One month ago today, I sent a request for information to the DPJ, Quebec’s monolithic Youth Protection bureaucratic machine, to their Access to Information Request email address. Gmail was able to confirm they received the email. It’s amazing how much data is available to you, if you know how to look.
They had 20 business days to reply, either giving me a copy of my file, or giving me some bullshit excuse as to why they “couldn’t” supply me with a copy. I expected the latter not the former.
The DPJ, as always, did not fail to surprise:
They elected not to reply at all.
Yesterday, the 25th of August, was their legally-mandated deadline to respond. So today, I sent a request via email to the appeals board, the “Tribunal Administratif” as they like to call it in this little province of Quebec.
If they manage to fuck me over there, I’ll take them to the Human Rights Commission. If that doesn’t work, I’ll fucking sue them, if I fucking have to.
If that doesn’t work, well…nothing’s off the table.
I asked for access to my file with the DPJ, because as I said in a previous post, I intend to blow the lid off the culture of malfeasance and bad faith that rules the Direction de Protection de Jeunesse, and the vile cockroaches who pretend to be social workers while running it.
Why? As mentioned in a previous post, the Montreal Comiccon fiasco. For another, the time my daughter, while visiting me, asked why M, the social worker at the time, was asking her if I had ever inappropriately touched her. Leia was was afraid, because she knew they were trying to get either her or me into trouble. I tried to reassure her it was SOP, but she told me that neither of her siblings had been asked any similar questions. It should go without saying but I will say it nonetheless: I would never and have never been inappropriate with any of my children in any way.
I cannot communicate the level of disgust I felt when I heard what M had to say, when I called her on it. It boils my blood more than two years later, just thinking about it.
They say I traumatized my children because of my “unreliable” behavior; I ask how much more trauma have several different social workers caused my children in their attempts to alienate them from me? Including one who had me arrested after triggering me into a nervous breakdown, and another who suggested to my ex-wife that she use her texts with me to alienate my children from me.
This entire time, the only goal the DPJ has, has been the destruction of me as a father to my children. They’ve robbed me of the last years of their childhood; my kids are young adults now, and I don’t even know what they look like, because they’ve grown up so much in the last few years.
They say I traumatized my children because of my “unreliable” behavior: I have constant moderate to severe back pain because of a lower back injury suffered when I was a kid. Subsequent to that injury I developed arthrosciatic pain. I have also suffered with irritable bowel and acid reflux since my twenties; this has given rise to Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome in my fifties. I can start my day fine, then out of nowhere and for no good goddamn reason I will become violently ill. I also live with anxiety and depression.
The DPJ WEAPONIZED my disabilities in order to paint me as “unreliable” and “unstable;” despite them being the reason I had a mental breakdown.
Oh, yes, I got into psychiatric care after years of searching for it; oh, absolutely, I’m a new man today for what I went through.
But it is also true that despite even being cleared by the courts of the crime of rage-texting the social worker who drove me into a nervous breakdown and despite meeting every goal the DPJ set for me, instead of seeing my children, they just kept moving the goalposts; they pushed me into this, and they pushed me too fucking far one too many times.
I’ve cursed their souls with the righteousness of the wronged, the oppresed, and the persecuted; for they violated my fatherhood, and my life.
I will never forgive them for it, because I cannot forgive the injuries I’ve suffered and continue to suffer because of them.
But right now, I think I need to take a nap.
If you are a victim of this or any other monolith of bureaucratic authority and qualified immunity, don’t lay down; get up, stand up and fight. Fight as hard as you can, with every tool at your disposal.
…and when or if you run out of legal measures, welcome to the Resistance.
We are Legion, because we are many.
Month: August 2025
-
The Slow War: Access to Information Acts, Reactions and Actions
-
I can only be experienced forward, but I can only be understood backward. What am I?
I know this blog has no readership, which means I’m screaming into the void. I’m not on any social media anymore, I have no public presence, and I am a non-person, now. They took me away from my children. I have no family, no friends, no loved ones…no connections. I have nothing left to even hope for. And I’m so tired of being alone.
Why the fuck am I even here?
steve@karmazenuk.com
-
“Family” Used to Mean No One Got Left Behind…
This is something that I’m not supposed to write.
Normally I would only discuss my writing, here, and not really anything personal. But I can’t talk about writing They Came in Peace without mentioning the personal struggles that I survived during the process. Among those struggles, was surviving alienation from my children for the last two years, and four years in total of fighting for my parental rights, with Quebec’s Department of Youth Protection.
The Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse, the DPJ, motivated by some fabrication of my abusive ex-wife, have gone out of their way to make sure I don’t have a relationship with my children.
Now every time I go out and see kids around their age I search their faces for anything I recognize; I haven’t seen my children in so long I can only imagine how they look, now.
I lie awake at night rebuking myself for every stupid, impudent act that led to this, hating myself for things I did, and hating the DPJ all the more because of what they’ve done to me.
I was admonished by the DPJ to not discuss this case, but the fact is, they so abused their authority in what they did that I feel the greater injustice would be letting them get away with it all without reproach. This organization is as corrupt and as authoritarian as everyone has ever told you. And here in Quebec, there is a hatred towards men, especially Anglophone men, that is built into the cultural subconscious: The DPJ was called originally to investigate my ex-wife. After they found she did little to nothing wrong and falling all over themselves while trying to offer her support and services, they turned their eye to me and took every aspect of my life apart to find fault with everything.
I know what my failings are; but they wouldn’t recognize anything that I’d achieved, and once again this week they reminded me of that fact again, when they told me they were going to extend their blockade against me until the fall, when they will divest themselves of the case and my ex-wife will be given full parental authority.
I may never see my children again; in my fight against the DYP they drove me into a nervous breakdown, and I lashed out at the social worker and it cost me the love and trust of my sons, and the presence of my daughter. They’ve stolen my fatherhood from me. The last time I hugged my children was the last time I hugged my children; they’re all young adults, now…the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse stole the last years of my children’s childhood from me.
And they expect me to smile and say nothing as they continue fucking me, and thousands of others, over for petty reasons and minor issues. They act in bad faith and are never to be trusted.
For two years I’ve stayed awake at night, trying to sleep, trying not to cry…I miss my children, and they won’t be children if and when I ever see them again.
I dove headlong into the re-edit and minor cosmetic rewrite of They Came in Peace two years ago, when they cut me off from my kids. It was a story that grew out of apocalyptic and violent nightmares I had, over the course of a decade following my escape from an abusive ex-partner. How such a person can be such a wonderful mother is beyond me; but she is. She treated me like dogshit, made me feel like her employee instead of her partner. But, this isn’t about her.
This story is an exploration of so many different themes…I wouldn’t know where to start in unpacking what goes where in relation to what I was living through when I started the very first draft of TCiP. I don’t think I’d have survived, if I didn’t have this story to write, and now, to share. -
Diary of an Exile
It’s been twenty business days since I asked Quebec’s Youth Protection for a full copy of my file; I have not seen a single page.
It’s clear to me that H.S. and the rest of the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse has no interest in the children in her care; only about creating and controlling the narrative around the story.
The book cover is coming along, but it’s an unremarkable process of emails between me and my cover artist, with various in-process sketches. I mean, the picture is going to be amazing, and Em is pouring herself into the work…but until I have a visual to show you, we have no common frame of reference to discuss matters.
But being a father alienated by a massive bureaucratic machine…I’ve got to start talking about it, now, before I get my hands on the file because if I don’t I fear the pain of it all may kill me.
And this is one place that my kids might actually still be able to hear from me.
My sons hate me; and Obi-Wan and Luke have cause, I will admit that. Not because of anything I did or said to them…but apparently my ex-wife doesn’t understand the concept of keeping private texts private. More on that later; probably in another post.
In 2022, I wanted to take my kids to Montreal ComicCon. And while telling me to my face that they supported it, in their files and conversations with my ex wife, M, the first social worker the DPJ put on this joke of a case, to make sure that under no circumstances were they going to let that happen. When I found out the truth and threw it in M’s face, she didn’t even do anything other than sneer angrily; that “How DARE you catch me lying to you?” look that some entitled women manage to generate.
Knowing my weakest point is the fact that I’m broke, they only agreed to let me go if I paid out of pocket for everything, myself. The kids wanted to cosplay, I was going to be cosplaying, so I had to buy their costumes out of pocket. My sister helped me, because she could see what they were trying to do, and knew I couldn’t afford to help the kids half as much as I wanted to.
I got to take them to ComicCon. The next year would be the last year I would see them, and I would never get to take them anywhere, ever again.
