The Duplessis Orphans:
Still Seeking Justice
For almost a decade now, the roughly 3,000 surviving "Duplessis Orphans" have been seeking justice in the form of a formal apology and compensation for the abuse they suffered in church-run psychiatric institutions under the regime of Maurice Duplessis.1 So far, the Church and Québec government have shown no compassion.
Placed in institutions in the 40's, 50's and early 60's
because their
mothers were unmarried or simply because their parents were poor, these
children were labelled retarded or insane, often beaten, put to work,
deprived of formal education, and sexually abused. Many were excessively
medicated, placed in isolation for weeks on end, straight-jacketed, electro-shocked.
This was not Nazi Germany or Ceaucescu's Romania-this was Duplessis' Québec.
Needless to say, the survivors have had tremendous difficulties in making
lives for themselves.
Their medical records, still containing false diagnoses,
have yet to be corrected. The Church has officially refused to apologize
or to take any
responsibility whatsoever. On behalf of the entire Roman Catholic Church
of Québec, Monseigneur Pierre Morissette, President of the Assemblée
des évêques du Québec, stated that the Church does
not intend to apologize, nor will it make any financial contribution to
individuals or to a fund intended to assist them.
This has sent the Québec government scrambling to do something, anything. The Bouchard government proposed a paltry $3 million toward treatment services. The Duplessis Orphans, who had asked for $56 million, were aghast at such callousness. Québec's own ombudsman recommended $10,000 per person, more in keeping with what other provincial governments have already allocated to individuals who have suffered institutional abuse as children.
Recently, Premier Bernard Landry has promised some form
of monetary
compensation, without specifying any amount. Condemnation of the Church
is out of the question; he feels it did nothing wrong. Furthermore, according
to Landry's unique logic, the Duplessis Orphans should really be called
the "Saint-Laurent Orphans", after the Canadian Prime Minister at the
time, since funding came from the federal government, which offered more
money to psychiatric institutions than to orphanages. C'est la faute du
fédéral. To score political points at the expense of the
survivors is beyond belief.
Why did Duplessis and the Church pocket the money, expressly misdiagnosing perfectly normal children? Why did individual "servants of God" actively inflict sadism and cruelty on these innocent souls? Why must survivors today be forced to grovel for recognition? Ah, for this we need to enrol in Professor Landry's Logic 101.
It is clear that the Parti Québecois government has
never really severed
its attachment to or diminished its reverence for Duplessis and everything
he represented. Today, as in the Duplessis era, Québec is being
bought up
by U.S. corporations, without so much as a peep from the Québec
Left.
(What's left of the Left?) Lionel Groulx, right-wing nationalist chief
cleric, has been resurrected in political and academic circles. A symposium
rehabilitating the Duplessis name and era was held last summer in
Trois-Rivières, just 150 kilometres northeast of Montréal.
Interestingly,
that town has only one psychiatrist for a population of 150,000 people
(Montréal has one per 5,000 people), causing those with mental
illness to
suffer over-medication and isolation for lack of adequate services. Here
we go again.
A statue of Duplessis stands proudly on the Grande Allée,
in front of the
National Assembly. In Québec, Duplessis is still a righteous dude.
1 Duplessis was premier of Quebec from 1936-39, and from 1944 until his death in 1959-eds.