`I WAS REDUCED TO A LAB RAT'

Ex-inmate Dorothy Proctor says she was used in LSD experiments. Federal
documents appear to corroborate her claim, Mike Blanchfield writes.

His voice pierced the darkness. ``Dorothy,'' the psychologist said,
``There's a new medicine out and I would like you to take it because it
might help you, so that you don't ever have to come back to The Hole, so
that you can calm down and get through your period with us.''

This was the basement of the federal prison in Kingston, the area staff
referred to as ``segregation'' or ``disassociation.'' To inmates, it was
``The Hole.''

In this five-by-eight-foot, windowless cell lit by a single bulb, reeking
from a plugged toilet, Dorothy Proctor was about to have her first
experience with a powerful hallucinogenic drug called lysergic acid
diethylamide, or LSD-25. It was some time in 1961, several years before the
drug became part of the '60s counterculture, eight years before it was
illegal in Canada.

Ms. Proctor remembers taking five blue pills, 200 milligrams of LSD. It
was, she recalls, a very bad trip.

``The ceiling and the floor started meeting each other,'' she says. ``The
walls started to melt. The bars became snakes and started coming at me
I
remember dry screaming -- screaming but nothing coming out -- no one there
to help me, things all over my body.''

The details of that first exposure are seared into Ms. Proctor's brain. ``I
was reduced to a lab rat,'' she says, ``a monkey in a cage.''

She says the effects of those LSD treatments continue to haunt her today.
Ms. Proctor, now a long-recovered drug addict, says she is still plagued by
flashbacks. According to a Corrections Canada report, her symptoms are
consistent with a recognized psychiatric disorder -Post-Hallucinogen
Perceptual Disorder (PHPD) -- that was identified in the late 1950s.

She must fold her arms across herself or clasp her hands together in order
to sleep; she avoids her reflection in mirrors, store windows or pools of
water so she won't feel like she is being sucked into them; she imagines
her skin bubbling and oozing if she looks at it too long. The LSD
experiment whetted her appetite for other drugs, she contends, contributing
to her becoming a cocaine and heroin addict after she was released.

She complained in 1996 to Corrections Canada, which investigated and
corroborated her story last year. The department recommended she receive
compensation and an apology. The federal government has yet to respond. It
referred the matter to a Montreal research institute for further
consultation.

Tired of waiting, Ms. Proctor launched a $5-million lawsuit earlier this
month against the government and the men who gave her LSD while she was in
prison. The defendants in the case have yet to issue a statement of
defence.

Ms. Proctor's experience sounds like a storyline from television's The
X-Files. However, the government's files corroborate many of her claims.
For decades, those documents gathered dust. They were re-opened last year
by a board of inquiry from Corrections Canada, which was investigating Ms.
Proctor's complaint.

Those files provide a glimpse into an era when bureaucrats, psychiatrists
and prison wardens viewed LSD as a magic pill to cure criminal behaviour, a
drug that could break down criminals' defences so their personality could
be rebuilt, moulding them into respectable citizens.

``If you told this story to the typical Canadian citizen, I don't think
they would have believed it happened,'' says Ms. Proctor's lawyer, James
Newland, who has examined more than 300 pages of government files
pertaining to his client. ``People are now aware that it did happen, and
their government did this.''

To him, the inference in her file is clear: Prison officials, with the full
knowledge of senior federal bureaucrats, were determined at all costs to
test a dangerous drug on a defiant teenager, who had embarrassed the system
by escaping the penitentiary and who openly defied authority every chance
she got.

During an investigation last year, Corrections Canada found evidence in its
files of an LSD experiment involving 23 inmates, including Dorothy, at the
Prison for Women in the early '60s. Corrections tracked down one of the
women, and said the story she told had ``an almost unbelievable similarity
in terms of anecdotal reports'' to the harrowing tale recounted by Ms.
Proctor.

``When I was locked with chain and padlock in my cell after one of my LSD
treatments, I can remember slashing my left arm, and when it was bleeding,
little tiny black things crawled out of my arm and floated with the blood.
These were spiders. After the bleeding stopped, my arm stopped crying and
howling and it wasn't swollen any more.

