By Andrea Lawson

Remy Couture - Photo courtesy Kelso Rebel

On a wintry night in east Montreal, I stand on a porch waiting for Rémy Couture to answer his door. When it swings open, I am greeted by a pleasant, spiky-haired guy with a full sleeve of tattoos.

There’s a coffin in the living room. The downstairs workshop is unfinished, with cement floors and a low ceiling. There are limbs sticking out of buckets on the floor, and masks and pictures of bloodied people cover one of the walls.

Couture is a special effects artist based in Montreal. He has been in the industry for several years and has worked on indie projects and Hollywood blockbusters including The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Death Race.

For Couture, the past two years have been a time he describes as a “nightmare.” The nightmare is far from over.

In October 2009, Couture received an email from a couple wanting him to do makeup and take pictures for a Halloween party they were hosting. On the date and time they were to meet, he got a call from the couple saying they couldn’t find his place. The male on the line asked Couture to step out of his house to meet them on the street. He did so and soon found himself face-to-face with the gentleman on the line.

“He grabbed me and told me I was under arrest,” says Couture. “I thought it was a joke.” The couple who had contacted Couture were actually police officers sent to arrest him. The female officer showed him her gun to assure him it was no joke. He was shocked.

“They trapped me like a pedophile.”

For five years, he had been working on and off on a side project, a website: Inner Depravity. The website featured photos and two short films of a serial killer, played by Couture, committing fictitious, often gruesome murders. “It’s a trip in the mind of a serial killer,” he says. Some of the titles for the photo sessions on the site include burn, enslaved, sacrifice and necrophilia. He describes Inner Depravity as dark and disturbing – but it drew people in. “People are attracted to horror,” he says. “I think it’s inside us.”

The website had been viewed by about 30,000 people, many of whom wrote back to Couture. “A lot of people hate what I do. I got a lot of hate mail,” he says. “But a lot of people liked it too.” People told him his work was very realistic, which is exactly what he was hoping for. “The goal was to create the most realistic psychopath.”

One year after his arrest, Couture was charged under Canada’s obscenity laws, specifically section 163 of the Criminal Code. If convicted, Couture could face up to two years in jail.

According to the Montreal police, information received from Interpol initially got them investigating Couture. “It was a notification of child molestation,” says Sgt. Ian Lafrenière, media relations supervisor for the Montreal police. Someone from Germany viewed the website; saw a child on the site and alerted the police. “We did investigate and found no indication the child was molested,” says Lafrenière. The police investigation report was submitted to the crown attorney, who decided to pursue the case, he says.

Kirsten Kramar, a criminology professor at the University of Winnipeg and co-author of the book, Sex and the Supreme Court: Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada, says according to the obscenity laws, creators are not allowed to couple horror with anything that is sexually suggestive.

“My stuff is not real,” Couture says.  “I represent a sad reality but there’s no sad reality behind it.” He says he’s not the only one doing this. “There’s a lot of disturbing stuff on the Internet,” he says. “I’m not a revolutionary of horror.”

But still, Sgt. Lafrenière  counters with “We’re not talking about a site where people go just to see horror. We’re talking about a mix of that and sexually explicit images also.” He argues that just because other people do it, doesn’t mean it’s okay. “There are a lot of people speeding; it’s still not okay to speed.”

The Internet can be extremely useful but it can facilitate a lot of criminal activity, Lafrenière says. More laws could be helpful in getting this criminal activity in check and this may be one way to get them, he says. “We believe at the end of this, we might get some ground rules as to whether or not it was okay for Rémy to [create the site].”
[pullquote]“There’s a lot of disturbing stuff on the Internet. I’m not a revolutionary of horror.”
- Rémy Couture[/pullquote]

After the arrest, the Montreal police searched his home. What they were looking for is a mystery to Couture. “Maybe they were hoping to find corpses or something like that,” he says, joking that the officers didn’t brave a look inside the coffin. They seized his credit cards, computers and his passport. To Couture’s knowledge, they didn’t find anything illegal but prosecutors have pressed forward with the charge.

Kramar is doubtful about the possibility of a conviction sticking. “Maybe he’ll be convicted by a lower court but if it went to the Supreme Court of Canada, I don’t see there being a conviction,” she says. “It’s bizarre to me that they’re proceeding in that way. I can’t see there ever being a conviction because there is an artistic defence written into the obscenity law.”

Art is hard to define and apply the law to, Couture says. There are certain scenarios where the law can clearly be applied. Pictures of naked children, for example, are illegal, he says. His case is not so clear. “What I do is art,” Couture says. “It’s done in an artistic way.”

