In 2021, a 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an educator in a resource that had a contract with the Youth Protection Directorate (DPJ) of the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal . And because of ways of doing things that a judge had ordered to be reviewed since 2019, his file was not the subject of a complete evaluation. The little victim was left without psychological support for almost a year.
Judge Alain Brillon, in a judgment rendered on March 27, severely blamed the DPJ and the CIUSSS, ruling that the child’s rights had been violated. This story is in certain respects “inconceivable”, believes the magistrate.
It begins in 2018, when the 9-year-old girl immigrated to Canada with her father. His mother remained in her country of origin. However, the father physically mistreated his daughter and reports were made in 2020. The little one was first placed in foster care, then in a group home.
In February 2021, she ended up in a group home managed by an NPO, under contract with the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud. The home has nine places and welcomes children aged 6 to 12.
Problematic events have already happened in this resource: it was closed in 2020 for sexual conduct between users. The children were all relocated elsewhere and the entire staff was fired. However, the resource reopened six months later. Management then committed to better training all of its staff in matters of sexual assault, which, Judge Brillon noted, had clearly not been done.
A “close relationship” with the child
A follow-up educator is assigned to the girl’s case. In 2021, his superiors noted that he had developed a “close relationship” with the child. In particular, he lets the little girl use her phone to talk to her mother through an application. He is asked to delete the contact. It takes three weeks to do it. The educator also mentions “sexualized” behavior to his colleagues.
Following these revelations, the educator is told that he can no longer be alone with the little girl. This instruction “was in fact in no way respected as the child testified, and as other speakers also reported,” established Judge Brillon.
In August 2021, when she had just turned 12, the little girl requested a meeting with another worker. She is crying, unable to speak. “She indicates on a sheet that her educator: ‘forces me to love him, he touches places that I do not like and I am no longer capable of supporting this,’” writes Judge Brillon.
The girl says that the educator, on three separate occasions, touched her buttocks, her vagina, and inserted a finger into her genitals. “He would have told her that she and her mother only had him. He then allegedly put his hand on “her vagina” over her swimsuit,” relates Judge Brillon.
“We don’t believe her,” notes the judge
Extremely disturbing, the educator who received this denunciation then asked the little girl if she “consented”. The same worker only calls the DPJ the next day, even though a possible sexual assault, under the law, must be reported “without delay”.
“It is inconceivable that the child’s tears and fears did not allow the educator to immediately report the facts reported to the director. In addition, the evidence demonstrates this educator’s lack of empathy towards a child barely 12 years old by asking her “if she consented”. Finally, the evidence shows that the child was not believed by the educational team who further criticized her behavior to explain her disclosure,” Judge Brillon is indignant.
In fact, the little girl has the impression that her testimony is being called into question by the speakers. “At the home, all the stakeholders do not seem to have believed the child as evidenced by the various reports and notes filed. […] The child was quite affected by the attitude of the members of the team in this regard,” notes the judge. On September 17, she asked to change resources “since we don’t believe her. She also asks to have access to a psychologist.”
However, in fact, she did not obtain the services of a psychologist until a year after the attack.
The fact of not ensuring that the child benefited from such psychological support for almost a year violated her rights to receive the services she greatly needed.
Judge Alain Brillon, in his judgment
Why did the services come so late? The worker says she is waiting for a response from the parents – who are virtually absent from the child’s life – for the request for psychological support. No steps were subsequently taken to ensure that this support materialized, even if the Compensation for Victims of Criminal Acts (IVAC) program ended up offering the little girl such support. She will not get therapy until July 2022, 10 months after the incident.
In fact, this little girl’s report of sexual assault was never the subject of a complete evaluation, as the law requires. This seems to be the way of doing things at the DPJ, where we generally close a file when a report concerns a child housed in social services resources if the staff involved leaves or the resource is closed.
This is exactly what happened in the girl’s case in 2021: the educator stopped working at the home during the police investigation, and after it, he was arrested and charged.
No new protocol
After the child was revealed – and the report that followed – the “report [d’évaluation] is laconic and concludes that the facts are well-founded, but that the child is not in need of protection,” notes the judge. In a report of less than two pages, which contains no analysis of the facts, the safety and development of the child are judged not to be compromised.
What’s more, “the director maintains that according to her analysis, the child was no longer in danger at home since the alleged abuser had left his position.” The DPJ ended up severing its contractual link with the resource, following an administrative investigation.
However, two years earlier, in a similar case, Judge Lucie Godin had given the DPJ six months for these ways of doing things to be reviewed and for a clear protocol marking this type of case to be drawn up. The judge recommended that the Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights (CDPDJ) participate in the drafting of this protocol.
However, the director of youth protection of the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud, Assunta Gallo, came to confirm to the court “that no protocol was drawn up following the orders,” notes Judge Brillon. As in many other cases, the CDPDJ does not seem to have acted either.
Mme Gallo declined our request for an interview. The group home has been closed since October 2021, due to “recruitment difficulties”, indicates a letter from management that we were sent.
During the hearing of the case, the child’s attorney, Me Sophie Papillon, called on the national director of the DPJ, Catherine Lemay, to demand the modification of the standards of practice in the case where a child suffers sexual assault in a resource. The judge ordered that the judgment be sent to him. Me Butterfly and Mme Lemay both declined our interview request.
“The Court remains very concerned about cases of so-called institutional abuse,” concludes Judge Brillon.