``That first night I couldn't remember how the spiders got in my body and
some time in the middle of the night it came to me
Spider semen crawled
up my legs and into my vagina and some crawled up my body and entered
through both ears. That night I wadded up toilet paper and `plugged' my
vagina, anus and ears. I never slept.''

Corrections investigators concluded that officials tried to explain the
experiment to Ms. Proctor and obtain verbal consent. But they could find no
written consent forms. Even if they had, the investigators concluded an
inmate in solitary confinement could never give informed consent. (Written
consent forms did not become a necessity until the 1970s.)

As Ms. Proctor told Corrections Canada investigators last year, ``I'm
assuming because of my circumstances and my environment I probably would
have said, `Yes' to anything.''

Dorothy Proctor entered the Kingston Prison for Women in 1960 as one of
society's castoffs. At 17, she was facing a three-year robbery sentence,
her first conviction as an adult.

She was the product of a broken home and a life on the streets. Her mother
abandoned her shortly after her birth in Glace Bay, N.S. She was raised by
grandparents and various relatives. She was sexually abused as a girl. Her
teenage years were lived on the run, across Canada and parts of the U.S.
She was reunited with her mother in the late 1950s. A juvenile court judge
had ordered her to be sent to her mother, who lived in East Coulee, a small
town in the heart of Alberta's Badlands. Dorothy took off again in 1959,
bored with her rural surroundings and feeling ostracized from other
children in the community because of her mixed-race background. Her mother
was white and her birth father -- no longer in the picture -- was black.

She linked up with a couple of other young people. Their run ended in
Chatham, Ont. in early 1960, when they were convicted of stealing a car.
Dorothy received three years in Canada's only federal penitentiary for
women.

She arrived in prison with an air of self-assuredness and ``sophistication
beyond her 17 years,'' wrote a prison social worker.

She moved gracefully and had an expressive way of talking with her hands.
``Dorothy is a striking looking girl of mixed origin. She has light
coffee-colored skin, very dark eyes and black wavy hair,'' the social
worker wrote.

All of that hid a ``lonely child who craves affection,'' the social worker
remarked.

Dorothy adapted poorly to prison life. She fought occasionally with other
inmates, smashed small items a couple of times, and once she tried to slash
her left wrist. Usually, she simply refused to get out of bed in the
morning, for which she was routinely written up on for ``offending against
good order and discipline.''

On July 24, 1960, Dorothy became the first inmate to escape the Prison for
Women. She had rolled up towels and an extra pillow under her covers and
hid until dark at the back of softball diamond.

She scaled the 10-metre wall -- a combination of stone, chain link and
barbed wire -- using a bench from the the park and a blanket from her cell.

By September, she had criss-crossed the country again, winding up back in
East Coulee. After three months as a fugitive, she was arrested again when
her mother called the Mounties.

Her defiant behaviour behind bars continued. She smashed a broom handle on
a matron's knuckles. She refused to get out of bed.

Dorothy's lawyer believes Corrections officials selected her for the LSD
experiment because they found her an embarrassment to the system.

Her prison break earned national headlines, and she openly defied the
warden in front of her guards, says Mr. Newland.

On Feb. 24, 1961, Dorothy was summoned to the office of Supt. Isabel
Macneill. She refused to get up. Three male guards were sent from the men's
penitentiary to get her. She broke free in the prison laundry room. Dorothy
flung an iron, narrowly missing a guard's head. Supt. Macneill arrived just
in time to hear ``abusive and indecent language.''

Within months, Dorothy received her first dose of LSD in solitary confinement.

At the time, the drug was legal, but unknown outside mental health circles.
It was touted as a shortcut through the often long and difficult
psychotherapy process. By 1962, more than 1,000 research papers had been
published on its therapeutic and experimental effects. However, the method
was soon discredited, and the drug was outlawed in Canada in 1969.

One month before the fight in the laundry room, Dorothy sat in the office
of Dr. George Scott, the prison's head of psychiatry and a respected prison
physician.

Dr. Scott prided himself on being on the vanguard of psychiatric
developments. When a new drug like LSD came along, he believed it was the
responsibility of scientists such as himself to test it. In the post-war
years, Dr. Scott felt driven to test new therapies. Though some of these
approaches have been criticized, Dr. Scott stands by them today.

