Sidhartha Banerjee, Montreal (Canadian Press) – In the months since they were arrested by the RCMP as alleged human traffickers, a Quebec couple say they’ve lived a hellish existence, shunned by some and tried globally by rumour.
Vindicated Thursday after the Crown decided to withdraw criminal charges against them, Nichan Manoukian, 60, and his wife Manoudshag Saryboyadijan, 48, are now demanding the Mounties make reparations.
And they want the federal force to begin by publicly apologizing to them for thrusting them into the public spotlight.
The Laval, Que., couple said in an interview in Montreal Thursday they were made out to be criminals without the RCMP conducting a proper investigation into the allegations of an Ethiopian nanny who had lived with them for eight years.
“They came to my door and treated me like a big criminal in front of my children, my wife,” Manoukian said at his lawyer’s office in Westmount, Que., a stone’s throw away from the RCMP’s headquarters in the province.
“I’ve been sick for the last two years. I’ve never cried before in my life but I’m crying from the heart now,” an emotional Manoukian added, the toll of spending almost two years trying to clear his family’s name apparent.
But the Mounties say the were just doing their job.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Luc Bessette said the decision to lay charges is up to the Crown and not the police force.
“We presented the file to Crown prosecutors who decided to lay charges, and our job was done,” Bessette said.
“After that, what they do with the file is up to them, because it’s before the courts.”
It’s up to the Crown to make clear why the charges weren’t pursued, Bessette said.
The charges had been laid last May after RCMP investigators concluded the couple treated their nanny like a prisoner.
“Whose fault was it?” asked Saryboyadijan, adding the couple was humiliated after being fingerprinted and having their mugshots taken.
Crown prosecutor Jonathan Meunier said the charges were dropped because new elements were introduced since his office decided to lay charges.
“There’s no question, we would not file any (new) charges with the information we were given,” Meunier said. “We feel that a good decision was made in this case.”
The Manoukian family says they still aren’t sure why the nanny, 29, filed the complaint with police and are adamant that she was treated “like family.”
But they strongly believe the woman was coerced into filing the charge to secure her status in the country and did not act on her own. The woman gained status in Canada following the police intervention.
The Manoukians had hired a lawyer to help her iron out her immigration woes.
“We were already getting the paperwork for her, I don’t know why she did it,” said Arvine Manoukian, the couple’s 21-year-old daughter. “We were even trying to help her bring her fiancee over here.”
In May, the Mounties said the Manoukian’s arrests were the first of their kind in Canada since criminal laws on human trafficking were introduced in November 2005.
Nichan Manoukian said his family was tried by rumours in the local Armenian and Lebanese communities. A newspaper in Lebanon listed the couple as being jailed. The family couldn’t sit in restaurants without having people staring at them and hearing whispering about them.
“How could I explain to them that I was innocent,” lamented Nichan Manoukian.
The nanny lived with the couple beginning in 1997 in Lebanon. Manoukian and his wife are both Canadian citizens and lived in Lebanon before returning to Canada with the Ethiopian woman in tow in 2004.
She was removed from the Manoukian home in January 2006.
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