The publishing house AdA, which made itself known thanks to its literary collection of forbidden tales, has abandoned the 4 million lawsuit it brought against the Directorate of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), we have learned The Press.
The founder of AdA, François Doucet, his wife, Nancy Coulombe, and their son Nycolas Doucet, who is the current general director of the publishing house, had turned against the DPCP for abusive prosecution following their acquittal for production and distribution of child pornography. An accusation arising from a complaint, based on an incest scene published in an adult replay of Hansel and Gretelsigned by the author Yvan Godbout.
The Doucet family did not wish to comment on the reasons for this withdrawal. One of his lawyers, Me Frédéric Laflamme, from the Lavery de Billy firm, was not more talkative. Last summer, however, François Doucet confided to The Press that his lawyers had difficulty obtaining internal written communications from the Attorney General’s office justifying the criminal prosecution.
The lawyers for Éditions AdA had to prove “absence of reasonable grounds” and “pursuit of an illegitimate aim”, which is no easy task given the “relative immunity” of the DPCP.
In 2022, an expert report signed by a former Crown prosecutor, Me René Verret tried to answer these questions. He concluded that the Crown prosecutor should have asked for “additional evidence” before going further and that he “does not appear to have taken into consideration the devastating consequences of the prosecution on the accused persons”.
“The Supreme Court recognizes that prosecutorial immunity is not absolute and that it cannot protect the Crown from abusive prosecution. […] The plaintiff’s burden is to demonstrate that the pursuer did not have reasonable and probable cause to pursue him,” wrote the lawyers of Éditions AdA in the suit before detailing the faults committed by the DPCP.
“Not an apology for violence”
Basically, Éditions AdA affirms that the very definition of child pornography, which the Criminal Code defines as “any writing whose dominant characteristic is the description for sexual purposes, of sexual activity with a person under the age of ten -eight years […] » does not apply to the novel signed by Yvan Godbout, who was also prosecuted in this case.
“The book contains only a few short sexually explicit passages involving minors on a total of 251 pages, all of which is presented for a purpose that is not sexual,” write the lawyers of Éditions AdA. The character of the abusive stepfather is described in the novel by the author Yvan Godbout as a “pig”, a “monster”. »
Hansel and Gretel is in no way an apology for sexual violence or pedophilia. It was never intended to create desire or excitement in the reader, but rather to arouse fear, terror and disgust.
The lawyers of Éditions AdA
The suit also mentions “the absence of legal precedents in matters of literary works”, the choice of the DPCP to proceed “by direct indictment”, which deprived the publishing house and its author of the right to a preliminary investigation, “the desire of the DPCP to test a provision of new law, a test case “, as well as the “relentlessness” of the Attorney General, which affected the “reputation” and “financial situation” of the people targeted, despite their acquittal.
Acquitted in 2020
In September 2020, judge Marc-André Blanchard acquitted the publishing house AdA and the author Yvan Godbout by recognizing that “the literary material does not advise or advocate the commission of sexual acts”. He also concludes that his “prohibition” does not “protect children” and “encroaches on freedom of expression.”
It must be said that the DPCP’s evidence was based essentially on the testimony of a criminalist from the Sûreté du Québec, Sarah Paquette, who affirmed that the publication of the novel Hansel and Gretel “could have the effect of suggesting to a reader that its content [était] acceptable”. At the same time, Mme Paquette refused to establish a causal link between “a literary description” and the birth of “atypical sexual interests”. Remember that there were no victims in this story.
Despite the acquittal of Éditions AdA and the author Yvan Godbout, in April 2021, the Attorney General attempted to bring the case before the Supreme Court on a constitutional question, but the latter refused the request for authorization to appeal of Judge Blanchard’s decision.
The AdA Editions lawsuit was filed following this episode, in September 2021. It was abandoned on November 23 after more than two years of legal proceedings, which put an end to the case.