The death of the girl from Granby, in disturbing circumstances, has caused much ink to flow in recent years. Sometimes we have the impression that everything has already been written.
The report of the Special Commission on the Rights of Children and Youth Protection (Laurent Commission) recommends several changes and a reform project for the Youth Protection Act was recently tabled in the National Assembly.
In his column of December 18, Patrick Lagacé underlined that “the grandmother was right”1. While I do not fully agree with his analysis and deplore the contemptuous tone he adopts towards the mother of the girl, he stresses the importance of taking more seriously the fears expressed by women regarding the safety of children.
There is indeed a commonality between this situation and several other situations that I have encountered in recent years: a woman – usually the mother, sometimes the grandmother – expresses fears about the safety of a child, but these fears are not taken seriously.
On the contrary, she is accused of exaggerating, of being too anxious, of transmitting her anxiety to the child, of being hostile or of being alienating. According to the workers, the woman does this because she has mental health problems or because she is trying to get revenge on her ex-partner.
In his column, Patrick Lagacé deplores the fact that interveners and the courts maintain blood ties at all costs, to the detriment of the safety of children, a point of view that I do not share. The situation of the girl from Granby shows moreover that they do not attach the same importance to all blood ties.
In fact, what is problematic, in this situation and in the other situations to which I am referring, is the willingness of the interveners and the courts to maintain as much contact as possible between the children and their father, even when the latter has a problem. pattern of violent behavior. In this context, workers tend to adopt a complacent attitude towards the father. They don’t do an in-depth assessment of his pattern of violent behavior, they have very few demands and are content with minor changes, which aren’t even necessarily indicators of a decrease in violent behavior. Often, it is no longer even about violence, but rather parental conflicts or severe separation conflicts. And if women express fear, they risk being accused of fueling conflict and damaging the father-child relationship.
In these circumstances, the allegedly “alienating” behaviors of mothers are seen to be much more serious than the violent behaviors of fathers. The consequences are serious for these women, some of whom have even lost custody of their children.
It is extremely worrying to note that, despite the recommendations of the Laurent commission and those of the Rebuild trust, the reform project Youth Protection Act remains silent on the issue of domestic violence. All the measures deployed in recent months to ensure the safety of victims of violence, including specialized courts and crisis units, risk being ineffective if the fears expressed by women and children are not taken more seriously and whether interveners and courts in the areas of family law and child protection continue to have a complacent attitude towards men who exhibit violent behavior.