“We're not running away from home, we're running away from the centre” — Investigation into a system in crisis
At the start of the month, the faces of seven missing teenagers circulated massively on social networks and media in Quebec. Their similar age, height, and weight soon sparked speculation online, with some netizens raising the possibility of a human trafficking network. A week later, all the young people were found.
By investigating these disappearances, La Converse was able to confirm that at least three of the four girls were placed at the Centre jeunesse de Laval (Laval youth centre), in the girls' unit, Notre-Dame de Laval (NDL). It is also noted that at least one of the boys is in a youth centre. Since the start of the 2024-2025 period, which is still ongoing, the CISSS de Laval has already registered 298 runaways, compared to 231 for the whole of 2023-2024. But why do adolescent girls run away from this institution so often? What do they live within these walls? Investigation.
The sun beat down hard on the parking lot of the Centre jeunesse de Laval. Cars came and went. Opposite, there are a few shops and a strategically-placed neighbourhood post. The building is massive, cold, intimidating. When you're in front of it, it's hard to ignore the impression it makes: a prison.
The centre consists of 12 units, separating boys and girls. On the left, a small yellow building draws attention. Regulars call it NDL — for Notre-Dame de Laval. It has 110 places for young girls aged 12 to 17. The balconies of the buildings are screened, transformed into cages suspended over several floors. Sometimes you can see teenage girls looking into the distance. Behind the centre, a park leads to Mont-de-la Salle school, where several girls from the centre study. This banal space is becoming a high-risk place of passage. In just a few meters, you switch from one world to another. On the one hand, peaceful residential streets; on the other, a locked structure, a place where you enter and that some people try to flee.
“They locked me up in isolation for 12 hours”
On the night from Thursday to Friday, February 7, Shayna published a video on social networks. In front of the camera, she denounced what she is experiencing at the Centre jeunesse de Laval, and said she knows the young girls who were missing until last week. She describes degrading treatments, characterized by comprehensive searches and extended periods of forced isolation.
She mentions behaviours that she considers unjustified and explains that the young runaways did not flee their homes, but from the youth centre they attended together. “All these girls disappeared because of the centre (...) because of the centre, the girls who disappeared put themselves in danger, they go into prostitution... Because they no longer know where to go, and that's exactly what the pimps look for; so, they are selling their bodies”, said the teenager. When he woke up on Friday morning, her video had gone viral.
That same evening, we met Shayna at home with her mother — that's where she spends her weekends. At the family home in Laval, we discovered a calm, thoughtful and articulate teenager. She has the look of a ballet dancer and, looking at her, you can tell her penchant for fashion. For over an hour, Shayna tells us about her life at the Centre jeunesse de Laval. She has been placed there intermittently since the age of nine. Now 16, she has lived in NDL for seven years. She ran away eight times.
“You have to wait for a release. For me, I go out from Friday evening to Sunday evening, she said. On Sunday evening, rather than going back to the centre, I left. The aim was to show that I was not running away from home, but from the centre. That's why I didn't leave until Sunday night. Every time I left, or was declared to run away, it was Sunday evening,” she said. She insists on this point. And she is not the only one. Among the four young girls who disappeared at the beginning of the year, two also ran away on a Sunday, one on Saturday and another on Monday.
Last October, after a trip to the beach, Shayna claims to have been placed in isolation for 12 hours for refusing a full-body search. “Cold air passed through the screwed window and an air conditioner was blowing continuously. It seemed like I was outside,” she describes. Wearing a swimsuit, she was shivering without being able to drink, eat, or go to the bathroom. “I have sickle cell anemia, it's very dangerous,” she adds. Exhausted, she finally gave in to the search so as not to miss her father's visit. “Nothing was found on me.” Traumatized by this experience, she filed a complaint against the institution and is waiting to know when she will go to court.
