Sterilized psychiatric patients get $450,000 in out-of-court deal: 'The Gov. agreed to make the payout without admitting anything wrong happened'

Globe and Mail
Dec. 25, 2005

VANCOUVER -- Nine women who were sterilized while psychiatric patients in Vancouver more than 35 years ago have received a total of $450,000 in an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit against the British Columbia government.

"It was the right time to settle these cases," Public Guardian Jay Chalke, who initiated the lawsuit on behalf of the women in 2001, said yesterday in a news release.

"Some of our clients died during these lengthy proceedings and we had to consider the age of those still living."

The government agreed to make the payout without admitting anything wrong happened, he added later in an interview.

British Columbia and Alberta were the only provinces in Canada to embrace the eugenics movement that swept through the United States in the early 20th century.

B.C. enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act in 1933 and kept it on the books until 1973. Statutes providing for eugenic sterilization were enacted in 30 states by 1937. Proponents contended that sterilization of those with mental illnesses, criminals and the poor was an acceptable measure to improve society.

The women were patients at the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital between 1940 and 1968. A publication ban prohibits the media from identifying the women who launched the lawsuit.

When the suit was filed, a women identified as C.B. described in a statement of claim what happened to her.

She alleged that she was sterilized because she was considered to be promiscuous and amoral, that she was unfit for motherhood and that she showed poor judgment. Authorities considered her "of indifferent intellectual and emotional endowment," she stated.

The procedure was carried out as a matter of convenience for the psychiatric hospital administration and "in the course of a systemic practice of sexual sterilization of female patients," she said.

As a result, she lost the ability to bear children and experienced pain, suffering, physical scarring, humiliation, loss of self-esteem, and mental and emotional distress, she stated.

The Public Guardian initially filed lawsuits on behalf of 18 women, who claimed there was an abuse of authority.

The cases were dismissed in 2003, with the court finding that those who administered the sterilization were acting with good intentions.

The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the decision for nine women, allowing them to proceed to a new trial. The second court case was to start in the spring of next year.

"These were complex and difficult cases," lawyer Thomas Berger, who represented the Public Guardian, stated in the news release. "Obtaining compensation for these women so many years after this dark chapter in our province's history is a good result."












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