Court says no to sensible parenting

Blatant state interference in father-daughter dispute sets dangerous precedent

Lorne Gunter ,  The Edmonton Journal

Published: Sunday, June 22, 2008

 

source: Court says no to sensible parenting

www.canada.com/topics/news/

 

Before I get into the case of a Quebec father whose decision to ground his daughter was overturned by a court last week, I want to remind you about Vincent Duval.

 

Duval is the 31-year-old Belgian man who pleaded guilty Friday to using the Internet to strike up a relationship with a 13-year-old Montreal girl and lure her into meeting him for sex two weekends ago.

 

About eight months ago, Duval was cruising teen chat rooms on the Internet, as sexual predators do, when he met the young Montreal teen. After more than 3,000 e-mails exchanged between the pair (that's more than 12 a day), and a host of cellphone calls, Duval flew to Montreal earlier this month and invited his victim to meet with him in his hotel room.

 

That evening, the girl's parents reported her missing. Police read some of the e-mails Duval and the girl had traded, learned he was on his way to Montreal and began a search of the city's hotels.

On Saturday the 14th, officers found Duval and the teen in his room. They arrested him and returned her to her home.

To demonstrate how persistent and beguiling these predators can be, the girls' parents discovered her cellphone conversations with Duval in February. They called him in the middle of the night, Belgium time, and told him he must cease his contacts with their daughter. He agreed. But the very next day he and the girl resumed their e-mails.

This past Friday, Duval pleaded guilty to sexual touching and invitation to sexual touching. Crown prosecutor Nath-alie Fafard said the girl was spared having to have intercourse with the creep only because she was menstruating at the time of their meeting.

Duval also told police he had intended to take the 13-year-old to an Amish community in Ontario and live with her there where their relationship would be socially acceptable.

Now, consider the case of the Quebec father whose 12-year-old daughter took him to court after he grounded her from going on her Grade 6 class year-end camping trip.

This girl, too, was a frequent visitor of online chat rooms. Deeming some of them to be unsafe, the father barred her from accessing certain sites. She persisted. He imposed minor punishments and restricted her use of the computer. Finally, she began going to a friend's and using the friend's computer to access the prohibited sites. She even posted photos of herself on at least one of them, photos the father felt were "inappropriate" for a girl her age. That's when he barred her from the camping trip.

In a world full of Vincent Duvals, this hardly seems a harsh or unreasonable punishment. The grounded 12-year-old, likely without realizing it, was baiting sexual predators with her photos. Her father was only doing what most sensible parents would do.

But the girl didn't see it that way. Nor did her mother, who has been in a 10-year custody battle with the father.

Despite the fact the father has 100-per-cent custody, the girl went to live with her mother. However, when she and the mother learned the girl still needed the father's signature on the camping-trip permission form -- and the father, rightly, wouldn't give it --they convinced the court-appointed lawyer who has been handling the custody case to haul the father before a judge.

 

The remarkable thing is that Quebec Justice Suzanne Tessier agreed to hear the case at all. This is none of the court's business. The judge should have thrown it out immediately and reprimanded the lawyer, Lucie Fortin, for even dreaming to waste the court's time making family decisions.

 

It's not even clear on what grounds Justice Tessier thought the court had jurisdiction in the this matter. The father was not being abusive. His actions were neither illegal nor beyond the scope of his custody agreement.

Yet lawyer Fortin told Justice Tessier that the trip was a rite of passage, "something that would never happen again in the child's life." It was too important an event in her development to miss --and the judge bought the argument and intruded into private family decision-making in a way and to an extent it is hard to fathom.

Talk about judicial activism and arrogance.

Yes, I know the Liberals introduced their Tax Shift green plan this week. And yes, because the carbon tax contained in it is placed on producers rather than consumers, it amounts to a Tax Shaft for the Western provinces, where most of the producers are. I had planned to write about that because of its implications for the West's economy and national unity. (Quebec's hydro projects, for instance, would be exempt from the tax.)

But I believe this court decision is more dangerous.

The Liberals aren't in power. And with a tax plan like this it's hard to see how they'll get there. Their carbon tax, then, is moot.

But this Quebec case is real. If it is not overturned by Quebec's appeals court, it would make the state the final arbiter of even the most personal of decisions, not to mention undermining parental authority nationwide.

Now that's dangerous.

lgunter@shaw.ca