PORTRAIT Expert

Anne-Sarah Kertudo

« During my training, my supervisor told me: “If someone is agitated, or speaks in a confused or delusional way, you need to get rid of them — they’re potentially dangerous. »

When I started working in access to justice, I ran free legal clinics at an association serving people in extreme precarity. During my training, my supervisor told me: “If someone is agitated, or speaks in a confused or delusional way, you need to get rid of them — they’re potentially dangerous.”

I was seeing homeless people, drug users, people just out of prison… And I asked myself: if I don’t see these people, who does?

Since then, I’ve held to a simple conviction: mental health or disability should never prevent anyone from knowing and asserting their rights. Among other things, this means training justice professionals — lawyers, judges, court clerks — to understand the difficulties tied to psychological or physical conditions, and to not shut their doors to litigants who are, more than most, victims of violence and discrimination.

Stigmatized and discredited groups are often the ones who most need support. Even when a person is agitated, or speaks in a confused or delusional way, they retain all of their rights. These behaviors in no way rule out the possibility that they have suffered a violation of their rights. On the contrary, they can be signs of trauma, and reveal a victim rather than a dangerous individual. Women who are victims of violence are a perfect illustration of this: post-traumatic reactions, denial, contradictory statements — these should raise our vigilance, and above all, never distract from what matters. These women are used to not being believed, to being abandoned. Our role is to stand by them. Let’s work together toward a justice system that includes everyone.

Portrait Expert