Runaways
One Sunday, Shayna ran away with two girls from NDL, but the police stopped her before she was even declared running away. Upon her return, she wasplaced in a reflection room. When she gets upset, the agents escort her to “the tide,” a calming room where she must spend 30 minutes. After half an hour, she was told that she had to stay longer due to “the hustle and bustle of the group.” Her stay was extended. “I finally fell asleep and stayed there for 3 hours instead of the planned 30 minutes.” For two days, she asked for explanations, but was told that it was a communication error. “I didn't file a complaint because it was just three hours... but I guarantee you I already did more than that.”
Three weeks later, she ran away again with four girls, including one from NDL. On the third day, feeling in danger, she sent her address to her mother, who found her. “We were getting ready to send her to Toronto,” her mother tells us. When she returns to the centre, Shayna must go through a “bedbug protocol” which required her to remove her clothes to avoid any infestation. Refusing to undress in front of anyone, she wasplaced back for nine hours in one of the centre's three isolation rooms. “I arrived at 3:00am and went out at 12:30 p.m.” She reports that she was woken up every 15 minutes to ask if she had changed her mind. An educator, who had already supported her in the past, finally intervened. “She came back at 12:30 and said to me, “Get up, it no longer makes sense. Go change in the bathroom and go to sleep.” I still had to do nine hours of isolation, and that bothers me.”
Shayna speaks out to denounce practices that she considers unacceptable. “I made mistakes that led me to a youth centre, but that doesn't mean that I deserve to be treated like that,” she said. She believes that the treatment given to young people encourages some to run away. According to her, there is always a runaway girl, and it never happens that everyone is there at the same time.
According to what she has observed, runaways are often long-term residents. “They try to leave the centre, but we don't help them. Before looking for runaways, the centre should give them a reason to want to come back.”
But the risks are immense. “To run away is to live with fear: where to sleep, when to eat, how to survive? There are always Bad Trips, moments of panic. And running away from the police is a constant burden.” Especially since there is another threat: pimping networks. “All vulnerable adolescents are exposed to them, but for a girl at the centre, it is even easier to be coaxed. We think they want our best.”
The way educators talk to young people is fuelling unease, Shayna believes. “At the centre, you don't have the right to your opinion. They control everything, even when you want to go to the bathroom.” Conversations between young people are also monitored, under penalty of punishment for “unclear contact.” “It's an abuse of power.” I need to talk, to confide in myself.”
She also denounced the use of force by security agents. “I saw a girl carried by four agents, her head pressed against the wall. She was bleeding from her nose and ear.” Shayna wonders about these practices: “A friend was crying. They put her in solitary confinement and told her that she would not go out as long as she cried. But they didn't give him any breathing techniques, nothing. How does that help someone? ”
Shayna shares how these treatments affected her. “I started having tantrums. I had a rage that I could not control.” Today, she said she is feeling better, but it has been a difficult journey. “Learning to manage your anger in a place where everything is controlled and then entering a freer world is a shock,” she said.
NDL, from mother to daughter
Stefania, Shayna's mother, settles down next to her daughter. Their two stories echo each other. She is only 37 years old. Like her daughter, she experienced life in a youth centre during her adolescence. Of her five children, four were placed at the Centre jeunesse de Laval. Today, she believes that her past, marked by the interventions of the DPJ, followed her in her parenting.
“I was sexually abused when I was 14. I asked for help at school, and the DPJ came into my life from that moment on,” she said. Because of the trauma caused by the abuse, Stefania was no longer herself. “They said that I was behaving violently. But they didn't know what I had been through.”
Stefania was then removed from her family by the DPJ to be placed in care. “I thought it was a good thing — then I went through the system: foster family, group home, open centre, closed centre...” she said. “My mother fought a lot, then she didn't have the strength to fight anymore.”
She too wasplaced in NDL, and said she experienced abuse at the centre. “I've been through these things for years, and only now am I able to open up. To do some digging, they put me on the ground, they put their foot in my face, it was really very violent...”
