Unrealistic expectation for police sexual abuse reporting

 
A rescheduled meeting with Quebec Aboriginal Affairs Minister Geoffrey Kelly for Friday could not have been better timed for Edith Cloutier, executive director of the Val-d'Or Native Friendship Centre and president of Regroupement des centres d'amitié autochtones du Québec.

Cloutier will be letting Kelly know that she is disappointed with measures announced on April 5 by Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux to establish a second 1-800 hotline allowing Indigenous women, who allege sexual abuse by police, to lodge complaints against the officers of the Sûreté du Québec. Nor is she impressed with expanding the Montreal Police Service’s mandate to investigate all complaints that come in on the hotlines.

Cloutier says it is unrealistic to expect Indigenous women to call the new hotline and complain about police action.

“When a woman takes the phone line and asks to meet a police investigator, it’s not the beginning of the process. She doesn’t begin by taking the phone and saying, ‘I want to file an official complaint.’ It’s more what happens at the end of the (process),” said Cloutier.

Only now, she points out, are women, who suffered abuse at the hands of on-duty Quebec police officers, going back decades, coming forward and telling their stories of being physically or sexually abused, or being dropped off at the outskirts of a community and being forced to walk back.

If Coiteux or his staff had spoken to Cloutier, she says she would have told them they needed a community-driven structure that creates cultural safety, trust, and self-esteem, which allows the women to talk about their experience, and an organization which can “support them in walking their way to filing a complaint.”

That is how the issue came to light last year, she points out, with women talking at the Val d’Or Friendship Centre about what had happened to them. A roundtable at the friendship centre in May resulted in Cloutier writing letters to the provincial ministers of Justice, Aboriginal Affairs and Public Security. But it wasn’t until Enquete broadcast about the situation in October 2015 as part of a piece on Sindy Ruperthouse, that the government took action. Ruperthouse is an Aboriginal woman, missing for 18 months at that time.

The Montreal Police Service was tasked with carrying out the investigation into the allegations of abuse leveled by the Val-d’Or women against Sûreté du Québec officers. However, while those investigations are ongoing, Cloutier says, neither she nor the women who made the complaints, know what progress is being made.

“We understand that we can’t have details about the investigation … but that’s not what the women are asking,” she said. The women want to know “before everybody else, what is happening, when it’s happening.”

As well, Cloutier says, a mechanism, perhaps an oversight committee, needs to be put in place to ensure that directions to the police are carried out and if they are not, why not. This mechanism would also keep the women, who have lodged the complaints, informed on what is happening.
Cloutier sees the latest steps taken by the provincial government as a knee-jerk reaction to an Enquête program aired on March 31.

Last week’s Enquete broadcast suggests that such abuse is widespread, says Cloutier, and Coiteux’s actions are not enough.
 
Assembly of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Chief Ghislain Picard refers to the government’s response, which includes the establishment of a new working group to study how to provide better training for police officers working with people in Indigenous communities, as “half measures.”
“For them to admit that there wasn’t such training before … it really show us, why is that?” said Picard.

While training is one part of the solution, he says it does not address the systemic issue of racism.

“The Quebec government has continuously tried to avoid the bigger picture on this issue,” he said. “Last December our chiefs demanded that the Quebec government establish an independent inquiry into, not only the allegations … also on the whole issue of the relationship between the Quebec police force and our people and specifically (our) women.”

Cloutier says when she meets with Kelly she will reiterate the call for an inquiry.

“We’re saying this is happening in our cities in Quebec, with Aboriginal women living in the province of Quebec, with police officers that are employees of the Quebec government. Therefore it is not an issue of federal jurisdiction, because we are Aboriginal people. It’s an issue of the Quebec government and its citizens and its police,” she said. “Once we get that understanding of what is systemic racism, in this case about justice and First Nations, then we can truly measure (the) discrimination that is taking place (and) that’s where we can identify solutions.”