Associate Chief Justice of Quebec Superior Court accused of 'overriding and evident bias' in new res

Judge André Wery, subject of a new statistical report on judicial bias issued today, is condemned by his own record of decisions. According to researchers at World Fathers Union, this powerful and important judge in Canada's second most populous province has a custody-award record to fathers which is severely short of the norm established by his brother and sister judges.

[USPRwire, Fri Nov 24 2006] After 6 months of planning and 8 months of research, the first report from the Project SPOTLIGHT programme at World Fathers Union has been released, and the results are clear: The associate chief justice of the Québec Superior Court, Judge André Wery, has an 'overriding and evident bias against fathers' who seek custody of their children.

Project Director John F. Smith explained how the Project SPOTLIGHT programme works:

'For many years, fathers and their attorneys have been complaining of unfair treatment in family courts, and about "bad" judges who never seem to give a father a fair hearing,' he said. 'But complaints aren't evidence, they're just allegations and opinion. And it seemed to us,' Mr Smith continued, 'that if we're going to demand that the judges themselves rule on the real evidence instead of the allegations, we had better hold ourselves to the same standard.

'Several of the "founding fathers" in World Fathers Union have academic backgrounds,' he explained. 'In addition, a number of our members are attorneys, doctors, child psychologists, or hold other professional positions. With all this talent at our disposal, we decided to design a research programme which would answer the question, "Is Judge so-and-so biased?" in an definitive way. And that was the genesis of Project SPOTLIGHT.'

The first report focuses on Quebec Superior Court Associate Chief Justice André Wery. 'Interestingly,' said Mr Smith, 'the original complaints about Judge Wery came from three Montréal-area attorneys instead of from fathers. This is unusual. That alone would seem to grant some substance to the allegations, but we followed protocol nonetheless.'

That protocol, he explained, required a preliminary investigative overview of a number of Judge Wery's cases to see 'if indeed there was some fire under the smoke.

'In this case, we found rather quickly that there was,' Mr Smith continued. 'So a full study was commissioned, and we sent out a call to our members for researchers able to read French. The study took 8 months to complete, and the results are unequivocal: Judge Wery has a serious problem.'

The study revealed some surprising and not-so-surprising facts. After tabulating the child-custody awards given by 59 judges of the Quebec Superior Court over a 5-year period, it was found that the court as a whole awarded custody to mothers in roughly 60% of the cases, granting custody of some sort--either sole or joint custody--to fathers only 40% of the time.

Breakdowns of custody awards by type showed that sole custody was awarded to fathers in 25.3% of the cases, and to mothers in 54.9%. The remaining decisions gave joint custody awards, 15.4% to fathers and 4.4% to mothers.

However, the figures for Judge Wery's rulings tell a completely different story. 'Judge Wery awarded custody to fathers in just over 11% of the cases,' said John F. Smith, 'thus placing himself only one quarter of the way towards meeting the standard set for him by the rest of the judges on his own court. He is so far off the curve we had trouble plotting it.

'Judge Wery gave custody to mothers almost 90% of the time. And he awarded joint custody to no one at all during the entire 5-year period we studied,' Mr Smith said. 'In a court which awards custody to fathers in over 40% of cases, a judge who grants it to fathers only 11% of the time shows a prima facie and substantial bias, and identifies himself as what statisticians call an "outlier." This man should not be judging custody cases. That is clear.'

Mr Smith said that a copy of the full research report has been sent to Justice Minister Yvan Marcoux with a call for an investigation into Judge Wery's conduct. It also recommends that if Judge Wery refuses to recuse himself from custody cases, the Minister administratively re-assign him off all custody cases until that investigation is completed.

The complete research report is available on the World Fathers Union website at http://www.worldfathersunion.com/SPOTLIGHT.htm

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
The press coordinator for this news release is John T. Smith
e-mail: Press@worldfathersunion.com
Toll-free press pager: 1-866-WFU-DADS (866-938-3237)

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