The “girl from Granby” had expressed her despair and even made suicidal remarks to a worker from the DPJ, a year before her death following the multiple abuses she suffered.
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“It’s not okay. My heart hurts. Only you can help me. Everyone is tired of me. I better be here, disappear […]I want to go far away.”
Here are the comments that the girl would have made, when she was only 6 years old, to a worker.
They are reported in the $ 3.7 million lawsuit filed Monday morning at the Granby courthouse by the mother and grandparents of the girl who died in 2019.
The lawsuit filed by Mr.e Valérie Assouline, whom our Bureau of Investigation was able to consult, is targeting the Department of Youth Protection (DPJ), four of its employees as well as the Val-des-Cerfs School Service Center.
In the 60-page petition, damning situations are alleged about the condition of the little girl, who was then in the care of her father and his spouse: she was sleeping on the floor; she was losing weight visibly; she hid in the school bathrooms to rummage through trash cans in hopes of finding food, as she sometimes went two days without eating.
The girl, whose identity is protected by law, is said to have even implored the school not to send her home.
His brother, three years his junior, was also experiencing violence, it is alleged.
SCREENSHOT / VAT NEWS / QMI AGENCY
Locked up in the cellar
The paternal grandmother would have launched many warning signals indicating that the girl and her brother were in danger, but in vain.
We also learn in the lawsuit that in September 2017, the father’s spouse was arrested by the police for physical abuse of the two children.
The petition filed by Mr.e Assouline quotes the police investigation report:
«[La conjointe] takes the little girl by the bottom of her panties and by the waistcoat at the level of the nape of the neck and throws the little girl towards the front door over a distance of 1 m. […] The spouse locked him in the cellar during the day or in the bedroom.
The report also indicates that the girl’s bedroom door was locked from the outside.
In all, the police had to intervene on six occasions in three years at the residence of the couple, it is described in the lawsuit.
Photo filed in court
Reproaches to the DPJ
Also, seven reports were made in less than a year to the DYP during 2017, but several of them were not taken seriously.
For example, in November 2018, the girl reportedly explained that her father’s spouse had punched her in the face and knocked her to the ground. School staff also reportedly found blood on the girl’s handkerchief and a wound above her eye.
However, the intervener and the head of the DYP department would not have planned any emergency measures. They would have contented themselves with asking the father not to leave the little girl alone with her spouse.
History of sexual abuse
The paternal grandmother would also have informed the DPJ that the little girl affirmed that her father asked her to adopt sexualized behaviors when she was at home. Faced with the worker’s refusal to read it, she then filed a complaint with the Granby police.
However, according to the prosecution, the DPJ knew that the father had a history of family sexual abuse with his siblings, which the intervener failed to say during testimony before the court.
Another worker would have questioned the words of the little girl to a worker to whom the file was going to be transferred: “She is waiting to be followed in child psychiatry […]the young person tends to exaggerate and invent.”
- Listen to the interview with Martin Gignac, Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, MUHC and Associate Professor at McGill University on QUB radio:
home school
The prosecutors also blame the Center de services scolaire du Val-des-Cerfs. The management of the girl being difficult, the center would have ended up sending her home to do home schooling in the presence of the spouse of the father.
The school staff, who nevertheless made several reports to the DPJ, could therefore no longer exercise the last safety net for the girl, is it described in the lawsuit.
The child finally died on April 30, 2019.
The father’s spouse was convicted of unpremeditated murder in December 2021. She is currently appealing the case.
“During this hearing, Mrs. [Intervenante de la DPJ] describes the father’s spouse as an explosive person “hyper positive, hyper posed, hyper in her place, but at some point, when there’s something that doesn’t work, it jumps”. »
“As of February 8, 2018, X [la fillette] mentions at the end of the day to her teacher that she does not want to go home, because she is afraid of being teased again, detailing examples of punishments: “hot/cold showers, doing 100 squats, being locked in her room or outside, deprived of food, being put in diapers”. »
“On January 18, 2019, a little over three months before the death, the child mentioned in crisis to the school TES “that we don’t care about her, that we don’t want to help her. ” »
“On May 21 and 23, 2018, a school supervisor reported to the DPJ that at dinner time, X [la fillette] locked herself in the toilet to rummage through trash cans and eat discarded food. »