Purveyors of Hearsay

According to the medical records, the people who gave information or worked for my internment were as follows: Dr. Louis Dionne, Mr. and Mrs. Lyonnais, Mr. Zoran Majcen (originally from Yugoslavia), and my wife Vasilka.

Dr. Louis Dionne. After my wife, Dr. Louis Dionne was the most zealous informer. He was a wily schemer before and during my internment.

He falsely declared himself to be my next door neighbour, which he had never been. The Dionnes, at the time, were living in Sillery, and my family in Duberger (a distance of about 10 miles).

I had a few contacts with this doctor, but we did not see each other at all for three months before my hospitalization, because I was living in Hamilton, Ontario. In spite of this, two weeks before my internment (according to Dr. Grenier's testimony) Dr. Dionne, utilizing his position as a physician, was the most active, "nervously" running from Dr. Jacques Grenier to Dr. Jacques Dufour, the psychiatrists involved in my internment, to convince them that I was mentally ill.

Further, according to medical records, he was the one who organized my "urgent transportation" to the mental hospital, although the transportation of patients was not his business.

He was the one who dictated the duration of my stay in hospital. Later in court he was shamelessly bragging, with his hands in his pockets, how he had "smoothly organized" my internment by telephone, without having seen me.

The testimony of Dr. Dionne, and subsequently that of the defending psychiatrists in general, very clearly indicated there had indeed been a conspiracy.

Mr. and Mrs. Jean-Marc Lyonnais. This couple appear in the medical records as my landlords for two and a half years. In fact, like Dr. Dionne they gave false information about their relationship with me. I was their tenant for only three and a half months, three years before my hospitalization. Furthermore, during that short period we could not communicate because we did not speak the same language. Besides, because I did not have a high opinion of them, we left their home in an unfriendly manner.

Mr. Lyonnais was also active in organizing my internment. He helped the police arrest me. Later, during my internment, he tried to seize my belongings which I had left in my apartment in Hamilton. Among other things there were letters and documents whose contents were compromising for my wife. For example, I had letters by her mother and relatives in which they reprimanded her for her rude behaviour. In her own letters she expressed appreciation to me for taking good care of the family. The birth certificate of the eldest son contradicted her statement that she had become pregnant after our marriage, and so forth.

In their statement in the medical records -- in their attempt to describe me as "mentally sick". -- they stated that I had accused them of "exploitation". In fact, it is true that they did exploit us. The three of us -- my wife, one child and myself, were living in their house in a miserable bachelor apartment, which was tiny, with an old small oven, a refrigerator and an old couch on which all three of us were sleeping. I paid relatively high rent for this. In addition Mrs. Lyonnais used to receive donations (clothes, dishes) from some humanitarian organizations. She would keep the best articles for her family and then would offer us the rest in a humiliating way. My wife complained about this more than I did until I found another apartment.

When we decided to move, Mr. Lyonnais vehemently contested our decision, even though we had only agreed to live in their house until we found other suitable accommodations. At that point, as usual, my wife, changed her attitude. She tried to convince me to stay in Mr. Lyonnais' "apartment", even thought we had many arguments about this and she constantly complained about the situation.

These "landlords" later denied in court that they gave any information about me during my hospitalization! Nevertheless, Mr. Lyonnais did testify in court about the fidelity of my wife.

Mr. Zoran Majcen. This man figures in the medical records as my "only friend". Actually he was a friend of my wife.

He described me in the medical records as a "dictator and one who does not like having friends" (sic). The statement speaks for itself. If I did not like friends, how can he declare himself my "only friend"?

On the other hand, he came to court to swear that my wife was a "faithful wife". One wonders how he and Mr. Lyonnais were able to know better than I did that my wife was faithful. As we know, especially today in the era of the "sexual revolution", it is difficult to swear about someone's fidelity.

If I was tortured without any reason, the logical question is: why did the informers do this to me?

While I could not speculate about all of them, I do I know that Mr. Lyonnais and Mr. Majcen would often park their cars in the parking lot at my house, before and after my internment, when I was not at home. It is also worth noting that Mrs. Lyonnais was a sickly lady and under constant psychiatric surveillance. During our stay in her home she was complained about her "depression" and I noticed that she spent most her time in her bed.