Lafrenière is not so sure. “Necrophilia, masturbating while touching cadavers….is this art?” Lafrenière points out there are probably different points of view on that. “For each person that will tell you this website is okay and that it is art, you will find the same number of people who will tell you the opposite,” he says. “I think it’s an important debate.”

Couture specializes in the gruesome and grotesque – Photo by Andrea Lawson

Whether the obscenity laws violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been considered in the past. Ultimately, the laws have been found to be constitutional, says Peter Rosenthal, a lawyer for Roach, Schwartz and Associates and mathematics professor at the University of Toronto.

Still, the Crown has some work ahead. “The Supreme Court made it clear that a conviction for obscenity requires proof of harm,” Rosenthal says. “That might be the most difficult aspect of the charge for the Crown to prove in the case against Mr. Couture.”

In Kramar’s book, Sex and the Supreme Court, she and her co-author chart the changes in the tests the courts have used to determine whether or not material or sexual content is criminal or harmful to political values. Courts have put into practice a more abstract test for what counts as obscenity, she says. “It used to be courts at least were provisionally required to weigh evidence from the community.” Now, because the test has become more abstract, courts really don’t have to consider that information. “They can just make the decisions all by themselves,” she says. This is something that may not be well known but should be considered. “We’re flagging that as something that ought to be paid attention to.”

But the consequences of a conviction could be much more far reaching than jail time for Couture. “It will put a chill on the arts community when you have to think about whether or not the state is going to interfere with your artistic expression,” Kramar says. Some people Couture knows in the arts community have been watching his case closely. “People freak out because they don’t know what it will mean if I am found guilty.”

Always a little distrustful of prosecutors, Couture is now more suspicious. They’re trying to make an example out of him, he says. He is also stunned by the amount of time and energy that has been put towards his case. “It’s incredible to see all the time and the number of people working on this,” Couture says. “It’s the time and people they’re not spending on real cases.”

Filmmaker Frédérick Maheux is working on a documentary about what happened to Couture, the website Inner Depravity and the people behind it. Maheux, who has worked with Couture previously, knew about the hate mail Couture received in response to the website. Still, he was surprised by the arrest. “He had disclaimers and everything. It was really sudden,” he says. “I would have expected that he would have received a warning or something prior to this heavy sledgehammer-type judgment being given.”

He is unsure of the consequence beyond Couture. “If he is condemned, we don’t know how far the law will extend,” said Maheux. “Individuals who create artistic materials and show their skills on the web will be affected by the decision.”

Mélisa Dionne-Michaud helped with the writing of the script for the films and was one of Couture’s models. A big fan of horror movies and special effects, she was just as surprised about the arrest when Couture relayed what had happened. “He told me all the details and I thought it was a joke,” she says. “It was not possible that someone could be arrested for making too realistic special effects.”
[pullquote]“It’s not personal. We don’t make the laws, we are applying the laws.”
-Sgt. Ian Lafrenière[/pullquote]

In the documentary, Maheux hopes to get to the heart of why people got involved in the website. “I was trying to understand what the motivation was for the people who were behind the project, be it the models, Rémy himself and the people who took the pictures.” He has conducted interviews and asked people what it was like to work on the set and with Couture. “From what I have thus far, I think it was really a positive experience,” he says. “The working environment when the pictures were taken and the movie was done was really funny and happy-go-lucky.”

Dionne-Michaud, who has done special effects and makeup for films in the past really enjoyed the work environment. “On the set, the atmosphere was relaxed, funny and family-like,” she says. “If he asked me to participate again in a new project, I immediately would say, ‘yes!’”

In the art community, the reaction has been unanimous. “He is the victim of overzealous authorities,” says Dionne-Michaud. “His art can shock and is not appropriate for a certain audience, but to treat him like a murderer or a rapist is overwhelming.”

Couture is happy to have the opportunity to tell his story. “The best thing I can do to show people the reality of Inner Depravity is to show the people behind it.” The police and others are quick to judge him based on his look and his work, he says. “But I speak well and I defend my art. It surprises them.” The ordeal has affected his life but his resolve remains tough. “It’s poisoned my world,” he says. “But I will fight to the end. It’s kind of personal now.” Lafrenière disagrees. “It’s not personal,” he says. “We don’t make the laws, we are applying the laws.”

Couture’s trial will be in October, two years after his initial arrest. “I really hope that the jury will see how ridiculous this is,” says Dionne-Michaud. “Rémy is not a criminal. He is a professional trapped in the middle of a masquerade.”