In a divorce case, the Superior Court ordered that an independent lawyer be called into the file to cross-examine an alleged victim of domestic violence instead of her ex-spouse who was representing himself.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Judge Marie-Claude Armstrong accepted Ms.and Justine Fortin, lawyer at Juripop (a community organization offering low-cost legal services).
“He is a kind of screen lawyer whose presence in the file prevents the victim from being confronted again with his attacker”, which spares him this other trauma of having to answer him directly in court, explains in an interview. Mand Fort.
This precaution is in line with a section of the family law reform bill, which was also mentioned by Judge Armstrong in her decision.
In the present case, however, the judge relied on article 158 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which already allows her to rule on specific requests made by one of the parties.
First conviction
In a previous judgment, the ex-spouse had already been found guilty of harassment and breach of conditions against his ex-spouse and one of their children. Although he is appealing this decision, he consented to an independent lawyer carrying out the cross-examination in his place of the divorce case, on the condition that this in no way be considered as an admission of his go.
Given the seriousness of the facts for which the man received a first conviction, the judge accepted the argument presented to her according to which a cross-examination by the spouse himself would constitute, she wrote, “a stressful experience for the victim.
Mand Fortin is delighted that a civil court agreed “to offer this protection to a victim” even before the reform of family law was enacted.
She adds that this recourse to an independent lawyer to avoid that a victim finds herself facing her aggressor who represents himself alone is already provided for in criminal law, as well as in civil cases elsewhere in Canada.
Through his press attaché Élizabeth Gosselin, the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, recalled, in the wake of this judgment, that “it is essential that victims can feel confident and safe during their testimony. “.