While all these informers were fraudulently presenting themselves as reliable, their statements were absolutely void from a psychiatric point of view.²¹

The psychiatrists accepted as reliable information whatever these self-appointed "friends" said, but ignored my children, and my genuine and reputable friends, such as -- the very respectable Dr. Jaromil Danek, professor at Laval University, and his wife; the late professor Dr. George Sotiroff, also of Laval, Dr. Michel Jean, a physician, and the Reverend Claude LaVergne, the rector and principal of St. Augustine's Seminary. These friends visited me regularly until I was transferred to St. Jean de Dieu Hospital in Montreal, where I was for-bidden to have visitors or receive telephone calls.

Father LaVergne tried to help me get out of this hell, but was lectured by Mr. Marceau, Protector of Citizens of Quebec, to "mind his own business".

Reliance on charges that have not been subject to testing by the accused person is a dangerous business.

The informers who made the charges resulting in my internment, were not speaking under oath when they gave their evidence against me. Consequently, their lies blossomed.

As in Yugoslavia, where I had languished in the "re-education" camp because of trumped-up denunciations by despicable people, I was placed in Canadian mental hospitals because of information which was never questioned despite my protests. Despite the fact there were many indications that the informers were blatant liars.

Informers of an alleged mental patient, like witnesses in our courts, must be available for cross-examination and challenge. Cross-examination, it has been said, is the greatest engine for the discovery of truth.

Dr. Dorion used to tell me "this is not a trial", when I insisted on confronting the informants and verifying their information. "We do not have to find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If we see smoke, we may conclude that there is fire." But the criteria used to determine whether there is "fire" is very important. Besides, smoke is not always proof that there is fire.

A mental hospital is not a court, and psychiatrists do not have to follow stringent court procedures, but they do have professional psychiatric standards to uphold. When they act properly patients are protected from abuse. Proper conclusions are not always made in psychiatry. This fact leads some psychiatric critics such as Dr. Szasz to oppose involuntary commitment. Dr. Stewart Page wrote:

These critics maintain that mental involuntary hospitalization is a moral crime against humanity. They maintain that, since mental patients usually have broken no laws, there should be no involuntary mental hospitalization via civil commitment procedures -- especially since most commitment laws at present do not extend 'due process of law' to the committed person, i.e., he is provided with no means of legal recourse at the onset of commitment so that he may question and protest his impending loss of liberty. In contrast to the traditional, medically-oriented view that committed persons are mentally sick and thus need to be confined in order to receive necessary care and treatment, critics point in various ways to the essentially powerless position of the committed person in the midst of this process. ²²

In reality, the interned mental patients are in a much worse situation than criminals. The Law Reform Commission of Canada stressed this very fact.²³

Psychiatrists themselves should work to ameliorate the situation. Ethical codes oblige them to protect their patients. If they profess to be physicians and society accepts them as such, they are obliged by virtue of their profession -- by law and by the Hippocratic Oath they took -- to care, first and foremost, about their patients and protect them from unwarranted and harmful incrimination. Thus, they should spare their patients from unnecessary suffering.

Psychiatrists, given their nebulous area of practice, should be all the more wary in making proper examinations and important judgments about an individual's destiny on the basis of one-sided evidence.

A system that operates on secret charges is an invitation to grudge and smear. It allows those with malicious motives to destroy a person's life. It permits even well-intentioned but inaccurate information to be destructive, as Mrs. Castonguay's words were in my case.

Reliance on untested accusations evokes the nastiest periods in history. During the Spanish Inquisition, Stalin's terror in USSR, Hitler's Third Reich in Germany and the Anti-Communism era in U.S.A., many perished or suffered severely in proceedings without even knowing the names of their accusers, as had happened exactly in my case!

Those evil days may sound like ancient history. But my case proves that the destruction of innocent people by uncorroborated and unscrupulous charges still goes on.

In general, the role of psychiatrists in such controversial decisions as the involuntary hospitalization has been seriously questioned by many writers. On the back cover of Dr. Torrey's The Death of Psychiatry, under the heading of "Are Psychiatrists Gods ... Or Are They Frauds?" David L. Bazelon, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, writes:

-... Psychiatrists will continue to serve as little more than janitors -- sweeping up as debris into human warehouses those whom society has so callously and cruelly neglected. Torrey blows the whistle on this charade. The Death of Psychiatry provokes, outrages, entertains -- always informs, never bores -- and deserves a wide readership.²⁴

At the present stage of psychiatry the psychiatrists are unable to make as thorough diagnoses and prognoses, as do physicians in other branches of medicine. To avoid "human" mistakes, in the cases of mental patients, even more so than in those of "normal" offenders in criminal courts, it is imperative to proceed with all legal and medical steps before somebody is pronounced "mentally ill".

