Two Quebec women raped by adoptive father sue for child protection: lawyer

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Two women who were sexually assaulted by the same adoptive father 16 years apart plan to sue the Quebec City regional health authority, their lawyer said Thursday.

Valérie Assouline said the local youth protection service, run by health authorities, must be held responsible for ignoring the first boy when he reported his assault and for placing other children in the home for years.

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“When stories like this happen, and we try to sweep them under the rug and not hold them accountable, it won’t happen again,” Assouline said in an interview. “I want to make sure (youth protection) knows this won’t happen again.”

Assouline said that on two occasions in 2004, his client, who was 12 at the time, was drugged and woke up naked inside the home of Eric Jean, his adoptive father. The girl told one of Jean’s relatives what happened and, in response, they told her not to drink any coffee the man offered her.

The third time Jean raped her she was fully conscious, Assouline said.

The girl informed the health authorities about the third attack, but the institution did not respond to her complaint, Assouline said. Instead, the girl was placed in a juvenile facility after her adoptive mother told youth protection officials that the girl was using drugs.

In subsequent years, more children were placed in the home. One of them was Assouline’s other client, who was nine years old the first time Jean abused her. She reported the attacks in 2021; This time, authorities investigated.

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In November, Jean was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting both girls. Another man, Steve Hudon, also faces charges related to the sexual abuse of the two boys. Hudon is scheduled to return to court in May. A third man, who was a minor at the time the girls were raped, has also been charged.

Assouline said he is waiting to see if other victims come forward before filing the lawsuit against the regional health authority. But she said there are bigger problems within Quebec’s troubled child protection system.

“Unfortunately, the failure is systemic,” he said, describing the case of a seven-year-old girl in Granby who was murdered in 2019 by her stepmother, with the help of the girl’s father. In that case, family members had raised concerns with child protection authorities, who did not act.

“It’s the same thing, we don’t listen and we don’t believe,” Assouline said. “And that is what leads us to catastrophes.”

Granby’s case is not the only one in which a child was killed by a parent after youth protection officials were warned but failed to act, he said, referencing the case of two children killed in 2020 by their father in Wendake, and one involving a girl murdered in 2020 by her mother in Montreal.

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In those cases, such as the rape case he plans to take to court, the response from youth protection authorities has been “incredible,” he said.

“Your reaction is always to protect your system.”

His clients, now ages 32 and 17, remain haunted by their experiences, he said.

The Quebec City health authority said it was first informed of sexual assault allegations against Jean in 2021. Spokesperson Mélanie Otis wrote in an email that “a series of verifications and actions were carried out, including an investigation comprehensively among children housed in this environment who may also have been victims of sexual abuse.”

Quebec City police said their investigation into sexual assaults at the foster home remains active, but declined to comment further.

Lionel Carmant, Quebec’s minister responsible for social services, said he was horrified by the situation. “It’s abhorrent,” he told reporters Wednesday at the legislature.

Carmant said he would ask the province’s youth protection chief to investigate how children continued to be placed in the home after the girl reported what happened to her in 2004, but stressed that Quebec’s youth protection law has changed since a 2022 reform.

Assouline said Carmant should have ordered an investigation in November 2023, when Jean was sentenced.

“I think it is a lack of courage to change things, to change them from the roots,” he said.

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