Families of MK-Ultra brainwashing victims protest in Montreal

CTV National News: MK-Ultra experiments A Que. group is fighting for justice for family members who endured mind-control experiments in Montreal. Vanessa Lee reports.

The families of victims of brainwashing experiments in Montreal are fighting for justice and compensation in a case involving the CIA that the U.S. government wants dismissed.

“When my father would come home on weekends, he didn't even know who my sister and I were,” Lana Mills Sowchuck told CTV News on Wednesday at a protest in front of a Montreal courthouse. “They wiped his brain.”

Sowchuck’s father was first admitted to McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute in 1952. Allegedly told they would cure his asthma, he was instead experimented on, forced into electroshock therapy and drug-induced sleeps.

“He was put into an insulin coma for 36 days asleep with his recording saying, 'your mother hates you,'” Sowchuck said.

Sowchuk’s father was one of hundreds of patients of renowned psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, whose mind-control experiments were secretly backed by the CIA as part of a larger human experimentation program known as MK-Ultra. The Canadian government also provided funding.

“There’s a lot of people in our case that we think should have intervened either by not helping or cutting it off,” Jeff Orenstein, a lawyer for the victims’ families said.

Those families are trying to seek compensation through a class-action lawsuit, but hurdles remain. A lawyer for the U.S. Attorney General is currently in Montreal arguing for the case against the CIA to be dismissed.

“It's a matter of being accountable for allowing these atrocities to happen,” said Marlene Levenson, the aunt of a victim. “Experiments (were) done on innocent victims that never gave consent.”

With files from CTV Montreal