The victims of Mont d’Youville deserve better, Mr. Jolin-Barrette

Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette,

I am identified as a victim. I dare to believe that I am one of those people towards whom you showed sensitivity last November, with misty eyes in the National Assembly, during your statement in favor of a specialized tribunal for sexual violence, that you will institute with Bill 92.

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You said then that you wanted to “put the victims at the center of the judicial process” and initiate “a change of culture in matters of justice”. Minister, that is why I am speaking to you. I request your intervention.

It was in the 1970s that I arrived at Mont d’Youville, in Quebec. Very quickly, I was delivered to a man, a sadistic character, who, in addition to not being able to bear to hear me cry, satisfied his perverse and brutal desires in a repetition of sexually deviant physical attacks.

Like so many others, I had to endure this treatment, helpless, distraught and deeply hurt. From a terrified and bruised child, I have, over time, become an aggressive and violent man. I was only a passive and detached witness to my own life.

It took me twenty years of therapy and a lot of resilience to manage to build a “normal” daily life for myself, despite my irreparable injuries. My executioner has since, of course, been arrested and thrown in prison. The fact remains that Mont d’Youville marked my life with a hot iron and that this demon is not the only one responsible.

Mr. Jolin-Barrette, we are more than 500 victims who suffered atrocities at Mont d’Youville, when the orphanage was under the direction of the Sisters of Charity. Like many of us, I feel betrayed and abandoned.

The class action that we are bringing to obtain a little bit of justice in this case is drawn out in length and lost in the whirlwind of legal heaviness caused by the defendant. As you know, Mont d’Youville has become an integrated health and social services center (CIUSSS), a parapublic organization under the responsibility of your government.

The agreements governing the sale of the building provide for a sharing of legal responsibilities between the old and the new owners, which means that in front of us, to defend the interests of the Sisters, there are more than a dozen lawyers who, I repeat, answer for your government.

What results from this situation is that at the center of this legal procedure, it is not us, the victims, that we find – as you wished last November –, but rather the “advocacy”. as well as abuses of procedure, carried out by representatives of the Sisters of Charity and the CIUSSS to save time.

This circus has been going on for four long years. This means that our action, which aims to help put some balm on our wounds with official recognition of the injustice we have experienced, ultimately becomes extremely painful and painful. We, who live very hard each episode of this saga, we feel dropped.

It’s a real nightmare.

As Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Quebec, you can take action to finally put an end to this infamy. You just have to demand that an agreement be made and you’ll be done, I’m sure. A simple intervention on your part and we will finally be able to free ourselves from this stagnation which continues the immense pain that our attacker makes us live.

John Simard
Victim and plaintiff of a class action against the Sisters of Charity of Quebec