« A Person Like You Doesn’t Deserve to Have Children » — An Autistic Father Separated From His Kids

An autistic father living with Tourette syndrome describes a judicial and policing sequence that, in his account, cost him access to his children after a separation. He was acquitted on every count. The children did not come back.

That is how Julien sums up the police operation that, in his account, upended his life.

This father, who is autistic and lives with Tourette syndrome, says that in the course of a separation he lost access to his children following a chain of judicial and police events he now describes as discriminatory.

I — The morningAn armoured vehicle for two hunting rifles

According to his account and to access-to-information documents, the matter begins with two hunting rifles belonging to his former partner. He says he insisted they be removed before he left the family home. Despite confirmation that they were no longer there, he says he found them hidden under a staircase.

Fearing he would be wrongly implicated, he says he dismantled the weapons and handed the parts to his father so they could be returned to their owner.

A few days later, a neighbour called him: a major police operation was under way at his home.

Julien was arrested, handcuffed and questioned about weapons, explosives and a possible bunker — all of which he categorically denies.

No explosives and no arsenal were found in the search. The most serious charges — manufacturing explosives and illegal possession of weapons — were reportedly dropped before they were even formally laid. Death-threat charges, which he says rested on second-hand accounts he considers not credible, were subsequently withdrawn.

At the end of the process, he says he was acquitted on every count.

The file collapsed. The label stayed.

II — The courtroomWhen neurology is read as instability

Julien believes his autism shaped how he was perceived in court.

He says that during one hearing, Justice Pierre Labelle told him that « a person like him » did not deserve a lawyer — which, he says, forced him to represent himself from that point on, despite his disability.

A second judge, Stéphane Lacoste, denied him his reasonable accommodations and the support person he had requested for hearings, as recorded in the minutes of 18 November 2025.

He also reports that his former lawyer, Me Bianca Vigneault, said to him:

These alleged statements have not been confirmed by the parties named. Julien presents them as examples of what he calls « subtle systemic discrimination », in which his manner of communicating and his intensity were read as signs of instability — despite a neurological assessment placing him in the 98th percentile for intellectual ability.

III — The hearing« Sign, or lose the children »

He maintains that the rupture with his children did not come from a single ruling, but from an accumulation of decisions taken under sustained pressure.

He says psychosocial reports and youth protection assessments favoured shared custody, but were kept from the court by his own lawyer, Me Michel Lachance. He states that Me Lachance remains the subject of a disciplinary investigation by the Bureau du syndic, and that Me David Chun resigned from the Barreau du Québec while an investigation was under way. Both of those points were independently confirmed for the original French article.

One episode in particular sustains his sense of injustice.

Then represented by Me Bianca Vigneault through legal aid, Julien says he initially believed he had found an ally: she told him his file was strong, and that an emergency safeguard hearing — announced on a Friday for the following Thursday — would be a formality, particularly since youth protection was, in his account, supporting his position with favourable reports.

As the date approached, he describes total silence: calls, emails and messages going unanswered.

The day before the hearing, worried about appearing alone, he contacted youth protection himself and says he obtained a message to convey to the court, inviting it to await the final report. Shortly after leaving his lawyer a message saying he would go to the courthouse regardless, she called back and assured him that the hearing had been cancelled. His former partner reportedly wrote him the same thing.

The next day, checking the court list, he found the hearing was proceeding.

Once there, he says he was kept away from the courtroom, isolated in a cubicle and pressed to sign a lengthy document — dozens of pages drafted by opposing counsel David Chun, who resigned from the Barreau du Québec on 5 February 2025 while under investigation by the Bureau du syndic. The document was intended in part for youth protection, and described him as dangerous.

Julien refused to sign. It was at that moment, he says, that his lawyer told him:

He maintains these words were spoken despite psychosocial reports and assessments that favoured him. He eventually entered the courtroom just as opposing counsel was pleading his « absence ».

For him, that episode marked the point of no return.

IV — The closed circleInstitutions that hand the file to one another

Julien says his appeal is ongoing, and that a police ethics investigation is under way.

He describes a system in which, in his view, the institutions pass responsibility back and forth: courts, the Barreau and disciplinary bodies operating « in a closed circuit ».

Since February 2026, EnDroit.ca has reported that Me Anne-France Goldwater is said to have passed information to the Barreau concerning what she described as serious criminal fraud in the file associated with former lawyer David Chun, previously of Spunt & Carin. Despite those alleged elements, the Bureau du syndic maintains the closure of the file.

V — The police stationA complaint they would not write down

Following these events, and what he describes as false statements about him and repeated harassment and parental alienation, Julien went several times to the Repentigny police station to file a formal complaint. Officers declined to register it.

He recorded audio in which, he says, he is told that he is only there to give them grief — and that his facial tics and apparent nervousness make him look like a drug user.

He was, at that moment, explaining that he lives with Tourette syndrome.

Beyond one caseWhat this file asks of the system

Through his platform, Julien says he wants to move beyond his own case and raise broader issues: the complexity of procedure, the cost of litigation, access to evidence, and the weight of reputation in family files.

At the centre of the debate sits a genuinely difficult question: the balance between protecting children, parental rights, and how a court perceives a parent who is neurodivergent.

For Julien, the stake is simpler than that. He wants a place in his children’s lives.

And he refuses to accept that a neurodivergent parent should be judged on his symptoms rather than on his love.