Victims No More

It is said that conspiracy theories emanate from events of epic proportion because the simplicity of some explanations defies the enormity of the act.

How could a wan pipsqueak with a rifle and a half-baked grudge bring down Camelot? How could a few fanatics topple the Trade Center towers and transform the land of the free into the land of the fearful?

The siege at ArgentBank on Grand Caillou Road so many years ago is not comparable to the Kennedy assassination or the Sept. 11 debacle. In most ways. But it was a massive crime affecting many, carried out certainly by a single, tormented pipsqueak named Chad Roy Louviere.

For this little community, Louviere’s 1996 rampage accomplished what even killer hurricanes have not. He robbed people of their faith and their sense of security, and stole much more from those he immediately victimized.

Terrebonne Parish lost its innocence, and for a time even its trust in those sworn to protect its people. That Louviere wore a uniform and shield while doing murder and rape magnified the horror.

So there he was last week, getting helped out of a van that brought him from the State Penitentiary at Angola to the bowels of the Terrebonne Parish courthouse. The id-driven perfectionist who paraded for a few years as a protector before his day as tormenter, now cowers from the executioner’s needle. He comes crawling to the altar of justice. He came to beg a black-robed puisne to reconsider, to tell his fortune anew. One who admittedly victimized women just earning a living at their jobs now wishes to be seen as a victim himself, stripped of rights guaranteed even the likes of him.

Once toned and trim, he is 17 years later balding and craven, a rotund, shuffling cretin, dragging his chains like an orange-clad Dickensian specter, a stun belt around his waist like something you use to keep a rogue elephant in line.

Perhaps, as his current attorneys say, Louviere is a madman not responsible for his actions, which took the life of a carefree young woman named Pamela Duplantis, and derailed the lives of other women held hostage. Perhaps, as his attorneys say, earlier proceedings were a sham, and a new trial should issue.

The evidence and testimony to be presented over many months to come in this courtroom, and likely to be presented in others, will tell if this is true.

Perhaps not.

If not, the needle is patient. It doesn’t mind waiting. The needle doesn’t give a damn.

But patient as well are those Louviere wronged, the women subjected to his savagery, on the day when he was in charge. They have a place at justice’s altar as well and that is where they were last Wednesday. They didn’t kneel and they didn’t beg. They demanded. They stared him down as he sat in the jury box. When he was moved to the defense table these women, along with the mother of the one who was killed, stood their ground as they drilled holes in the back of the tormenter’s head with eyes clear and focused.

They told the prosecutor, after the justice beggar was led out like a beast, that they want no more of this looking at the back of the head at future hearings.

In their words and their carriage, they made clear if nothing else that they are victims no more.

It was summed up by the words one woman spoke.

“We want him to see us,” she said. “We want him to know we are not going away.”