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First, the father banned his 12-year-old daughter from going online after she posted photos of herself on a dating site. Then she allegedly had a row with her stepmother, so the father said his girl couldn't go on a school trip.
The girl took the matter to the court - and won what lawyers say was an unprecedented judgment.
Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn't discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip.
The judge's decision, made from the bench, applies only to the girl's unusual circumstances, lawyers for both sides said, trying to dispel visions of grounded teenagers rushing to the nearest courthouse to overturn their parents' punishments. Nevertheless, the case triggered an uproar in the Gatineau region of Quebec, near Ottawa, where the girl, her divorced parents and her stepmother live.
Even though the school trip is now over, the father is appealing the ruling because his moral authority over his child had been undercut by the court, said his lawyer, Kim Beaudoin. "He is stunned by this situation. He feels like he's lost his daughter," Ms. Beaudoin said in an interview.
"My client wants to appeal so no other parents will live through the same thing."
Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.
She said the girl has already been forbidden to use the Internet and her father also punished her by cancelling her participation in an extracurricular event.
The trip, a three-day outing within Quebec supervised by teachers and volunteer parents, marked her Grade 6 class graduation from elementary school.
"She's becoming a big girl. ... It's a unique event in her life," Ms. Fortin said.
The girl's parents are divorced. Her father has legal custody but for the past month she has lived with her mother, Ms. Fortin said.
Before Judge Tessier, she cited Sections 159 and 604 of the Quebec Civil Code, which allow minors in some circumstances to initiate court proceedings relating to the exercise of parental authority.
Ms. Beaudoin said Section 159 is normally used in extreme circumstances, for example when a child wants to be removed from negligent parents.
"What my client is saying is that a school trip is not a right, it's a privilege," she said.
Ms. Fortin said, however, that the case ended in court after a long, escalating dispute between the girl and her father and stepmother, which ended with the daughter being expelled from her father's house and living with her biological mother since May.
"I presented this [court] motion with a lot of sadness," Ms. Fortin said.
Ms. Beaudoin also described a climate of tension and defiance, saying the girl, who had been banned from Internet chatting, tried to circumvent the order by going online at a friend's house.
Judge Tessier heard the matter for about 40 minutes on Friday morning then gave her oral ruling in the afternoon, Ms. Beaudoin said.
