Art or obscene? Trial tests boundaries - Ottawa Citizen

A jury trial kicked off Tuesday for a Quebec special-effects artist whose ability to create gory lifelike images has prompted criminal charges against him.

Remy Couture is charged with corrupting morals through the distribution, possession and production of obscene materials in a case that will explore the boundaries of artistic expression.

At issue are nearly 20 photo sets and a pair of short videos that appeared on a website he hosted, dubbed Inner Depravity. The violent, sexually explicit, horror-inspired works were based on a serial-killer character he created.

The 35-year-old filmmaker plans to argue that what the Crown calls obscene, he calls art. The prosecution, however, will stress the risks associated with exposing such material.

"The Crown will show that publishing the material undermines fundamental values of Canadian society as expressed in the Constitution," said Crown lawyer Michel Pennou.

He said the Crown intends to show that the material could push vulnerable members of society to act out what they see.

A jury began hearing testimony Tuesday and even saw some of the photos on Couture's site.

The sets viewed in court included titles like Hook - which is a series of photos depicting a woman being tortured with hooks by a muscular, tattooed, masked man. Another picture set titled "Burn" involves a woman's burned body being assaulted and mutilated.

Some of the work portrays scenes of necrophilia, simulated rape and extreme violence.

Couture uses a combination of fake blood, latex and silicone to weave disturbing tales of a serial killer who tortures, sexually assaults and murders his victims.

The court heard today that Interpol was first alerted to the images and videos in 2006 by an Internet user in Austria; the scenes were deemed so realistic that a pathologist in Europe couldn't rule out that a homicide had actually been committed.

But the case only landed on a Montreal police investigator's desk three years later.

Det.-Sgt. Christina Vlachos, an investigator with the police's morality squad, said she got the case in January 2009. She said she never actually mistook the images for real-life slayings.

"I never thought they were real," Vlachos testified Tuesday.

Vlachos said part of the reason the case moved slowly was that police had never dealt with such a case before.

Meanwhile, a senior detective told the court that police decided to be prudent when arresting Couture shortly before Halloween in 2009, given the contents of his website.

Det.-Sgt. Eric Lavallee testified that police decided to use an elaborate sting operation, with him posing as a client wanting to set up a gory photo shoot with his wife for Halloween. When Couture stepped out of his home, police swept in to arrest him.