In a recent interview, he enthusiastically recalls how he became a convert
to electro-shock therapy in the 1950s.

``The man who pioneered shock treatment was actually the man in charge of a
hospital for epileptics. He noticed that when epileptics had a fit they
were lucid for maybe two or three days. He got thinking about it. He tried
finding a drug that he could inject that would produce a fit
He found the
patients improved themselves.''

Dr. Scott does not remember Dorothy Proctor. He estimates he has seen tens
of thousands of patients since then. (Dr. Scott was stripped of his license
to practice medicine by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons in
August 1995 after pleading guilty to having sex with a
patient.)

However, as government files show, Dr. Scott was clearly excited about the
possibility of treating Dorothy in the early 1960s. He saw her during ``an
extremely interesting orientation interview,'' according to a Feb. 3, 1961,
report he wrote. Dr. Scott said he wanted to see Dorothy ``on a fairly
intense (basis)'' over the following three to four months.

``I feel it will be of great psychological significance to see how she
attempts to handle the therapeutic relationship,'' Dr. Scott wrote.

He tried to convince her to enter into ``treatment'' with him, but Dorothy
was reluctant. Dr. Scott's report doesn't specify the treatment he had
offered.

He again urged Dorothy to take therapy, according to his report dated May
16, 1961.

``She inquired what `therapy' meant,'' Dr. Scott wrote. ``This was
explained to her and it was pointed out that the therapeutic situation was
designed to develop some understanding within herself of her own weak
points.''

Again, Dr. Scott's report does not specify the nature of the therapy being
recommended.

Again, he noted, ``this case is extremely interesting from the therapeutic
point of view, in that it will entail a fairly intense therapeutic
relationship over a period of months.''

In his June 6, 1961, report, Dr. Scott noted that Dorothy was ``mystified
that interest has been taken in her from a psychiatric point of view, and
while she is pleasant and co-operative, does not really `need this type of
treatment' in her opinion.'' Again, ``treatment'' is never defined in Dr.
Scott's report.

In July 1961, Dorothy escaped for the second time, but was quickly
re-arrested. In August 1961, she was sent to The Hole.

Supt. Macneill personally outlined the reasons in a letter to Dorothy dated
Aug. 17, 1961: refusal to work in the sewing room; refusal to wear proper
clothing at meals; ``insolence and threatening talk'' to a
prison staffer; defying Supt. Macneill herself on one particular occasion.

She told Dorothy her attitude was deplorable and that any attempt to gain
parole would be ``futile unless supported by recommendations from this
institution.''

Supt. Macneill continued: ``You will have very few privileges at present --
if you co-operate 100 per cent you will get privileges gradually, but you
must never again think you can get away with flaunting (sic) authority.''

It was then that Dorothy was administered LSD for the first time.

Last year's Corrections report concluded solitary confinement ``was not a
venue suited to the administration of LSD.''

There is another interesting aspect to this trip to The Hole -there's no
official mention of it in Dorothy's conduct file.

Dorothy's ``Conduct Sheet'' is part of her official government file. The
five-page document lists 20 offences from April 26, 1960 to Sept. 4, 1962
- -- everything from failing to get out of bed to fighting to damaging
property, including the Feb. 24, 1961, laundry room incident where she
threw the iron and swore at Miss Macneill. The penalties are also
well-documented, including token fines, reduced meal privileges, and trips
to The Hole -- including her first sentence, seven days beginning June 27,
1960.

The record shows a gap between the laundry room incident and another
incident on Jan. 23, 1962, in which Dorothy was fined $5 for smashing a
radio. According to the Conduct Sheet, the August 1961 trip to The Hole
never happened.

However, officials in Ottawa were well aware of it.

On Oct. 23, 1961, Mark Eveson, a psychologist who was also working with
Dorothy (and who is one of the defendants in the current lawsuit), wrote a
two-page letter to the physician in charge of penitentiary medical services
with the federal Department of Justice.

Of Dorothy's bad acid trip, it said only that it ``produced no change in
the behaviour, and
we felt that either the initial dose was too heavy to
induce anxiety and recall, or, that this drug was unsuccessful with this
kind of personality usually termed psychopathic.''

