Settling for nothing

>> Mouthpieces profit while many Duplessis Orphans get zero

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

After being abandoned by her mother at age seven in Montreal North, Noella Doucet bounced around orphanages until 1955 when, at 15, she was transferred to St-Julien, an institution near Drummondville. To her surprise, she had been placed in an insane asylum. "There was never anything abnormal about me. I wondered why I was there. I cried, I screamed. I thought of escaping but getting away wouldn't have been easy," says the St-Jerome resident.

Doucet, 61, says that during her teens, she was regularly straitjacketed and strapped to a mattress by a nun named Sister Romaine. "She committed sexual aggression [below] my waist. I tried to tell people but they said it was impossible. People could never understand something like that."

After her release at age 19, Doucet suffered four miscarriages, which she blames on damage caused by sexual abuse she suffered in the institution. Doucet finally bore three children with a man who had also spent his youth in insane asylums in the same funding scam operated by the church, province and various doctors to defraud the federal government.

Doucet's husband never adjusted to society and became a hardened criminal, which led to their eventual separation in 1984. She says that he then used her fraudulent psychiatric record against her to have their three children taken away by the Department of Youth Protection. The next year he was shot in the head and killed at the scene of a crime by the Sùreté du Québec.

After unsuccessfully fighting to have her children returned, for the past nine years Doucet has put her energies into helping the Duplessis Orphans Committee battle for compensation. She has been interviewed by the media about 15 times, although she says this is the first time she has put shame aside to fully divulge the extent of her abuse.

The Orphans' fight for compensation finally concluded this month when, during a surprise vote by show of hands, a majority of those present at an East End meeting accepted a $10,000 settlement each plus $1,000 per year interned in an asylum. But to her surprise, Doucet and many others won't be getting a cent. The $37.5-million offer, the first extended by the provincial government, will only go to those who were between six and 12 years old when interned.

In contrast, the group's lawyer, Yves Lauzon, is expected to receive around $5-million of the settlement. Carlo Torini, the group's public relations representative, is also expected to receive a multi-million-dollar cut. He refused to comment on the figure when reached by telephone this week. Orphans' committee President Bruno Roy is out of town and unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, several Orphans unhappy with the deal--including former committee chief Hervé Bertrand--have started a rival group to fight the settlement. Twenty naysayers met last Thursday at Le Club Sandwich with Yves Manseau of Mouvement Action Justice to develop a strategy to reverse recent events.

Unless the new committee succeeds, Doucet will again have to cope with shattered hopes. "For 10 years I fought with the committee and I'm getting nothing. Now I have trouble putting one foot ahead of the other one. My heart is too broken. With my life it's impossible for me to be happy or to dream. The only thing I have now is just to wait to die."