A Montreal woman who was brainwashed almost 50 years ago is demanding reparations on behalf of herself and hundreds of victims of CIA-backed mind control experiments during the Cold War.
Janine Huard asked a Canadian federal court this week to authorize a multi-million dollar class action suit against the Canadian government for its alleged complicity in the involuntary tests, her lawyer Alan Stein told reporters.
Ottawa partly funded the research, led by doctor Ewen Cameron at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal from 1950 to 1965, he said.
Huard was given "experimental drugs and electric shock treatments" and subjected to psychic-driving tests, using electroconvulsive therapy and psychedelic drugs such as LSD in an attempt at mind control, he said.
She was also left in a dark room and forced to listen to recorded messages saying she was a bad mother who neglected her children, for six or seven hours a day for a week.
The treatments were part of Cameron's "depatterning program," Stein said, given to Huard following her admission to the hospital for mild depression after giving birth.
"The idea was to erase her memories and re-forge her personality," Stein said.
Cameron, born in Scotland, pioneered the techniques.
He was recruited by the CIA in the 1950s to conduct mind control experiments, part of its notorious Project MK-Ultra, first revealed in the 1970s.
A US congressional investigation has revealed that some 30 universities and institutions were involved in the project.
The tests are believed to have produced little useful scientific data.
Much of the files produced during the experiments have since been destroyed.
Huard described the treatment inflicted on her as "torture."
She told Canadian reporters that she was unable to care for her children because of the brainwashing.
She was forced to rely entirely on her mother for a decade after the experiments, she said.
The Canadian government has denied culpability in the affair, yet offered 70 people who underwent the sadistic tests about US$100,000 each in the early 1990s on the grounds of compassion.
Another 250 people were refused indemnity because their injuries were not deemed serious enough, Stein said.
Huard received US$66,000 from the CIA, but has not received redress from the Canadian government.
In 2004, a Canadian court forced Ottawa to compensate one of the 250 neglected victims, inspiring Huard to step up her fight on behalf of all forlorn victims, Stein said.
Government attorneys insist that Huard's appeal has come too late, almost a decade after she was first denied reparations from Canada.
But Stein asked a federal court on Wednesday to extend the statute of limitations for restitution and to certify Huard's class action lawsuit.
The court's decision is still pending.
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