Department of Youth Protection | “There are some for whom it ends well”

Like many CEGEP students, Cristhin is finishing her college studies these days. For this young woman who was taken into the care of the Department of Youth Protection (DPJ) at the age of 15, it’s a bit of a response to a murderous sentence delivered by her mother-in-law: “You’re going to end up like your mother, you won’t have a diploma. »

There is one, diploma: Cristhin, who prefers not to mention his last name, has just finished his nuclear medicine technique at Ahuntsic College.

She has come a long way to get there. At age 11, she arrived from the Dominican Republic to live in Quebec with her father, stepmother and two stepsisters.

“At the beginning, things were going well, but things deteriorated quickly,” she says, sitting in the shade of a tree in front of the CEGEP. Cristhin’s father is never at home, her stepmother is violent, physically and psychologically. The years that follow are tumultuous for the child.

Cristhin remembers, for example, a day off school when her mother-in-law sent her to wait for the bus in the cold and the snow, even though she knew full well that there was no school that day. -there.

When she was 15, returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic to see her mother, Cristhin couldn’t find her father to meet her at the airport. She waits for hours with a security employee. His father is called on the intercom: he may have just made the wrong entry…

She is faced with a heartbreaking choice. “They asked me if I wanted to board the first flight back to the Dominican Republic the next morning or stay and be taken care of by the DPJ, because my father didn’t want me,” says Cristhin.

The host family that changes everything

“Being in foster care was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Cristhin says now. For three years, she lives with a Haitian family. “I felt included. When I had an event at school, they were always there,” she says.

She cites meals ready in the evening, which she had not experienced with her father. The teenager discovers that she likes reading, volleyball, gets involved in the life of her secondary school.

When she comes of age, however, she leaves the family. This is where the Youth Foundation of the DPJ comes into his life and gives him a boost to find accommodation, pay for his studies, his books.

After a brief stint in a nursing program, she enrolled in CEGEP in nuclear medicine technology. “I had no idea what it was,” said the young woman.

Today, Cristhin lives with her boyfriend in an apartment. This week, she will take the exam for the professional order which will allow her to practice her profession as a nuclear medicine technologist, a sector where jobs are not lacking.

Cristhin still has ties with her foster family and has reconnected with her father, whom she sees on a regular basis. Absent at the high school graduation ceremony, he was in the room during the graduation ceremony at Cégep Ahuntsic. “I was happy,” says Cristhin.

Why is she telling her story? “Often, it seems that we just see the bad side of the DPJ. I thought that at 18, you were put on the street and told: ‘Forgive yourself'”, says Cristhin, who adds that there are “for whom it ends GOOD “. She wants those who have donated to the Foundation to know that they have contributed to its success.

At 22, Cristhin now dreams of a big house with a yard. She sees herself outside Montreal, cites Chicoutimi, or why not Rimouski, to settle. Hospitals wishing to hire a graduate fresh out of CEGEP are asked to come forward.