January 13, 2023 – Ottawa, Ontario – The father of a Russell, Ontario boy accused of a brutal, racist attack that left a Black boy with a broken arm is suing the Black group that came to the mother’s aid.
The father cannot be named to protect the identity of the accused boy who was 10 at the time of the 2020 incident.
The father is suing the 613-819 Black Hub for $200,000 for libel for contacting the Ontario chapter of the Royal Canadian Legion. The father was an executive with the Russell, Ontario chapter of the Legion at time of the incident. In its email, the Black Hub quoted facts that had been reported by the media the day before and raised concerns that the father hadn’t reached out to the mother of the victim weeks after the incident. The Hub was concerned how Black veterans might be treated at the Russell Legion under the father’s leadership given the racist nature of the attack.
The victim’s mother filed a lawsuit against the father in September 2022. The Black Hub is named as a defendant in the counterclaim the father immediately filed. The father’s claim says the victim started the altercation and that his son did nothing wrong. He denies his son called the Black boy the N-word.
“This is the typical reaction of white people accused of doing racist things. They say the Black people started it and that they did nothing wrong”, said 613-819 Black Hub coordinator, Robin Browne.
“Counterclaims like this are what we call White Harassment and Intimidation Prosections, or WHIPS for short.”, Browne said. “The father and his law firm are trying to WHIP the Black Hub into silence. But just as our enslaved ancestors refused to be whipped into silence on the plantation we will not be silenced now.”
The Black Hub attempted to file a defence but the clerk at the Ottawa Courthouse civil suit desk said it couldn’t as the documents the father and his law firm Vice and Hunter LLP served on the Hub weren’t done properly and were, therefore, invalid. The Hub will file its defence once it receives valid documents.