Quebec singer Nathalie Simard returns to private life
Author: CBC News
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Quebec singer and former child star Nathalie Simard has announced her retirement from show business, three years after publicly revealing she was sexually abused as a child by her manager.

Simard said she's found it harder than expected to be in the spotlight since going public with her story in 2005 and reviving her singing career.

She returned to singing in 2005, after revealing that she had been sexually abused by manager Guy Cloutier, starting at the age of 11 and continuing through her teen years.

Cloutier had turned Simard and her brother, René, into pop sensations in the 1980s with their own TV show, Le village de Nathalie.

They were the Quebec equivalent of Donnie and Marie Osmond, but behind the scenes, Nathalie endured seven years of abuse between 1980 and 1987.

In 2005, Simard published a book about her ordeal and told her story to the private Quebec television network TVA in exchange for a $100,000 donation to a foundation for sexual-assault victims.

Cloutier was convicted in December 2004 after he pleaded guilty to sexually molesting a minor and other charges. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.

Simard said she returned to singing after a 10-year absence to prove that she could do it. She released an album, Il y avait un jardin, and a TV special in the past two years.

But the return to public attention "opened her eyes" and showed her that she was still fragile because of the abuse in her past, she told La Semaine magazine.

She said she was proud of what she had accomplished but now was looking for a life that was more "real and human."

Simard recently cancelled shows in Trois-Rivières and Sherbrooke and will do one last show at Théâtre St-Denis in Montreal on April 18.

With files from Canadian Press

Nathalie Simard, shown this January, says she plans to return to private life. (TVA/Canadian Press)

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