“This is the worst story Quebec has seen in the last 100 years,” said Ms.e Valérie Assouline, the lawyer for the family of the “girl from Granby”, who filed a lawsuit on her behalf on Monday for more than 3.7 million for her terrible death in 2019.
The lawyer specializing in youth protection cases detailed in her 57-page legal action a long list of reports made to the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse (DPJ), the police and various stakeholders by a multitude of people, to alert the authorities to the ill-treatment inflicted on him. Despite this, she died of suffocation on April 30, 2019.
There were shortcomings at all stages, she decided.
The action is thus directed against the CIUSSS de l’Estrie, under which the DYP reports, the Commission scolaire du Val-des-Cerfs, as well as against three DYP workers and one of its department heads.
Compensatory and punitive damages are claimed on behalf of the deceased girl, her mother and her paternal grandparents.
They were present at the press conference held Monday in Granby, but a court order prevents them from being identified.
The mother wanted to address those present in the hall of a hotel in this town in the Eastern Townships. When it was her turn, she sobbed for several minutes before she could speak.
She would have been 11, she said, before explaining all the interventions she made when she saw her child with bruises or burns on her body. But no one listened to her, said the 31-year-old woman.
“The helplessness I felt was so deep. »
She repeated that she did not want to sue for the money: “I do it for all the children because I know the pain it can cause”.
She lamented that her baby girl, who was taken from her at birth, was initially placed in the care of her paternal grandmother, where she was happy, only to be forced to go live with her father and his new partner .
The latter was found guilty of unpremeditated murder and forcible confinement and was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 13 years. The father of the child pleaded guilty and will spend four years in prison for having kidnapped her shortly before her death. The stepmother appealed the verdict and sentence.
Further details will follow.