Little Angels and Tiny Toddlers... Ontario's shame, our collective shame

The dormitory and hallways stank of excrement, children went to the toilet and showered in the open, exposed to everyone, once showered they were given clothes by a staff person from a locked room.  These children had nothing, not the clothes on their backs nor underwear they wore each day.

It was the Huronia Regional Centre in the 1970's. Originally named the Orillia Asylum for Idiots. Thousands of children were sent here, conditions so unsanitary, any child who was admitted would be exposed to Hepatitis, parasites and other infectious diseases, and the Ontario government knew this.

The Ontario Government is forcing these people to court to settle their claims against the institution and the government. There is little dispute the harm was done, little dispute people were beaten, abused, humiliated and confined in conditions considered inhumane. Sexually abused, forced to beat up other children.  

The case goes to court September 16th.  Carol Goar of the Toronto Star has called the trial “a day of reckoning”.

You can find out more below, follow the links. I'm hopefull all three Ontario political parties can agree to an apology and settlement. Or must these people relive the horrors in court. Challenged all the way by the Government of Ontario, Our Government. 

From Ontario Newswatch: 

Closed after 133 years in 2009, developmentally handicapped children were housed over the years in what some former residents allege were horrific, Dickensian prison-like conditions. 

Thousands are suing the Ontario government in a massive class action suit that alleges they were systematically sexually, physically and emotionally abused while the Ontario government was exclusively in charge from 1945 to 2004. - 

In 2011 CBC covered the story;

The lawyerKirk Baert: 'How far do you think the government would have gotten in the '50s, '60s and '70s if they had held people convicted of murder by the ankles and dunked them into bathwater full of ice cubes or forced them to scrub floors with toothbrushes or kicked them or punched them.
'If you think about the hierarchy, about where these people stood on the totem pole, they were below convicted felons.'

See also 

CBC Radio One documentary “The Gristle in the Stew”Listen now! Read about the documentary here and some of the incredible comments at the bottom of the article. - See more at: http://www.institutionalsurvivors.com/#sthash.nGPZMvR4.dpuf