Politics
Child-welfare lawsuit proceeds Action over decades of child abuse in youth homes includes Cree members by Ben Powless
A
new class-action lawsuit alleges decades of abuse against girls and boys throughout Quebec’s child-welfare system. Filed on behalf of those who attended reception centres for boys and girls over the past 30 years, the lawsuit alleges the Quebec government was aware of the abuse but did nothing to address it. The Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay is named as one of the administrative institutions in the lawsuit. According to Lev Alexeev, the lead lawyer behind the case, the suit could potentially involve tens of thousands of victims. He is seeking $500,000 in damages from the province, in addition to punitive damage compensation. Alexeev says that the main objective of the lawsuit is to stop these practices from continuing. The lead plaintiff, Eleanor Lindsay, met other people who had attended the reception centres on social media and discussed the harm they had suffered as kids. They then approached Novalex, which initially filed the lawsuit in October 2019. Christopher Stephen, of Waskaganish, attended a group home in Chibougamou and ended up in a reform school in Vald’Or. “I was institutionalized at a younger age, locked up in a room, sent for reclusion every time I was in trouble. I would spend days, maybe weeks there,” Stephen told the Nation. “It was a form
of abusing children, locking them up and throwing away the key.” Stephen, the oldest son of Chief Billy Diamond, said he spent half of his teenage years in such institutions in the mid1980s before being released at 18. He said one of the administrators told him he should be sent to prison, and that he didn’t belong in society. He says that there were Cree youth, both boys and girls, as well as Inuit youth placed together, with francophone youth held in another area. Stephen says he
28 the Nation February 26, 2021 www.nationnews.ca
tried to run away twice from the institution. “They always used to lock me up, when I was sleeping in my own room,” he said. “I was never really allowed to do anything, there was always a form of authority, they always put a tag on me, telling me I’m just a number.” Beyond compensation, Stephen hopes that people will find healing from the “trauma and wounds” of reform schools. “Before reform school there was residential school which became reform schools
