The Youville Orphanage of Quebec, later renamed Mont D’Youville, was run by the Sisters of Charity.
A former Canadian sex crimes investigator is one of the thousands of children who have lived in this institution. The ex-policeman requested anonymity because he is unable to speak about what he experienced to those around him. We will call him Marc, a fictitious name.
A concentration camp for children, that’s what it was. I was someone doomed, maybe even damned. I was convinced that they were going to kill us
assures the former resident.
This is what would have happened to a little boy he used to protect. Marc was reciting the prayer at the end of a meal when the cooks noticed that he had hidden food in his clothes to throw away. They started screaming and the children rushed for the exit.
An employee grabbed her friend by the jaw and pushed him back. He lost his footing and his head smashed against the edge of the terrazzo floor. I saw his eyes rolled back and a pool of blood all around his shoulders. There was panic.
The children were ordered upstairs. Mother Superior was waiting for them there.: “Nothing happened and you forget that”.”,”text”:”We gathered in a big room and they said to us: “Nothing happened and you forget it”.”}}”>We gathered in a large room and they said to us: “Nothing happened and you forget that”. Marc never saw the boy again.
A scar on his head reminds him that he almost left his skin at the orphanage, hit by a nun with a small, sharp red shovel.
She opened my face. Blood flowed. I was on the ground. It was panic. I couldn’t see anything because of the blood. She kept hitting me. They dragged me on the floor to the door
, says Marc with precision. When he received a visit from a relative a few days later, the sister hastened to say that he had fallen down the stairs to cover up the events.
The ex-policeman has spent his entire career helping victims and arresting criminals, without ever revealing his terrible secret. He was allegedly sexually abused by an employee and by the Sisters of Charity.
A six-year-old boy who is sexually assaulted by women, especially at that time, is destabilizing. The nuns told us that they were representatives of God on earth
he testifies with difficulty.
In the bathtub, an employee would have taken the opportunity to touch him in full view of the nuns. She had fun with us. She asked me to lean forward. I don’t need to draw a picture of what she was doing. But I remember how I felt. I felt empty. I was nothing. All the little guys, we were like shadows in the dorm
says Mark.
At another time, when he was sick, a sister allegedly hit him on the head and buried his face in his vomit. He lost consciousness. When I woke up I was undressed on the floor and another nun was grabbing my genitals telling me that guys is disgusting
says the ex-investigator.
The man who has convicted hardened criminals is convinced that the sisters had the recipe for producing serial killers, like hitman Donald Lavoie, who spent most of his childhood at the Chicoutimi Orphanage.
This notorious criminal from the Dubois Brothers clan, who became an informer, confessed to 27 murders and provided information on nearly a hundred assassinations in which he allegedly participated. In an interview with CBC in 1982, Donald Lavoie mentioned that the violence experienced in his youth helped to harden him.
Another Mont D’Youville survivor reportedly also witnessed potentially fatal injuries inflicted by a Sister of Charity with a solid wood molding. As she was leaving her classroom to go to the bathroom, she saw a naked girl beaten up. She was screaming murder
remembers the former resident who intervened by asking the sister to stop beating her.: “If you ever speak, you will have the same thing”. And then it wasn’t long, a couple of days later, the little girl died”,”text”:”She said to me: “If you ever talk, you’re going to have the same thing”. And then it wasn’t long, a couple of days later the little girl died”}}”>She said to me: “If you ever speak, you will have the same thing”. And then it wasn’t long, a couple of days later the little girl diedrelate the give me.
She then had to undress the orphan’s corpse. Helped by another child, she washed the remains, which she never saw again. It’s always stuck in my head because it’s sad
entrusts the woman with the quavering voice. If they were able to do that, there must have been others too because we were often beaten
she believes.
The young resident herself thought she was spending a certain winter evening there when the nuns tied her naked in the snow because she was crying too much.
According to these testimonies, the children were afraid of ending up buried, neither seen nor known, on the land of the Sisters of Charity of Quebec. The seasoned ex-investigator, like the former boarder, remembers the same mysterious place where there were small stones.: “It’s a cemetery””,”text”:”Between us, we looked and, silently, we said to each other: “It’s a cemetery””}}”>Between us, we looked and, silently, we said to each other: “It’s a cemetery”relate Marc. They should investigate and they should dig
believes the lady.
The terrain of their childhood has changed. It has been excavated and now gives way to a paved parking lot. In January, we requested permission from the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale, which now owns the building, to use ground-penetrating radar. Like the excavations around the residential schools for Aboriginals, this machine would make it possible to probe the ground and see if there are traces of clandestine burials. We are still awaiting a response from the government, which described this request as unusual.
The investigator who worked in Canada is categorical: If the government refuses to have investigations, they are complicit in this massacre. They have a duty to do so.
Reached by telephone, the Superior General of the Sisters of Charity of Quebec, Monique Gervais, assures that there would never have been a cemetery at the D’Youville Orphanage. However, she was unable to say where the remains of deceased orphans were.
A class action has been authorized against the congregation and the CIUSSS for physical, sexual and psychological abuse allegedly committed by a hundred abusers on more than 500 children. The sisters’ lawyers dispute these allegations. Given these legal proceedings, the nuns have no further comment.