Furthermore, in psychiatric cases, I suggest that strict protection be ensured, so that no psychiatrists, lawyers or judges, could abuse the patients. Today, tape recorders and video cameras should be used to monitor psychiatrists, mental patients, hospital staff and informers.

Further, psychiatrists should use lie detectors during "consultations" with the persons known to the patient. And, they should be reminded, as in the courts, to say "only the truth, and nothing but the truth". As we know, some unscrupulous relatives intentionally misinform the psychiatrists in order to harm the patient or to benefit from the patient's status as mentally ill (this situation occurs most frequently in cases concerning inheritance). It would be appropriate to remind the informers that they will be held responsible for false information.

Did it occur to anyone that "mental patients" are longing for a similar degree of legal protection given to the criminals? Most "mental patients" are not violators of the criminal law, but they could be, in a single stroke, automatically deprived of the right to be called human beings by some semi-literate or corrupt psychiatrists who are in a position to impute to their patients whatever they wish.

If video cameras were used in hospital and videotaped examinations were accepted as evidence in courts, I am sure that the psychiatrists would think twice before incarcerating someone as they did with me and the courts would be unable to cover up for unscrupulous psychiatrists.

The honest and intelligent psychiatrists, if they exist, do not need any cameras. Moreover, they are in a much better position than the lawyers to protect patients from unwarranted incrimination, since they could, without delay, in a very simple and effective way verify the accuracy of the allegations by the persons involved in the internment of the patient. Lawyers are often limited by the legal procedures when protecting their clients (i.e. subpoenas for involved persons within the time prescribed by law, and arranging dates for examination which are acceptable to all parties).

In my case, the psychiatrists, Drs. Grenier and Dufour, not only failed to verify the imputations made by my wife and her friends, they went even further by lying and inventing non-existing events. In addition, instead of substantiating his colleagues' Commitment Certificate (which I contested as false) and verifying my wife's and the other informants' allegations, the third psychiatrist, Dr. Dorion went on writing records which did not make sense. He was directed by others (Dr. Dionne, my wife and her friends²⁵), and hence was unable to make a proper independent assessment.

Later when I was transferred to Montreal, my wife suggested to Dr. Juretic that I was still "dangerous", although she had not seen me for at least three months. He, like Dr. Dorion, accepted her words and postponed my release.

In short, on the basis of nauseous insinuations the psychiatrists imposed unspeakable physical and mental pressure upon me which was intended to coerce me into admitting that I was sick.

It was easy to see that all the informers were lying, especially my wife. My wife was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of L'Enfant Jésus Hospital, which was located next to St. Michel Archange Hospital, where I was interned. Psychiatrists could have obtained more information from the L'Enfant Jésus Hospital about my wife's mental state and her reliability.

With respect to the allegation that I wanted "to kill" my children, it would have been easy for the psychiatrists to investigate the matter by simply asking my children about it.

It would also have been easy to find out whether Dr. Dionne had ever been my neighbour or whether the Lyonnais' were my landlords at the time of my internment. The results of these verifications would have led any reasonable person to conclude that the story of my "mental illness" was the product of mentally sick and morally dissolute people.

Subsequently, these informers stated in court under oath that they had "forgotten" what they said earlier during my hospitalization. For example, Mrs. Lyonnais disavowed her statement to Mr. Yvon Gervais, a social worker of St. Michel Archange Hospital, and even denied having seen any hospital representative. Yet Mr. Gervais testified in the court that he had interviewed her in person and recorded the information word by word (mot à mot). Obviously, she had blatantly lied.

Mr. Louis Marceau, Protector of Citizens of Quebec²⁶. There were others who were involved when I sought redress. One of them was Mr. Louis Marceau, who further aggravated my situation. These people instead of acting properly and humanely to protect me from evil people, preferred to join the othersin destroying me as a human being and a professional, having probably thought: "To hell with an immigrant! Better take care of our people, the psychiatrists, even though they are crooks!" These people were exploited by the unscrupulous psychiatrists. More about Mr. Marceau read Chapter IX: The Legal Juggernaut following my Illegal Internment.

