MONTREAL - Theo Wouters and Roger Thibault are arguably the most high-profile homosexual couple in Quebec and, partly as a result, they say their lives in a quiet corner of suburbia have been "sheer hell."
Ever since they went public with complaints of threats and harassment by their neighbours in the bedroom community of Pointe Claire, they say they have been victims of homophobia.
And now, in the latest chapter in their public and acrimonious battle, they have won a victory at the Quebec Human Rights Commission, which has ordered a local youth and his father to pay them $10,000 in damages for violating their rights.
The agency ruled that Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault, retirees who have been a couple for more than 30 years, were the victims of harassment by a local teenage boy who threw projectiles onto their lawn and threatened to smash their faces.
The incidents unfolded in 2003, one year after Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault boosted their public profile by becoming the first gay couple in Quebec to join in a civil union.
"This is happening because we're an open gay couple," Mr. Wouters said from his home yesterday. "We didn't accept being harassed in the first place, and it all escalated from there. The last 10 years have been sheer hell for Roger and I."
The Quebec commission said, in a ruling issued in June and made public by the couple yesterday, that Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault had suffered discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Bolstering their case were video cameras that had been installed outside their home and paid for by Quebec's victim-compensation agency.
Although the couple says a group of teenaged boys in a pickup truck harassed them, the commission did not pursue the case against the other youths because they live in Alberta, commission spokesman Robert Sylvestre said.
But it did uphold the case against a youth from Pointe Claire, aged 17 at the time, who openly admitted his disdain for the couple. He acknowledged to the human-rights agency that he'd thrown a lit fuse and rolls of toilet paper onto the Wouters-Thibault property, and threatened the couple with violence once while they were in their car.
The youth, whose name was not released, also stated about the couple: "I didn't like their lifestyle, found them arrogant and it bothers me that they make their story so public," the commission wrote.
The boy's father is being held accountable for paying moral damages because his son was a minor, Mr. Sylvestre said.
The Montreal civil rights group that fought the couple's case says the pair paid a price for their notoriety and their choice to live in suburbia. "We tend to see Quebec as a very tolerant society, but in practice it all depends on where you live," said Fo Niemi of the Centre for Research-Action for Race Relations. "The suburbs are very conservative and family-oriented and heterosexual, so sometimes [gays] aren't seen as very positive by the neighbours."
In 2002, the Quebec Human Rights Commission ordered two of their neighbours to pay the pair $36,000 in damages. But in a separate, criminal case, a Quebec Court judge in Montreal later that year cleared one of those neighbours of criminal harassment and assault.
And the couple's fight isn't over. Mr. Wouters and Mr. Thibault have another case pending before the human rights commission, this time because they say a neighbourhood father came to their door in 2005 and threatened their lives.
"We have no choice," said Mr. Wouters, a 65-year-old former couturier and milliner. "We have suffered greatly for the last 10 years and I simply don't want this to happen to other people."
from The Globe And Mail
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