Homeless Man assaulted at
Seaton House Men's Shelter
Fallout from Toronto's recent strike at Seaton House, a shelter for men, didn't facilitate a simple request for food and instead
the guy who asked, Brian DuBourdieu, ended up spending the night at St. Mike's Hospital.
On June 24th, Brian DuBourdieu went to Seaton House planning to spend the night. The problem
occurred with the food he was offered,
a peanut butter sandwich. As DuBourdieu said, "I can't eat peanut butter."
Seaton House was then staffed by City Management given the Toronto inside worker's strike. DuBourdieu is allergic to peanuts
but the city management allegedly told him that was all that was available to eat and threw the sandwich at him. DuBourdieu
threw the sandwich back at the manager, kicked a steel door (causing no damage), turned and walked away.
DuBourdieu describes what happened next, "That is when the five city managers that were working, jumped me
from behind, tackled me to the ground and three of them held me down while
the other two kicked me repeatedly, they carried me down three flights of stairs
and outside to the sidewalk where they dropped me on the ground and left
me there". The injured man was taken to the hospital with the help of his
friend. His injuries include torn cartilage and ligaments in his knee. There is a strong possibility DuBourdieu will need
surgery to repair the damage caused in the incident.
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty organized a protest outside Seaton House where, DuBourdieu, his lawyer and Gaeten Heroux of OCAP
all spoke.
Mike Leitold, DuBourdieu's lawyer said, "to me it's a symptom of the crisis that is in our shelter system today; that people are being treated in the way Brian describes.
I think that crisis is exacerbated today by a city that is unwilling to strike a fair contract with its employees and its workers
who are here supporting us today."
"Many of the CUPE workers who are here are trained in de-escalation and know their clients; know people like Brian; know who is
allergic to what so when we have aggressive managers filling in for workers this is the kind of casualties that we are seeing in
our streets; people beaten and left on the curb. The other thing that causes great consternation for me; Brian did try and make a
complaint did try and file charges against the people that beat him him but unfortunately .. 51 Division elected not to
actually proceed."
Gaetan Heroux from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty said, "the shelter system
desperately needs more funding and more beds, especially now when we expect an
increase in homelessness. We call on the City of Toronto to apologize to
Mr. DuBourdieu, return his missing property, make restitution towards him, lift
the ban against him at Seaton House, and ensure that nothing like this ever
happens again," said OCAP representative Gaetan Heroux. "We also demand that the
police lay charges against the managers involved in the assault."
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