Duped orphans

So what do you do when you're trying to get compensated for a government wrong? You put someone in charge but how can you ensure that the leader doesn't make a sly deal and sell out the rest of the gang? Some suggest that this is precisely what happened to the Duplessis Orphans, children forced to live in insane asylums as a provincial government scam to extract federal grants.The plight of these children has been widely documented. They were subject to a wide variety of shocking abuse, five year olds chained to radiators, given false permanent labels of "incurable and dangerous," and were never educated.

The feds provided more grants for mental patients than orphans, so Premier Duplesis simply transferred the children from orphanages to insane asylums. That's how the devious Duplessis administration cashed in on a giant money making scheme. When provincial ombudsman Daniel Jacoby denounced Premier Bouchard's laughably small settlement offer in the provincial legislature in 1999, the orphans suddenly had some momentum. Surely time was ripe to cry havoc and let slip the dogs. However instead of laying a big fat lawsuit against the government - as is universally done in similar cases elsewhere - Bruno Roy signed these papers two and a half months later and lawyer Yves Lauzon was never asked to bring the case to court. These recently released never-before-seen documents display that Roy had been been conducting friendly negotiations with the provincial government.
The orphans leader Bruno Roy was a big name. Not only was he an orphan himself but he was president of Quebec's Writers Federation. What's less-known is that he - unknown to others - actually joined the Clercs de St. Viateur de Joliette at the St. Georges Orphanage from 1964 to 1970. Some of the brothers of that sect allegedly committed acts of sexual abuse on orphans there as well as at other orphanages.

The orphans eventually went on to get about $10,000 to $15,000 each after a controversial show-of-hands closed door vote on the offer. Roy recommended they accept the paltry sum.

The settlement is shockingly bad. In every other similar situation of institutional abuse in North America the settlements are far higher. Two weeks ago in LA,500 similarly abused orphans were awarded $691 million - that's over a million dollars each. The Duplessis orphans received no apology and never had their fake mental records erased. Meanwhile Roy and Lauzon received considerably more than that for themselves. In fact, even the pencil-pushing administrators charged with compiling the list of legitimate recipients were paid $1,000 per day for their efforts. That's the same amount that each orphan received for an entire year of abuse. The orphans have repeatedly attempted to get legal aid to finally get a fair settlement, but the government has turned down every attempt to get it into court.