I’ll get into the role I’ve played and how the DPJ used it to crate a feedback loop of emotional blackmail that ultimately caused me to have a nervous breakdown. Right now, I’ve written about as much as I can stomach, today.
Before I finish, though, I want to tell Obi, Leia and Luke how much I miss you, how much I love you, and miss you. I won’t stop trying to reach you, but if you don’t want to have me in your lives, I will accept that. I am going to try, here, in this space, to explain what happened. And once I have the documentation, I’m going to expose what they did to me, what they did to our family.
I will love you forever and ever without breaking, and I hope and pray all day every day that the time before we see each other again is shorter than I fear. -
The Waiting Game
Full Text of my request to the bastards at Quebec Youth Protection, sent 26th of July:
Please find attached a copy of my Medicare card.
Pursuant to such confirmation of my identity, I hereby request access to any and all records pertaining to my and my children’s dossier, opened in 2021, and of the case file in its entirety, included, but not limited to, any and all written correspondence between individuals involved in the case, social assessments for all parties, intervention notes for all parties, and any and all related correspondence, reports and other documentation not listed herein.
The children’s names are:
Obi-Wan Karmazenuk, BB 2010
Leia Karmazenuk, BB 2013
Luke Karmazenuk, BB 2013
I understand you have twenty (20) calendar days to respond to this request. Should you refuse, either directly or de facto, please take care to note that I shall, immediately and regrettably, escalate the matter with the Commission d’acces a l’information du Quebec, and, given the level of discrimination, denial of dignity and harm caused to me, and outright abuse of power that I have regrettably and undeniably suffered, should the CAI refuse my appeal, I will be taking it to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de jeunesse du Quebec. Please note that I have conducted a thorough review of my rights as enshrined in both provincial legislation and Constitutional protections, and I am in no mood for, nor under any legal obligation to indulge with any capering, antics, larks or shenanigans regarding this request.
Do please take care that, ideally, I would prefer to receive a paper copy of the file via mail, but a complete set of PDFs of all information will nevertheless be considered an acceptable substitution.
I am still waiting for a reply – or for that matter a confirmation from Youth Protection.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, The DYP bitches in charge of this case, MS and HS (No relation) are emotionally blackmailing me and refusing to answer my questions.
Text in full:
Good day.
It is Monday, August the 4th; 5:09 PM.
You have yet to send a reply to a very serious question that I have asked you, and the nonanswer you provided last week was, undoubtedly, an inefficacious attempt to obfuscate rather than elucidate.
So, I ask again: Why should I trust that any information my psychiatrist provides you will not be selectively edited to fit your narrative of painting me as an unfit father?
Now, I see my psychiatrist again next Wednesday, the 13th of August, at 3:00 PM.
I expect an answer from you, this week
I was ready to let go; I was ready to accept that I had to wait until the Twins were 14 before I’d hear from them, or that I couldn’t reach out to Obi until he’s 18.
I was ready to stop looking at every 12 to 15 year old, searching their face for something that I recognize. Do you have any IDEA what kind of HELL it is to not even know what your OWN CHILDREN LOOK LIKE?
I wish you did; truly. Maybe the Rite I performed will see to that; who knows. But yeah, the curse I put on you lot stands. You can’t have me arrested for Witchcraft, either; religious freedom. It’s my religious right to throw bad juju at you.
In any event, until you phoned me to emotionally blackmail me with “Don’t you want to see Leia again BEFORE then?” I was ready to walk away.
Now, here I am, like an imbecile ready to trust you again, and you cannot even provide a satisfactory answer to my above question – I’ve already CAUGHT YOU IN THE ACT of lying about the report before a fucking JUDGE.
Even Judge Dipshit would be pissed if he heard about that shit. You’ve spent years selectively editing the facts of my life to paint the picture you want of me.
So, if I haven’t heard a satisfactory response from you within 24 hours of my psychiatrist’s appointment next week, I will walk away. Comme on dit en bon kebequoi, that will be it, that will be all, and I will close with a GFY that would impress the late Vulgarian comedians, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce.
And when, in time I finally get to answer Anya’s question of “Why don’t you cooperate?” I will tell her the unvarnished truth: You are not trustworthy.
Now it is upon your shoulders to convince me otherwise.
Have the week you deserve.
I am so fucking sick of these bastards, and they have the gall to wonder why I have such a deep-seeded hatred of them. They can’t suffer enough to satisfy me.