At 16, Stefania ran away with a girl from NDL. Over the following two years, she joined a network under the influence of a Pimp and starts working for the pimp. “It was the same recruitment system; I met a girl who said we could find ways to run away together,” she said, fearing that her daughter would be recruited in the same way.
Stefania sometimes returned to the youth centre by herself, especially if she felt she was in danger. She then made sure that the police were not alerted: “If the police find you and take you back to the youth centre, the consequences are more serious. You can go three months without leaving the centre, with only one right to visit.”
In the youth centre, looking to the future is a challenge. For some girls, prostitution and crime seem to be the only way out. Stefania believes that the repression experienced in these institutions pushes several young people to develop behavioural problems, which reinforces a cycle that is difficult to break. According to her, young people are all the more likely to run away because they see the image of the runaway being glorified by popular culture, with programs like Fugueuses And La décadence de Montréal. “The world wants to look like that. Now they want to become like the singer Enima,” she laments.
It's nearly 8 p.m. and Stefania's phone was ringing, interrupting the conversation. A youth centre worker indicates that Shayna must be back at 22:00 without notice. The teenager thought she could spend the weekend here at her mother's house as usual. On the couch, her hands are shaking. She was afraid to be made to pay for her viral video when she returned to NDL. Her mother managed to negotiate with the intervener. In the end, Shayna would be spending the weekend at her mom's house.
Stefania wants to use her experience to talk to mothers of young people who are in youth centres. “We all made mistakes in thinking that they will learn thanks to the centre. You are on the wrong track,” she said. “The centre is not the option; working together is the option! With specialists, the DPJ — yes, there are good people working there, they are not all bad — but if you go against each other, nothing will succeed.”
Today, she works in a helping relationship and is studying in this field. “I am the person who can best understand people. That's why I chose this path.” Despite her commitment, she refuses to work in youth centres. The pain is still too severe. “If I saw children being abused there, I don't know what I would be able to do.”
She doesn't mince words about the institution where she spent her adolescence, and where her children lived in spite of her. “I want to bring down the youth centre. I want it destroyed and rebuilt. With good people, who have good values,” she said.
The mother of the family wants young people to be able to communicate freely with their peers and thus help each other. But it starts with their guardians, according to her. “If, as an adult, we don't support each other, young people won't see that as an example,” she said. What should be done, in my opinion, is to dialogue a lot with young people. Locking them up is not the solution.”
Stephania mobilized for Shayna after her speech. “The centre called me to tell me that we can go against her, that it could be it's a reputational attack,” she laments. However, she doesn't give up. “They're trying to put pressure on, and I'm not going to give in, not this time.
#SurvivantedeCentreJeunesse
The Shayna video seems to have given courage to other young people, who in turn give their testimony. Supportive reactions and testimonies were overwhelming. “There were 40-year-old people who told me that that had not changed. It's not normal to tell me that you went through the same thing as me. Where is evolution? ” Shayna asks. Many young girls who have gone through various youth centres denounce an environment marked by violence, isolation and a severe lack of resources. Some are speaking using the hashtag #SurvivantedeCentreJeunesse. We collected the testimony of two former residents of the Centre jeunesse de Laval.
“It's the first time I've shared what I went through. I arrived there on the 25th of the month... There are dates like this that you never forget”, whispers Catherine*. Now 27 years old, she spent a little over a year at the Centre jeunesse de Laval, from 2011 to 2012. If she is speaking today, it is so that things can change: “For me, it was more than 10 years ago and nothing has changed. The public needs to know the reality of what's going on in these places, because people have no idea, and there's a lot of judgment and prejudice about the young people who are there.”
According to her, it is important to understand that these young girls are not running away from home, but from a centre that would not fulfill its mission of psychosocial support and where there would sometimes be cases of abuse. “I have run away several times, and you have to understand that these young people who have run away think that nobody loves them, that no one is on their side in these centres, while outside, certain networks take advantage of them. of their fragility to lead them into illegal activities.”
