Court to rule on fate of firm offering pedophile services
LATMS says it doesn’t encourage or endorse abuse, warns of ‘demonizing an emotional orientation’
A superior court judge will decide Thursday whether a company whose website openly offers services to pedophiles should have its legal right to operate in Quebec revoked.
The company, called Les Amis de Toutes les Minorités Sexuelles (LATMS), was registered as a nonprofit company with Quebec’s business registry, Le Registraire des entreprises, in 2011. But after the company’s president, André Faivre, was arrested last month along with 13 other suspected members of a pedophile ring, registry officials seem to have taken a closer look at the company’s website.
Faivre, 67, is facing 11 criminal charges, including some related to juvenile pornography and encouraging others to have sexual contact with children. He was arrested Jan. 27 during Operation Malaise, an investigation by a special unit led by the Sûreté du Québec. Police believe Faivre is the ringleader of a highly organized pedophile network. His bail hearing on those charges is ongoing.
Arguments on a motion by the Registrar to revoke the letters patent of Faivre’s company were heard in a separate civil case Wednesday. Although it is rarely done, the Registrar has the right to refuse letters patent or request the court revoke them if a company’s actions go against the public interest.
Representing the Registrar, lawyer Eric Labbé argued that the company’s website promotes pedophilia by encouraging people to see sexual activity with children as normal. If visitors to the site see that the company is legally registered, it could give that view more validity, he said.
When it requested registration, the company described itself as a kind of social club, which also offered computer services, he said.
But the LATMS website, which is public, states openly that the company “was created with and for our pedophile and pederast friends and we are ready to offer the same attentive and respectful ear to all taboo sexual minorities.”
Dictionaries define a pedophile as an adult who is sexually attracted to children, and a pederast as a man who desires, or engages in, sexual activity with a boy.
According to its website, the company was mainly created because of an “insurmountable obstacle” that pedophiles and pederasts face as they try to “develop community resources”. That obstacle is the difficulty of signing cheques or contracts while maintaining anonymity.
“We consider pedophilia and pederasty to be emotional or sexual orientations in the same nature as homophilia and heterophilia and we believe that there are no rational reasons to demonize an emotional orientation under the pretext that certain people commit assaults or abuse,” the LATMS website claims.
The website says LATMS offers pedophiles services such as equipment rental, secure and private Internet connections, logistical support to organize meetings for sharing and support, help in preparing a case before the Quebec and Canadian human rights commissions. It also offers to train people to give workshops to help educate professionals who deal with pedophiles and/or pederasts, such as defence lawyers, social workers, psychologists, probation officers, criminologists, police officers, etc.
“The organization, its writings and actions can only serve to contribute to create, enlarge, organize and maintain a network of pedophiles and pederasts,” the motion by the Registrar states.
But the lawyer representing Les Amis de Toutes Les Minorités Sexuelles told the court there is no evidence the company promotes pedophilia.
“The website does not tell people to become pedophiles or pederasts,” lawyer Melissa Podilchuk argued. “It is in no way promoting that orientation. It is a site where people can discuss and help each other ... It is a group that is there to help its members, to share information and help people with the same deviant sexual orientation.”
She said pedophiles require anonymity because their sexual orientation is taboo, so LATMS accommodates that, just like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.
“Being a pedophile is not a crime. Only the action (of having sexual relations with children) is illegal,” she noted.
She pointed to a list of frequently asked questions on the website where the company implies it would cut ties with anyone using its facilities to do something illegal.