By keeping silent for decades about the physical violence that one of its pastors allegedly inflicted on the children entrusted to it, the Quebec Baptist Church would have made itself an “accomplice” of this one, according to the alleged victims of a recently authorized class action.
Pastor Claude Guillot was director of the school La Bonne Semence operated by the Baptist Church of Victoriaville, from 1982 to 1984. It is in this capacity that he allegedly dispensed “corporal punishment” to the children entrusted to him. in an “extreme and abusive manner,” reads the originating application filed on Monday.
During this period, the “corrections” were said to have been made with a blunt object, “being a pallet of varnished solid wood having a thickness of approximately one inch, a width of approximately 6 to 8 inches and a length of approximately 14 inches, excluding the handle”.
It is also claimed that Claude Guillot encouraged parents “to chastise their children in the same way” once they returned home. It was these abuses that led the La Bonne Semence school to dismiss him in May 1984.
Other alleged abuses at the “Academy”
“Despite the dismissal of Guillot […] for the reason that he abused children, neither the Victoriaville Church nor the Association [d’églises baptistes évangéliques au Québec] have denounced the abuses of Guillot”, it is written. The latter continued to evolve within the religious organization which, suddenly, made itself “accomplice” of the acts he would have committed in the following decades, according to the alleged victims.
In 1999, after studying theology in Quebec, Pastor Guillot created at home — in partnership with the Evangelical Baptist Church of Quebec East — a “clandestine church-school” called “the Academy”. This took up the same program as that of the Good Seed. The abuses would have been made there in view, with the knowledge and with the approval of the members of the Quebec-East Church, argue the applicants.
Students, some of whom lived permanently with Mr. Guillot, were also said to have been forced to stay there: “Guillot had installed multiple surveillance cameras there, he had screwed the windows into the frames and removed the cranks so that they could not not be open. Claude Guillot was also found guilty of forcible confinement against these victims.
The pastor who was first arrested in 2015 was convicted last April of 18 counts of child abuse at La Bonne Semence school and the Academy. This judgment, rendered on April 7, has not been appealed. Claude Guillot is currently awaiting his sentence.
Each of the two class action plaintiffs is seeking two million dollars to compensate for the suffering, anguish, shame, loss of self-esteem and multiple inconveniences resulting from the alleged abuse.