At the age of 13, Catherine discovered the Centre jeunesse de Laval. She had “behavioural problems” that her mother “can't manage” and her father was out of the picture. First placed at the Dominique-Savio Rehabilitation centre for Young People with Adaptation Difficulties, whose approach is more flexible, she was taken to the Centre jeunesse de Laval one evening in the fall after running away. “Obviously, they felt that I needed a stricter framework,” she said.
Upon arrival, she complies with a standard search and was taken to her new place of life. For the 13-year-old, it was a shock. “The room looked a lot more like a prison cell than anything else. The bed was a tablet attached to the wall with a thin mattress on it. There was a tablet attached to the wall as a desk, and the only other piece of furniture was a chair.” She said that, during her stay, her room was “completely turned over” twice as part of drug searches.
More painful for her, she recalls the day she learned about the death of her grandfather. “I was 13, and the support to grieve was not there. They told me, “It's not important, he was just your grandfather.” I was let out for a day for the funeral and that's it, I had to manage it by myself,” laments Catherine.
Above all, the young woman was marked by loneliness and the deleterious effects of the constant lack of social relationships. “We were never allowed to talk to each other without someone's supervision. So, quickly, I became small, because I was very afraid of being sent to an even worse place. I followed all the rules, I never tried to get anything forbidden in, I did everything I could to leave as soon as possible. But even then, I still remained for more than a whole year in deep discomfort,” she underlines.
Now a bookseller, she had found refuge in the books in the small library of the Centre jeunesse de Laval: “We were entitled to two or three books a week, and I always took the biggest ones I could find, regardless of the subject, just to get away from it all. From my room, I could hear the girls' screams. Sometimes some of them disappeared and you didn't see them again until two months later.”
Catherine denounced the placement of children whose problems or life stories did not suit these particularly restrictive closed units. “In retrospect, it is clear that this was not a place for me, and that it did not help me at all. I was 13, I was the youngest in the group, the others were between 15 and 17 and were there for drug or prostitution problems, while I just had trouble managing my emotions, but I never hurt anyone or been violent,” she said.
Nearly 15 years after her stay at the Centre jeunesse de Laval, Catherine said she cannot think back to this period of her life without fighting a complex post-traumatic syndrome linked to her experience, but also, in part, to her stay at the Centre jeunesse de Laval. “I am better today, but I don't understand that we are still there and that young girls continue to suffer this. This is not the way to protect children,” she concludes.
“It's a prison for children”
Gabriela spent a week at NDL in 2024. She has a painful memory of these few days. “How do you represent that? It's a prison for children. Never, but really never, have I felt so alone! I just wanted to leave there,” said the 17-year-old teenager, who now lives in a supervised apartment.
Raised since a young age by her grandparents, in a house where her uncle and aunt also lived, Gabriela did not have the chance to be born in a family cocoon conducive to her development. She said she first experienced sexual assault at the age of 12 when a loved one forcibly kissed her “with the tongue” while on vacation in the south. “And then, I experienced physical violence and insults at home from some members of my family,” she said without faltering.
She then mustered up all her courage to confide what she was experiencing to the social worker at her school, who reported it to the DPJ. “I was 13 at the time. The school told me that it was going to call my grandparents to inform them of the report, and I warned them that I would not go home anyway.” She ran away with a friend. “I went to the house of a friend and her parents, and two weeks later, they knocked on the door,” she recalls. “They” are the police sent by the DPJ. When she got in their vehicle, she did not know it yet, but she took the direction of the Centre jeunesse de Laval.
“When I arrived at the youth centre, I didn't even know what it was, but I knew it was a place I didn't want to be,” said Gabriela. She said that, when taken to a small room, she was then asked to undress and put on a hospital gown. “They were holding a towel in front of me, and I took everything off. They put my stuff in a trash bag and asked me to do Jumping Jacks, to see if I had nothing anywhere.” She then put on the clothes she was given and taken to her room.
