Patients at the former Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre are seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages for enduring “horrific” experimental treatments between 1966 and 1983.
But the lawyer representing the doctors, who were earlier found to be liable, says the total award being sought is up to $75 million for the 28 patients named in the lawsuit and far exceeds some of the country’s highest-profile awards.
“The damages they’re seeking is without precedent,” lawyer Sam Rogers, who is representing Dr. Elliot Thompson Barker and Dr. Gary J. Maier, told the virtual hearing.
Last June, Justice Edward M. Morgan of the Ontario Superior Court found the provincial Crown and two psychiatrists liable for using pain as an instrument on patients at the maximum-security facility in Penetanguishene, now called Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care.
He found that they gave high doses of hallucinogens and mind-altering drugs, including LSD and alcohol, as the cornerstone of one program they called defence disruptive therapy, or DDT.
Patients were also locked in a “capsule” for extended periods of time for group encounters. Some were strapped to other patients while naked.
Another program employed an overly strict physical disciplinary regime.
The programs operated within a self-contained unit housed within Oak Ridge called the Social Therapy Unit, or STU.
Eight of the 28 plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, which was launched 20 years ago, have since died.
Some of them were declared by the courts not guilty by reason of mental illness and are locked up indefinitely, until they are deemed well. Some have been there for more than 40 years.
Among those seeking compensation are serial killer Russ Johnson, who raped and murdered seven women.
Another is Dennis LePage, who killed his aunt with a rolling pin and has been living in the Penetanguishene facility for 40 years.
Others didn’t have that history, such as Danny Joanisse, who went to Oak Ridge at age 15 with a mental disorder where the judge determined in his decision last spring he was subjected to humiliation and degradation.
The nature of the programs, the wrongful conduct and what the patients were made to endure is a focal point in the punitive damages the patients are seeking, Peter Jervis, one of the lawyers representing the patients, said in closing remarks following three weeks of hearings.
He said the program was deliberate and intentional.
“As you said in your judgment, they designed a program to break these young men down, but they appear to have given little or no thought to how to build them back up,” Jervis said.
“It was recklessness as to the pain, the suffering, the psychological anguish, the torment," he added.
Jervis pointed to some of the evidence which showed that alcohol was given to alcoholics, a suicidal patient being put in solitary for six months, and a young sex-abuse victim cuffed naked to a pedophile.
They are seeking punitive damages, damages for pecuniary losses from income loss because of the experiences, as well as compensatory damages.
“We’re looking here at shocking conduct that destroyed lives,” he said.
Jervis said there has been no remorse shown to the patients, only “20 years of scorched-earth litigation.”
Representing the two now-elderly doctors, Rogers said there is no case in Canadian law that is remotely comparable to the dollar figure the patients are seeking.
“It works out to about $2.5 million per plaintiff,” he said.
That, he added, works out to be 10 to 100 times higher per plaintiff than what the victims of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop received in class-action settlements.
“We’re orders of magnitude higher than the residential schools case in this situation,” he said. “Your orders of magnitude higher than the most serious cases of sexual abuse in Canadian history. You’re higher than the most horrific cases of abuse of children, physical abuse of children by their parents.”
The hearing continues Friday with continued submissions by the lawyers for the doctors as well as the Crown.
