Victim of IVAC, the sequel

It was the story of a huge failure of the system. The IVAC, an organization whose mission is to support victims, paid generous compensation to a stalker who was determined to ruin the life of his ex-partner. From the beginning, the victim was her, Justine*.

Based on a form filled out by Alexandre*, a hyper-controlling man who had served 14 months in prison for criminal harassment of Justine, the IVAC had nevertheless allowed itself to be convinced that this man was the victim of the story.¹.

In the eyes of the organization, Justine was the aggressor. Worse, she had been violent towards their little girl. Alexandre also received compensation on behalf of the child.

When I exposed this absurd case in March, it didn’t take long: the IVAC promptly closed the files of Alexandre and the little girl. Quebec promised to plug the loophole allowing fraudsters to receive benefits reserved for victims.².

All’s well that ends well, then? Not quite. “Unfortunately,” Justine says, “domestic violence doesn’t stop with case closures.”

Hold on tight, the rest of his story is nightmarish. The good news, however, is that it shows that the system is also capable of good things.

For Justine, it was supposed to be a “small, ordinary visit” to court, a sort of mandatory routine involving the DPJ and Alexandre’s visits – rare and closely supervised – to their daughter. But suddenly, in the middle of the hearing, everything changed.

It was May 13. Five days earlier, Alexandre had gone to the hospital for an emergency psychiatric consultation. He then rushed to send the psychiatrist’s report to the court as evidence.

Except that he had blacked out the report in question. He had completely crossed out the excerpts that didn’t suit him, imagining that it would pass muster with the judge and the DPJ.

It didn’t go through. The DPJ obtained the report in its entirety. One of the redacted passages mentioned a possible narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder. Alexandre had made it disappear because he didn’t agree with the psychiatrist’s hypothesis…

The other redacted passage was downright terrifying.

Alexandre, it read, was considering four options: leaving the country, continuing to fight, ending his life or hurting his ex. He was leaning toward the fourth option: going after Justine. “He wouldn’t do it himself, but someone would have offered to do it ‘for free,'” the psychiatrist noted.

Justine was stunned. Her ex-partner was thinking about hurting her, maybe even killing her. He had discussed it with someone, who had offered to do the job. “It’s like there was a deal on my head!”

Judge Annick Bergeron of the Court of Quebec rendered her decision the same day. She ordered that Alexandre’s visits to his daughter be restricted again, while emphasizing her concerns: “The Court is concerned for the physical and psychological safety of the mother and the little girl. The father’s comments are bloodcurdling. His unpredictability is obvious.”

From that moment on, it was all hands on deck. Without Justine being informed, people from various backgrounds quickly mobilized to deploy a safety net around her and her daughter.

“It was much later that I was told that a Flash Unit had been activated,” Justine says. “It happens when we consider that there is an imminent risk of homicide, generally within 24 to 72 hours.”

“Someone raised the red flag and, after assessment, we decided that there was indeed an imminent risk,” confirms Valérie Grégoire, coordinator at the La Clé sur la Porte women’s shelter and member of Cellule Éclair, a “rapid intervention cell for the prevention of domestic and family homicides” in Montérégie.

Justine and her daughter were hastily moved to an unmarked women’s shelter. Alexandre was arrested three days later. Charged with threatening to kill and breaching conditions, he will remain in custody until his trial in October.

The Cellule Éclair was created in 2021, in response to the wave of feminicides that shook (and still shakes) Quebec. “Except for one, at the very beginning, we didn’t have any homicides [en Montérégie] since the cell has existed, says Valérie Grégoire. We feel like we are helping, but we will never be able to know if the cells we have triggered have really made a difference.”

Justine is convinced of this. “We can say that this hyper-efficient crisis unit probably saved my life. I was able to receive care extremely quickly and great efforts were made to provide a safety net.”

This is to say that, sometimes, the system works.

Justine and her daughter were forced to move. Their address, their region, the name of the school: nothing must be revealed to Alexandre. They now live in a hyper-secure house, equipped with surveillance cameras.

But it’s not over. It will never be over.

“It’s been five years since I left this guy, but I feel like I haven’t been able to leave him, because he still controls my life,” she says with anger mixed with helplessness. Five years later, Alexandre has made her lose her house, her job, her social network.

From the depths of his cell, he always manages to turn his life upside down.

A small – and ironic – consolation for the young mother: her moving expenses were covered by… IVAC, which now recognizes her status as a victim. Better late than never.

* Names changed to protect the identity of those involved, including a child.

Read “Victim of IVAC”

Read “IVAC backs down, the fault remains”