Parents of murdered children call for more help from Quebec victims of crime fund
Group pleads for lifetime counselling, financial aid through trials, help when murder occurred outside Quebec
Éric Boudreault can hardly find the words to describe the depth of his trauma after his 18-year-old daughter, Daphné Huard-Boudreault, was murdered last year.
"You cannot even walk or talk," he said.
"You just shake. You're not there."
Huard-Boudreault was killed shortly after breaking up with her boyfriend, Anthony Pratte-Lops, when she returned to the Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que., apartment she'd shared with him to pick up some of her belongings.
Pratte-Lops' trial for first-degree murder is set for April 2019.
Boudreault and a group of grieving parents of children who have been murdered are pleading for more help from Quebec's compensation board for victims of crime (IVAC).
IVAC pays for psychological services and offers financial help to those who are injured because of a crime, as well as to the close family members of those who have died because of one.
However, several parents say, despite the difficulty of coping with their children's violent deaths, they are left empty-handed, or close to it.
Boudreault could not work or even drive his car for nine months after it happened.
IVAC has paid for 30 counselling sessions, but he said it is not enough.
He and other families of homicide victims want the board to provide parents with unlimited, lifetime coverage for psychological services.
Need for financial aid through court trial
Among other measures, they are calling for the board to offer financial support to the parents of murdered children for the duration of an accused killer's trial.
"I have seen parents sleep in their cars. I have seen parents of murdered children thrown out of a courthouse restaurant because they had brought their lunch," said a spokesperson for the group, Nancy Roy.
They also called for IVAC to recognize and support Quebec parents whose children were killed outside of the province.
That's the case of Isabelle Tremblay, whose claim was rejected outright.
Her 23-year-old daughter, Audrey Carey, was shot in the head in San Francisco while on her first trip on her own in 2015.
She had befriended three young homeless people in Golden Gate Park and was found dead the next day.
Tremblay cannot understand why the board will not pay for the counselling she said she will need for the rest of her life.
"It's a nightmare everyday," she said.
"The traumatic shock is the same, whether it happened in Quebec or in the United States. My daughter is a Quebecer."
'Deplorable' policy
Isabelle Gaston, whose ex-husband Guy Turcotte killed their two young children in 2009, lobbied after their deaths for improvements to the level of support offered to parents.
Since then, the parent of a child who was killed by an ex-spouse is offered unlimited psychological services.
However, parents of children who were murdered by anyone else are limited to a total 30 counselling sessions.
Parti Québécois justice critic Véronique Hivon calls the policy "deplorable."
"We wonder what the basis is for this discrimination," she said.
Hivon said the fund that supports victims of a criminal act has a $40-million surplus, and she estimates the measures the parents are pushing for would cost, at most, $3 million a year.
'Not the only ones who feel compassion'
Quebec boosted IVAC's budget by $54 million last year, for a total of $129 million, said Quebec Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée.
As for parents whose children are killed outside Canada, Vallée said a federal fund, called Financial Assistance for Canadians Victimized Abroad, already provides some financial support in some cases.
Vallée will unveil a new measure dealing with support for parents during a trial within months.
Opposition MNAs "are not the only ones who feel compassion," Hivon said.