The entire diocese of Amos, in Abitibi, is the target of a request for authorization of collective action for sexual assaults allegedly committed by at least five priests on as many boys aged 7 to 14 at the time of the facts.
The request, which is presented to the Abitibi District Superior Court on Tuesday, targets the Diocese of Amos and the Bishop of Amos as an institution and covers the period from 1940 to today.
The representative plaintiff, a now 65-year-old man who cannot be identified, alleges that he was repeatedly sexually assaulted when he was 7 to 11 years old.
The request, piloted by the Montreal law firm Arsenault Dufresne Wee, argues that Father Paul-Émile Bilodeau, a catechesis teacher at the Notre-Dame-de-Fatima school in Val-d’Or, would have to first inflicted assaults on the applicant which allegedly took the form of anal penetrations between 1963 and 1967 in a small room in the school.
A few years later, when the applicant was a mass boy at Notre-Dame-de-Fatima church, Father Bilodeau allegedly sexually assaulted him again.
Multiple aggressors and assaults
The demand for collective action specifies that at least four other people have suffered sexual assault at the hands of priests of the Diocese of Amos.
Thus, Father Réal Couture, would have committed a dozen assaults in Parent on a boy who was then between 10 and 14 years old; Father Armand Roy allegedly committed around 30 assaults in Laferté and Launay on a boy who was then 12 years old; Father Lucien Côté allegedly committed several assaults in Authier-Nord on a boy who was aged 10 and 11 and, finally, Father Hubert Fortier would also have committed several assaults in Berry on a boy then aged 12 and 13 .
In the case of the principal plaintiff, his attorneys say that the plaintiff had informed his father of the sexual assaults inflicted by Paul-Émile Bilodeau and that a few weeks later, the latter was sent to Chibougamau.
Culture of silence and camouflage
The request accuses the diocese and the bishop of the time, Mr.gr Aldée Desmarais, for failing to investigate and crack down “to promote the culture of silence”. She considers that by doing so, “the Defendants perpetuated the risk that Father Bilodeau would commit other sexual assaults, and it is likely to believe that, in fact, such assaults were committed while he was acting in his capacity. of parish priest elsewhere ”.
Thus, in the words used by the plaintiff’s lawyers, the diocese and the bishop “covered up the sexual assaults committed by their agent, although they had been informed of it”.
Serious consequences
The motion reveals that because of the abuse, the Applicant made several suicide attempts between 1977 and 2005, suffered physical injuries and suffered from a multitude of psychological problems for many years, including anxiety, difficulty sleeping, panic attacks, anger and irritability, drug use and homelessness.
The plaintiff is claiming from the defendants a total of $ 600,000, that is, $ 300,000 in non-pecuniary damages for the damages resulting from the sexual assaults of which he was the victim, $ 150,000 for his pecuniary losses and, given the seriousness and for the duration of the actions taken, $ 150,000 in punitive damages under the Charter of human rights and freedoms.
The Diocese of Amos covers an immense territory of over 125,000 square kilometers serving a population of over 76,000 people in 53 parishes. It is flanked, among others, by the dioceses of Churchill-Baie d’Hudson to the north, Baie-Comeau to the northeast, Chicoutimi to the east, Trois-Rivières and Joliette to the southeast as well as by those of Mont-Laurier and Rouyn-Noranda to the south.
Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats advises that anyone wishing to register for this collective action can do so by contacting it.