Duplessis Orphans

Among their charges were people considered to be socially vulnerable: those living in poverty, alcoholics or other individuals deemed unable to retain work, unwed mothers, and orphans.

[8] [9] The Loi sur les Asiles d'aliénés (Lunatic Asylum Act) of 1909 governed mental institution admissions until 1950.

The law stated the mentally ill could be committed for three reasons: to care for them, to help them, or as a measure to maintain social order in public and private life.

Under Duplessis, the provincial government was responsible for a significant number of healthy older children being deliberately classified as mentally ill[11][12][13] and sent to psychiatric hospitals, based on diagnoses made for fiscal reasons.

[10] Years later, long after these institutions were closed, survivors of the asylums began to speak out about child abuse which they endured at the hands of some staff and medical personnel.

[14] In a psychiatric study completed by one of the involved hospitals, middle-aged Duplessis Orphans reported more physical and mental impairments than the control group.

[18] By the 1990s, about 3,000 survivors and a large group of supporters formed the Duplessis Orphans Committee, seeking damages from the Quebec provincial government.

[19] In 2001, the claimants received an increased offer from the provincial government for a flat payment of $10,000 per person, plus an additional $1,000 for each year of wrongful confinement to a mental institution.

[21] Critics of the judgment pointed out that three of the bureaucrats running the government's compensation program were being paid over $1,000 per day for work,[22] whereas the orphans themselves received the same amount of money for an entire year of their confinement.

[14] This offended some survivors; in 2006, one of the Orphans, Martin Lécuyer, stated, "It's important for me, that the Church, the priests, that they recognize they were responsible for the sexual abuse, and the aggression.

[28] In 2021, preliminary ground-penetrating radar analyses on grounds around former Canadian Indian residential schools allegedly indicated the presence of unmarked graves that could include the remains of Indigenous children that were also mainly administered by Christian churches.