Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jan 2007
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2007 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Katherine Wilton

'THEY DEMOLISHED ME,' BRAINWASHING VICTIM SAYS

Allan Memorial Patient In Court To Seek Class Action

As a young child, Martine Huard could never understand why her mother
spent so many hours in bed - or why she rarely played with her.

For years during the 1960s, Janine Huard was severely depressed and
unable to cook or care for her four children.

Years of undergoing electroshock treatment and other brainwashing
techniques at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s had
left her mentally ill and emotionally unstable.

She suffered memory loss and migraines, and struggled with depression
for years.

"I remember my grandmother taking care of us because my mother was
always in bed," Martine Huard said yesterday.

Five decades after unknowingly participating in brainwashing
experiments funded by the CIA and the federal government, Janine
Huard, now 78, walked into Federal Court in Montreal yesterday to try
to convince a judge that she deserves compensation.

"They demolished me," Huard told reporters yesterday before her court
hearing. "They gave me terrible drugs, electroshocks, and made me stay
in a bed with a mask over my face listening to recordings for hours a
day. I was afraid."

One of the recordings told Huard that she was useless to her family.

Huard had entered the Allan Memorial Institute in 1957 after suffering
postpartum depression after the birth of her second child. Her newborn
had become ill and Huard was having trouble sleeping.

But instead of helping her, the institute's director, Ewen Cameron,
used her as a guinea pig to carry out experimental brainwashing
techniques that he mistakenly believed could treat depression.

"I went to Dr. Cameron because he had the reputation of being the best
in the field," said Huard, who lives in St. Laurent.

Early on, Huard said, she was dubious about the effectiveness of the
"treatment."

But she said the doctors were aggressive with her when she protested
or asked too many questions.

One day, she had had enough and asked her husband, Robert, to call the
Allan and say she was not coming back.

"They told her that if she did not come in, they would send the police
to get her," Huard's lawyer, Alan Stein, told Federal Court judge Luc
Martineau yesterday.

Huard said she believes the effects of the treatment stayed with her
for years. She wanted to become a translator but did poorly in exams
because she lacked confidence.

Huard wants to launch a class action on behalf of herself and about
200 other victims who were shut out of a 1994 federal compensation
program. The program paid $100,000 to the 77 victims who suffered the
most serious damage. Huard was not among that group.

But before she can proceed, her lawyer must convince a judge that she
hasn't waited too long to seek redress.

A lawyer for the federal government argued yesterday that it is too
late to proceed with a lawsuit, more than 12 years after the claims
were rejected in 1994.

But in 2004, a federal appeal court overturned one of the rejected
claims and awarded another victim, Gail Kastner, $100,000 in
compensation.

That decision convinced Huard that it wasn't too late to seek justice
from the Canadian government.

In 1989, Huard was one of nine plaintiffs who were awarded $67,000
U.S. in compensation from the CIA, but she hasn't received a cent from
Ottawa.

Huard said she will never forget the damage she suffered at the hands
of Cameron and his co-workers. "The only time I got better was when I
stopped seeing those doctors."

The judge took the case under advisement yesterday.
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MAP posted-by: Derek