Mrs. Jeanne Castonguay. The scoundrels even exploited Mrs. J. Castonguay, a respectable but senile old lady. Mrs. Castonguay was the mother of Claude Castonguay, provincial Minister of Health and Welfare at the time. This lady was manipulated to "press" for my hospitalization. However, she was not able to give any information on my mental state for the simple reason that for the three months before my hospitalization I was far away from her.

While my in-laws supported me during my internment and thereafter, the same cannot be said of my brother. Before he arrived in Quebec City I was told that my discharge from the hospital was pending. When he did come to see me briefly after his arrival, I asked him to help expedite my release by obtaining a quick approval from my wife. When I phoned him a few hours later, I was shocked at his refusal to talk to me. Not only did he fail to give me moral support but he also forbade my children to visit me.

I suspected that my brother and my wife may have been in an unacceptable relationship and plotted my internment. In a desperate attempt to find out whether my suspicions were justified I asked my son Slobodan to check his mother's handbag for any letters and bring them to me. The letters which he brought during his next visit showed that my suspicions were unerring. My wife and brother had been involved in secret correspondence prior to my internment. According to the letters, my brother had been planning to bring my wife and children back to Yugoslavia, so that they could live together.

Later I read in the medical records that seven days after my incarceration, my wife was contemplating returning to Yugoslavia. During my brother's stay in Canada, she "very seriously" considered going back. Ultimately, she fooled my brother, too, when she "decided to stay in Quebec".

After my internment I went to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to visit my sisters and brother. Three of my sisters and my brother would not see me, while my other two sisters came to bring me a rosary to pray to God to help me. My plan was to confront my brother in front of my sisters and to show them that I was all right, but obviously this was not possible.

As for my sisters' prejudice, it is not as irrational as it seems. First, I believe that my wife wrote to them, while she was plotting to intern me, possibly even in Yugoslavia, advising them that something was "wrong" with me. By achieving her evil plan to commit me, she became credible in the eyes of my sisters. They could not believe that Canadian "doctors" might make mistakes or be corrupt. My brother's attitude towards my internment contributed even more to their opinion that I was really sick.

Moreover, before I was transferred to Montreal, I wrote to them that my internment was a mistake because of my poor French, and that my friend and psychiatrist Dr. Filippo Juretic would clarify my situation and free me immediately. Unfortunately Dr. Juretic, extended my stay in the hospital for additional three months. In one letter to my sisters he wrote, not about an error, but of "improving" my mental state.

After my discharge, I wrote to my sisters that Dr. Divic would write to them to tell them that I was not ill. Dr. Divic, in spite of my requests, did nothing. Therefore, they had many indications that I was hospitalized for a reason and they believed that my words were the words of a mental patient.

Finally, my sisters were convinced that something was "wrong" with me because of my new attitude towards my brother after his arrival in Quebec. They wondered how I could accuse my brother of hospitalizing me when I had regarded him as a saint before!

Dr. Littmann wrote a lukewarm letter to my sisters on my behalf in order to convince them to change their attitude towards me. They responded by thanking him for "taking care" of me. In other words, they were firmly convinced that I was sick. The prejudice towards someone once labelled as mentally sick is so immense that even a psychiatrist would find it difficult to eliminate.

It is understood that psychiatrists' duty is not only to take care of patients, during their hospitalization, but also during post-hospitalization supervision and rehabilitation: to help the patient adapt to the social environment. Because of the nature of most mental disorders, patients' relations with their relatives, friends and co-workers are often disturbed.

If I was really sick, the psychiatrists should have done everything -- during my hospitalization and afterwards -- to help me re-establish my social relations. They did not even try to do this. Thus, I concluded that I had been kept in mental hospitals just for the sake of my ex-wife's pleasure.

After my internment, there were people of good will, able to help me, but who had not known what was happening before and during my incarceration and afterwards in court. Whomever I contacted and asked for help after my hospitalization, after initial enthusiasm and readiness to help me they would unpredictably and without giving me any explanation withdraw from the case. I presume, they consulted, Dr. Josif Divic, who gave them an unfavourable opinion about my case.²⁷ In this category I include Dr. Morton Shulman, MPP of my constituency at the time, A. Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Robert Cooper, Ombudsman of the CBC, Judge Garry Seniuk, who was at that time chief of The Globe and Mail city desk, Senator Dr. Stanley Haydasz, Ed Ziemba, former MPP, and Jesse Flis, present MP²⁸. None of them gave me a reason for not assisting with my case. I believe that this writing will induce some of them to talk about their positions at the time when their help was needed.