Ombudsman backs end to time limits for starting sex assault court cases
Roger Lessard was sitting in his home office last month when an email appeared on his computer screen.
“Your complaint concerning Quebec’s justice department,” read the title of the letter attached. Sent from the Quebec ombudsman’s office, the email also included a 13page report.
Lessard, a 67-year-old retired school principal in Thetford Mines, printed out the report to read it closely. He was stunned by what it said.
He called a longtime friend, Pierre Bolduc. He had received the same message.
“Pierre,” Lessard told him, “this is incredible.”
“I know,” Bolduc, 61, answered. “It’s exactly what we wanted.”
The report was a response to a complaint made by the two men more than a year ago.
That complaint was the culmination of a seven-year battle against what they describe as an unjust and archaic system — how Quebec’s civil laws still set time limits for sexual assault victims to take their aggressors to court.
In its report, dated Dec. 19, the ombudsman’s office is unequivocal in siding with them.
Quebec’s justice department, it argues, should eliminate any prescription period — the time limit victims have to begin legal proceedings for civil actions — in cases of sexual assault, violence against children and conjugal violence.
“We’ve been waiting for so long,” Lessard said last week, “but this gives us hope.”
Seven years ago, in the summer of 2010, Lessard hired Bolduc to do some handy work around his home — mainly fixing the front porch and stairs.
The two men were there, talking about nothing in particular, when Lessard mentioned something he had overheard: how a man he knew from a nearby village had been sexually abused by a priest as a child.
Out of nowhere, Bolduc interrupted him.
Even before the words left his mouth, he was already questioning himself. But it came it out like a gunshot, he’d later explain, impossible to stop.
“Roger,” he told him, putting down his hammer. “It happened to me, too.”
It was something he hadn’t spoken a word of since telling his mother when he was a teenager: how, throughout 1969, he was repeatedly sexually abused by a Catholic priest from the local church.
Bolduc was 12 years old at the time. The priest in question, Jean Marie Bégin, killed himself in 1986.
Lessard became determined to help Bolduc get justice for what had been done to him. With Bégin dead, they knew criminal charges were out of the question. So they decided they should seek compensation from the diocese in civil court instead.
But too many years had passed, the two quickly found out. Due to the time limits Quebec’s civil laws adhere to, Bolduc was essentially too late.
Undeterred, Lessard pressed on. Recently retired, and with newly found spare time on his hands, he committed himself to the case.
He emptied binders left over from his years as a principal and filled them with research. He collected any statements he could find from politicians about possible reform, sought out advocacy groups pushing for change and filed access-to-information requests on the issue.
Bolduc, meanwhile, adjusted to what finally coming forward meant.
After opening up to Lessard, he went home and wrote down everything he could remember about the abuse. He had to stop writing after a few pages. He was trembling and having vivid flashbacks.
His life since the abuse is best described as chaotic, he says.
It left him with trust issues, bouts of nervousness and sporadic moments of uncontrollable rage. He has never been comfortable around older people ever since, crumbling in front of authority and struggling to keep a job.
One broken marriage was followed by several difficult relationships, and having lost faith in the idea of childhood, he never had children. Still today, he needs time to recuperate after talking about it.
“He broke something inside of me that couldn’t be repaired,” Bolduc says. “And I’ve been in survival mode ever since.”
Quebec is one of the only provinces in Canada to still have time limits when it comes to civil cases dealing with sexual assault.
In the past, Quebecers who wanted to take civil action against an aggressor had to do so within a three-year window. Per Quebec’s civil code, the time limit begins counting down once the person “becomes aware” that the harm they’ve suffered is attributable to the assault or act of violence.
If the person is a minor at the time they become aware, the window to take action begins when they turn 18. The victim also has the option of proving that, despite being aware of the harm, they were unable to act on it — a clause that often leads to difficult cross-examinations at trial, when victims need to explain themselves in detail to prove what stopped them from coming forward.
In 2013, the window to file a civil suit in Quebec was changed to 30 years in sexual abuse cases. But other conditions affecting how the time limit is calculated remain, including whether the victim became aware of the harm before the window was extended to 30 years.
These elements combined, critics argue, create a convoluted system for victims to navigate, and can often serve as a deterrent to seeking civil action.
It’s in this maze that Bolduc and Lessard have found themselves entangled.
“This isn’t a fight about victims who were abused by priests,” Lessard says. “It’s a fight against an unjust law, for all victims.
“The Quebec government right now is encouraging victims of sexual abuse to come forward, but there are many victims who don’t have access to justice for no other reason than the passage of time. And that makes no sense.”
Through the years, Bolduc and Lessard pushed for reform in any way they could. They travelled around the province for protests, met with politicians and teamed up with media-savvy lawyers to hold news conferences.
But nothing seemed to work. Feeling helpless, Bolduc says, he even considered a hunger strike outside the National Assembly.
Then, in November 2016, with low expectations and almost as a last resort, Bolduc and Lessard filed a complaint with the Quebec ombudsman’s office, presenting a condensed version of Lessard’s research.
For a year after the complaint, they waited. Then came the emails on Dec. 19.
In its report, the ombudsman calls for the elimination of any prescription period for people who have been victims of sexual assault, violence as a child or conjugal violence. It criticizes the complexity of calculating the prescription period and the burden placed on victims who need to prove their incapability to act.
It also recommends that anyone who had their case thrown out because they didn’t fit the time-limit requirement be given a five-year period to reopen it, and called on Quebec’s justice department to respond to the report before March.
“If there is one field where the time factor should be abolished, it is in this specific context, where suffering extends over time and often freezes the ability to bounce back,” Ombudsperson Marie Rinfret said in a statement.
“This is why our justice procedures should send a clear message affirming that sexual assault, conjugal violence and violence against children are unacceptable and that the victims may be heard, regardless of the time when they exercise the remedies available to them.”
Though trained as a diesel mechanic, Bolduc makes a living today through his art and craftwork, building furniture and sculptures.
In 1992, he bought his parents’ cottage in the woods by a lake a little farther out from Thetford Mines. He wanted his own place and liked the seclusion.
Later, he took out a loan, razed the house and erected a new one, building most of it on his own. The effects of the abuse, he says, are worse when idling with nothing to do. So he threw himself into the work.
If he ever is able to bring the diocese to court and receive compensation for what was done to him, he doubts he would change much about his lifestyle. It has never been about the money, he says, but about being acknowledged as a victim, and the healing that can come with a court ruling.
“I know I’ll never be able to forget — I’ll need to live with this forever — but I do hope to one day turn the page on this part of my life,” he says.
“The wait has been excessively long and exhausting. But there’s a saying that says ‘You can’t beat the person who never gives up.’ And I won’t give up. Not until the law changes.”
“I know I’ll never be able to forget — I’ll need to live with this forever — but I do hope to one day turn the page on this part of my life.