“It's a very small room with no windows! On the door, there are several holes without glass and a curtain, so they can look and hear at any time, she describes. At that moment I was given some thoughts to do: these are questions on a sheet of paper that must be answered, otherwise you can't get out. I had to say why I was there, what I needed to improve... when I was a victim! ”
She assures that young girls must ask for permission for everything they do, including going to the bathroom, and that it sometimes takes a long time to get the right to go. “Throughout the week, I was never able to shower in hot water, there was only cold water. I couldn't talk to anyone, and since they didn't plan to put me in either internal or external school, I was left alone in my room with crosswords all day,” she describes.
She feels that after reporting serious events in her family, she did not get the necessary support. “I think that every young person, despite their problems, needs to talk. But if a young person does not feel comfortable talking to the social workers at the centre, it is because there is a problem, said the young woman. These centres are not suitable! When some young people need help, we don't give it to them. I was there, even though I had done nothing and in addition no one tried to help me or to know if I was well.”
Speak for everyone else
At the age of 16, marked by her experiences, Shayna is determined: “I wanted to do it for a while, but I was too young,” she said calmly. I'm going to talk about it as much as I can.”
The teenager looks back on her case. “Several times, I asked to file a complaint. I was told that the complaints were ongoing,” she laments, while nothing seems to be progressing. According to her, responsible adults question her story. She denounced the legal system, which, in her opinion, is unsupportive. She wants to leave the youth centre and said that her lawyer is struggling to follow up. “I started my procedures since October, I have been waiting a long time.” She does not feel listened to during the procedures. “In front of the judge, we were just talking about everything I had done wrong, but never about the reasons behind my denunciation. When I talked about abuse, they said that now was not the time to talk about it and that it would be in another court. Each time it was put off.”
Shayna wants to talk to institutions directly. “I would tell them to reassess their code of life. The rules of the centres date back a really long time ago. Yes, it has to be strict, but there are limits! Some rules should be changed that don't really make sense,” she said.
Later, the teenager wanted to work in fashion design. “And continue to speak for people in youth centres. I would like to change some things in youth centres. Even if I have my passion on the side: design.”
Contacted by La Converse, the management of the CISSS, which manages the Centre jeunesse de Laval, initially refused to grant us an interview. After an agreement in principle to conduct an interview, the communication service finally notified La Converse that the director of youth protection, Jean-François Payette, was “not available” because he was traveling abroad.
We then requested an interview with the director of the youth program, Anick Deslongchamps, who was also “not available” because of the 48-hour delay we proposed. Converse then offered to postpone the interview, but no representative seemed more available, neither the following week, nor the week after, nor the one after again...
So we sent 15 questions to the CISSS in Laval. For the only response, we received the following statement: “The CISSS de Laval wants to offer a safe environment to all housed users. With this in mind, since December 16, an external counsellor, Manon Saint-Maurice, appointed by the National Director of Youth Protection, has been supporting the CISSS de Laval in order to help teams analyze and reduce the use of control measures. This joint decision between the CISSS de Laval and the National Director is the result of the desire to act on the issues concerning the use of the control measure and thus ensure the well-being of children and the respect of their rights.”
We did not get any answers to questions about the abuses reported by the girls and women we met during this report.
Asked about the runaways from the Notre-Dame de Centre jeunesse de Laval unit and the emergency measures taken to supervise young people, the office of the Minister of Social Services, Lionel Carmant indicated that “several runaways are of very short duration and do not constitute a danger for the adolescents concerned”. He adds that these escapes can “come from several different reasons, for example a need for freedom, valorization, experimentation, flight, contestation, the search for identity or autonomy. However, some adolescents may be at risk, especially girls, who can sometimes be at risk of sexual exploitation.”
In the second part of this report, we will explore the systemic dimension of the failures of youth centres.