Sexual assault: A Senegalese continues the Brothers of the Sacred Heart

Photo Pierre-Paul Poulin
The Collège Mont-Sacré-Coeur, Granby.

Catherine Montambeault

Sunday, 18 February 2018 18:00

UPDATE
Sunday, 18 February 2018 18:00

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A Senegalese who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a missionary from quebec who taught in Africa in the 1980s brought a lawsuit of $ 1.4 million against the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

The complainant, referred to in legal documents as the initial NBS, was only 12 years old when brother Marcel Courteau would have attacked for the first time. The religious quebec was then a professor of French at the College Pius XII, a catholic school administered by the congregation of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in Kaolack, Senegal.

From 1984 to 1987, the brother Courteau would have summoned the boy to “private lessons sex education” after the class. During these sessions, ” preferred “, the teacher masturbait the student and asked her then to masturbate, under the pretext to ” teach different techniques of masturbation “, alleged that the request for proceedings.

Confessions filmed

This student would not be the only one to have been attacked by Marcel Courteau. In 2016, an investigation of the string of information France24 revealed that the missionary quebeckers had allegedly been subjected to sexual abuse of children for which he was responsible in Madagascar, Senegal, and Togo for a period of twenty years.

The brother Courteau has even admitted the facts to a French journalist who met him in his retirement home in Sherbrooke with a hidden camera.

When he was asked if he understood the gravity of his actions, the man in the wheelchair replied : “Yes, yes, I agree. […] I very much regret some things. I didn’t think it would go as far as this. “

The religious died in 2017 at the age of 92 years.

In addition, last November, the Quebec superior Court has authorized a class action of $ 15 million against the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. At least 11 religious are accused of assaulting pupils at the Collège Mont-Sacré-Coeur in Granby, between 1932 to 2008.

Challenge

The lawyer of NBS, Me, Max Silverman, said his client decided to file a legal action in Quebec rather than in Senegal since the congregation of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart is based here.

“All of the documents, the evidence, are here, does he assert. And in Quebec, it is easy to make a prosecution under the cover of anonymity when the circumstances warrant it, whereas this is not the case in Senegal. “

NBS believes that his life would be in danger if his identity was discovered in his country, reports Me Silverman. “There is a culture homophobic predominant in Senegal, and according to my client, a man can be considered a homosexual if he was sexually assaulted by another man,” he says.

The superior Court of Québec may, however, refuse to allow the prosecution if it “considers that the authorities of another State are in a better position to decide the dispute” according to the civil Code.

For its part, the congregation of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart has announced its intention to oppose the application of pursuit. The lawyer, who represents, to Me, Eric Simard, said he would not comment on the record before it that the complainant has been examined on discovery. The case must be heard in the fall.