Lawsuit: Quebec’s Catholic Church

A class-action lawsuit has been filed accusing the Catholic Church in Quebec for “kidnapping, fraud and coercion to force unwed mothers to give up their children for adoption ”

“The accusations date back to the 1950s and ’60s, when the law firm alleges unwed mothers in maternity homes and hospitals were coerced by social-service personnel and hospital employees, often members of the Catholic Church working for the government, to sign documents giving up their children without being told they had the right to keep them.

Lawsuits alleging similar abuses are pending against several provinces. One against the government of British Columbia is close to being launched, said Tony Merchant, head of the law firm orchestrating the lawsuits. Close to 200 women have come forward to take part in the lawsuits since the firm started the process half a year ago, Merchant said. To date, fewer than a dozen are from Quebec, but he expects the number to increase as publicity mounts.

“The beliefs the Catholic Church (in Quebec) had about premarital sex and the judgmental approach the church had made it particularly aggressive in pressuring women into putting their children up for adoption,” Merchant said.

On Saturday, the National Post launched a series of articles chronicling the experiences of unwed mothers that suggested a systemic pattern of coercion existed to prod them to give up their children.

Valerie Andrews, who was forced to give up her child as a teenager, studied Statistics Canada data on illegitimate births from 1945 to 1973 and estimates 350,000 unmarried Canadian mothers were persuaded or forced into adoption. Several mothers are pushing for a federal government inquiry into Canada’s adoption practices, the Post reported.

Many of the wrongful adoption cases will hinge on the fact women were forced to sign documents allowing adoption within three days of giving birth, without knowing that was in contravention of the laws at the time. Others will note that the fathers were never contacted to give consent. Women reported that church officials shouted at them in the delivery room while they were still drugged that social services would sue them if they didn’t give the child up, Merchant said.

“They thought they were doing the right thing – getting children and putting them in an adoptive home where they would be looked after financially,” Merchant said, adding that possible plaintiffs can contact his law firm’s Montreal office.

Often, damages in a class action suit are designed to compensate for a wrong, or stop it from continuing, Merchant said. In this case, it’s more about women “wanting the peace of mind to feel they didn’t make the mistake alone, that they were manipulated and pushed and defrauded into signing.” Many of the plaintiffs are asking only that the government concede officials at the time were the wrongdoers.”

Quebec’s Catholic Church accused of coercing adoptions
[The Montreal Gazette 3/14/12 by Rene Bruemmer]

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