The following update has been extracted from Update on Quebec Class Action Lawsuit - GOOD NEWS!! dated January 27, 2021
In December of 2018, the court heard the case of Lisa Blais
asking to represent victims of child sexual abuse within the JW organization in
Quebec. She would represent 2 classes of victims : victims of abuse from JW
elders and victims of abuse from non-elder JWs. The court certified the class
action (in February 2019 IIRC), meaning the trial could go forward as a class
action. This essentially meant that if the outcome was in favor of Lisa, all
other victims that would come forward and meet the criteria of the
aforementioned groups would receive some form of compensation from the JW
organization.
Sometime later (not surprisingly) lawyers representing the
JWs appealed the decision and argued that Lisa could not represent victims as
she had never been abused by an elder. I believe there were some other details,
but that's the essence of it. This appeal was denied in the past 12 months (I
can't remember when exactly) [Appeal denied on December 11, 2020].
This left the JWs with one last option: appealing to the
Cour Supérieure du Québec [CSdQ] to get the class action thrown out. Sarah
Woods (Lisa's lawyer) said it was unlikely the JW lawyers would succeed at this
point before the higher court.
Lisa told me last night that there will be no appeal to the
CSdQ, and the trial will go forward!
On the one hand, this is huge news, as I believe it is the
first ever class action suit against any of the legal organizations of the
Jehovah's Witnesses. On the other hand, we have no idea when the trial will
take place. Lisa said it would likely not be for another 12 months. No court
dates have been set yet.
By the way, there is also a pan-Canadian lawsuit in the
works to mirror this one. The reason why there would be 2 such lawsuits in one
country (1 in the province of Quebec and 1 for the rest of the country) is because
the courts of Quebec are different and distinct from the rest of Canada. The
lawyers for the pan-Canadian suit are waiting to see the results and outcomes
of the Quebec suit to proceed. So it's safe to say that there is A LOT riding
on this. Keep in mind JWs have been active in Canada (including Quebec) for a
very long time. This is not a country where JWs have only been present for a
couple decades. Sadly, this means there are a lot of skeletons in the closet.
Those that have lived in Quebec know that Quebecers (mostly
the francophones) have a very long history of Catholic faith. They were once an
extremely devout population. Church and state were literally in bed together,
especially during the 40s and 50s under PM Maurice Duplessis. But in the 1970s,
many Quebecers started to leave religion en masse. And now, many Quebecers are
extremely sensitive when it comes to religion. They DON'T like to have religion
forced upon them, and stories of sexual abuse by clergy makes their blood boil
as they have sadly had to deal with a lot of it. So my prediction is that if
the JWs are in the news in Quebec for covering up CSA, Quebecers WILL NOT be
lenient or kind with them.