To that date, none of Dr. Scott's reports offered any diagnosis that
concrete. Until then, no one had labelled Dorothy a psychopath.

Mr. Eveson concluded Dorothy had undergone ``a remarkable change in
behaviour'' as a result of LSD. All her ``excessive violence'' had
disappeared. ``She is now working well and is no longer a behaviour problem
in the institution, and I feel that treatment has been highly successful.''

His conclusion was premature. Three months later, Dorothy smashed a radio;
in March 1962, she attacked a guard and got 10 days in The Hole; the
following month she attacked Supt. Macneill with a crutch when a kitten was
taken away from her -- an attack for which she was sentenced to another
week in solitary.

In a Nov. 6, 1962 letter to Supt. Macneill, Mr. Eveson concluded: ``I do
not think this young person is suitable for parole.'' He made no mention of
the LSD treatments a year earlier.

Today, Dorothy Proctor lives a quiet life, in an undisclosed part of
Canada. It is a modest life lived in fear and anonymity.

After she got out of prison in 1963, she got hooked on cocaine, heroin and
soft drugs. She cavorted with high-level crime figures on the eastern
seaboard. She had the furs and the fine food, and then she lost it all. In
the early 1970s, she was down and out on Skid Row in Vancouver. That's when
the RCMP recruited her to work as an undercover agent.

For the next two decades, she used her street smarts to infiltrate criminal
drug organizations across Canada gathering intelligence for police. She has
worked in Ottawa, where she has helped lead police to top-level drug
dealers. She has plenty of enemies, many of whom want to see her dead. She
won't allow herself to be photographed, and she won't divulge where she
lives.

In the late '80s, clinging to her Catholic faith for support, she beat her
drug habit and has been clean since. She no longer works with police.

Two years ago, she launched two complaints through the Solicitor General of
Canada. The first was against the RCMP, alleging they'd breached their own
code of conduct for using her as a sexual plaything during her 20 years
working for them.

The Mounties, as is their practice, investigated her complaint internally.
They sent her a terse two-page letter dismissing it. They told her their
records showed the officers in question were never alone with her at any
time. The complaint centred on an Ottawa-area narcotics officer with whom
she worked between November 1982 and March 1983. The RCMP turned the tables
and accused her of making sexual advances to police.

``These independent witnesses were interviewed and without going into any
specifics it is evident from their responses that your sexual advances
towards them
were neither appreciated nor accepted,'' says a letter sent
to her earlier this year.

Dorothy isn't surprised. She calls the Mounties ``schoolboys'' who circle
their wagons and cover each other when trouble strikes one of their rank.

``I just wanted to rattle their cage and let them know I remember what they
did to me,'' she says.

Her other complaint centred on the LSD experiment. This time, investigators
found a paper trail that appeared to support her allegations.

The files don't dispute that Dorothy was one of about two dozen women to
receive LSD while inmates in the early '60s. The government has shelved its
first report -- the one completed last year by the Corrections board of
inquiry that recommended compensation -- in favour of further study by the
McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law. It recently received an
extension on its May reporting deadline.

This time, Dorothy is getting support from outside the government. The
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the B'Nai Brith League
for Human Rights have joined her fight against the government.

They both say the government should stop stalling and compensate her. In
the long run, they say it would be cheaper for taxpayers than a long legal
battle. Kim Pate, executive director of Elizabeth Fry, says the
government's reluctance to address the LSD issue is indicative of deep
disregard for women's penal issues.

She says little has changed since a royal commission investigated the
outbreak of violence at the Prison for Women in 1994, when male riot guards
strip-searched female inmates. In her findings, Justice Louise Arbour, then
of the Ontario Court of Appeal, concluded the women's prison system
``operates with virtually no public scrutiny or accountability.''

Dorothy Proctor realizes most Canadians have little sympathy for the
travails of an ex-inmate. But she believes they ought to have some concern
about how their government wields power.

``In my opinion, the ultimate abuse is when the government abuses you,''
she says. ``What they said to me is, `You are worthless, you are a piece of
trash and we can use you anyway we want.'

``I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. I've already forgiven them. The only thing
I feel is betrayal.''

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)