Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Impossible to miss the caricature displayed on the wall of the entrance.
We are not in a conventional law firm. Here, we fight against the abuse of power. In particular, those committed by the police and by the Church.
Even the decoration underlines it in broad strokes.
The drawing denounces a double discourse of the Catholic Church on the attacks committed by priests.
In the foreground, a cardinal publicly mourns the fate of abused children, speaking of a “veil of sadness that envelops the whole Church”.
Behind him, a lawyer invokes at the same time the protection of the “corporate veil” to avoid compensating these same victims.
Dressed in his eternal cheap suit, Me Alain Arsenault warmly welcomes us to the bright, air-conditioned offices he shares with his two young associates in a tower above the Sherbrooke metro station.
Quite a contrast for the 69-year-old civil law lawyer who worked alone for a long time in a “peak” – the term is his – on Ontario Street.
He has dedicated his life to exposing systemic racism, police brutality, as well as prosecuting sex offenders on behalf of penniless victims.
All naked in the street
During his first 30 years of practice, he often had trouble making ends meet. “I was stark naked in the street,” he says with the outspokenness for which he is known.
Today, his ideals have not changed. His means, yes. His firm is now the one that leads the most class actions against religious congregations in Quebec.
In 2011, Mr.e Arsenault reached a first agreement of $18 million with the Congrégation des frères de Sainte-Croix: financial compensation for some 200 former students sexually assaulted by members of their congregation in Montreal between the 1950s and 1990s, notably at the Collège Our Lady.
Since then, collective actions have multiplied. His firm is involved in 18 of the 24 actions brought against dioceses or religious communities that are currently underway in Quebec. “Montreal, Quebec, Longueuil, Trois-Rivières, Amos, Saint-Hyacinthe,” he lists, pointing to a huge shelf on which sit piles of documents classified by targeted diocese.
The lawyer also participated in a press conference alongside his colleague Marc Bellemare and the victims earlier this week during which they called on the Pope to recognize at the time of his planned visit to Quebec at the end of the month the abuses committed by his Church.
“Would you say that you are the lawyer who makes the Church tremble? “, we ask him.
This child of the Quiet Revolution – very early outraged by the discrimination experienced by “French Canadians” – bursts into frank laughter. “I was a mass server. They [les religieux] must regret it, ”he blurts out with the drooling humor that we know from him.
“Or at least the lawyer making her pay?” “, we add.
“Shake, I don’t know. Pay, yes. Paying for that is clear, clean and precise,” he replies, regaining his seriousness.
In total, the collective actions bring together more than 1,500 victims. So many shattered lives that have paraded through his office in recent years.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
In the eyes of Alain Arsenault, it is important to expose the flaws in the system.
“People often ask me, ‘Am I going to heal?’ I always tell them: “I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist, but your situation will improve.” That’s clear to me, he said. But to be cured, there is perhaps only one out of 1500 of whom I can say: “He is cured.” And again, I have my doubts. »
Louise’s cry
The lawyer will always remember the cry of his Innu friend – Louise.
This cry, she pushed it during her testimony within the framework of a private hearing in Uashat Mak Mani-utenam where the victims of the Oblate fathers were invited to express themselves.
“I’ll hear it on my deathbed,” he said. The Innu was looking for his words. She couldn’t find any. It’s a visceral scream that came out of his mouth. When she was still a child, she was repeatedly assaulted for years by an Oblate father.
Me Arsenault had known Louise for over 20 years. She had never told him about the assaults.
At the end of the 1970s, as a young law student at UQAM, he began to act within the League of Rights and Freedoms. Even if he was not yet a lawyer, the League then sent him to the North Shore with the anthropologist Rémi Savard.
Their mission: to investigate the death of two young Innu fishermen on the Moisie River; and more specifically on the possible role of white fishery guardians in these drownings.
It was there that he met Louise, in her twenties just like him. She is the “representative” of the families of the disappeared. He remembers thinking: she would make a good lawyer. She is brilliant. She has “the drive “. But the young woman will not go to university.
Decades later, M.e Arsenault understands: a man of the Church – a real sexual predator – crushed her. Now missing, “she had problems probably related to what she suffered,” he drops, moved.
The lawyer has a lot of admiration for the resilience of the First Nations and the Inuit: “We cannot imagine what they went through individually and collectively. »
The other Louise
A second client marked him for life. Another Louisa. In this case, it’s not his real first name. It was the columnist Pierre Foglia who attributed it to him in a series of articles published in the 1980s.
This is the story of a mother falsely accused by her ex-spouse of sexually assaulting their 4-year-old daughter.
Another case of life destroyed, this time by a whole system (police, DPJ, juvenile court), illustrates the lawyer.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
The little “annoying” side of Alain Arsenault’s system has not left him since university.
“It’s appalling that we can set in motion the youth court, the Superior Court, the family division, a criminal court for a non-existent event. Totally non-existent,” he points out.
The system believed the father. Not the mother. The police investigation was conducted with tunnel vision. Louise ended up proving her innocence, but she went through hell.
When that woman knocked on Mr.e Arsenault, in search of reparation, the lawyer accepted without hesitation to take his case.
“We prosecuted everyone except the judge in the juvenile court”, he underlines, even if it was not the desire that he lacked. Lawyers for the authorities involved – from large firms – dragged out the proceedings in the hope that she and her lawyer would give up.
Me Arsenault – during all this time – did not receive a penny. “In general, my clients don’t have any money, so I was paid on a percentage basis for a long time,” he describes. In other words, in case of defeat, he “ate his stockings”.
Today, he no longer “eats his stockings”. His firm was even criticized recently for claiming “excessive” fees in the settlement of the class action brought against the Clercs de Saint-Viateur (7 million in legal fees out of the 28 million settlement, or 25 % gain). The judge responsible for examining the agreement underlined the “remarkable work” of the firm, but asked it at the same time to review its fees downwards. Me Arsenault said he disagreed with the magistrate’s analysis (some firms claim 30% of the gain). However, he promised to make a new, cheaper proposal.
But back to Louise. The mother of the family has won her battle against the state. The lawyer kept in touch with her and her daughter – now an adult. He even helped the latter years later when she was the victim of renoviction. “I made her landlord pay enough so she could put down a down payment on a condo,” he says, half-drooling, half-amused.
His annoying side
When he was studying at UQAM, a professor who would become the first black judge in Quebec, Juanita Westmoreland-Traore, had suggested that he do work on the police law. She had perceived his “boring” side of the system – the qualifier is still his.
The future judge was right.
The lawyer will devote part of his practice to denouncing police abuse. It will highlight flaws in law enforcement interventions and investigations.
When I started, people said: “It’s impossible, miscarriages of justice in Quebec. Here, it does not exist”. I don’t mean to be mean, but just me, in my practice, I’ve had ten files of people who have been in jail for crimes they didn’t commit.
Me Alain Arsenault
He will play a key role in the coroner’s public inquiry into the death of an 18-year-old, Fredy Villanueva – killed by the police – in a park in Montreal North in 2008.
And more recently, with his partner Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, he negotiated an amicable agreement with the City of Montreal after their client Mamadi Camara, a man without history, was arrested and wrongly accused of having shot a policeman.
At 69, he plans to slow down soon. His succession is assured: Me Dufresne-Lemire also thrives on fighting against the inequities and flaws in the system. He has long sought it, this succession. It is not “comfortable” as a practice, he says, among other things when representing victims in commissions of inquiry.
“Yes, it’s a lawyer’s job, but it’s also a job to make people realize what’s going on,” says Ms.e Arsenault. The system does not work; why is it not working? Because of who ? What should we change in the laws? »