MONTREAL - A group of Duplessis orphans wants to find out what happened to possibly hundreds of children who are buried in an east-end cemetery.

'They had the best people in the world. They had people that were unknown to anybody and nobody was asking any questions.'

The children were orphans in the Duplessis era as well.

The group suspects the orphans may have been subjects of medical experiments before being buried in unmarked graves, and they want the bodies to be exhumed.

Rod Vienneau, who is married to one of the orphans, thinks that dozens, possibly hundreds of innocent children suffered at the hands of various doctors.

The children were interned in church-run institutions from the 1930s to 1950s after being abandoned by their parents. Many were labelled psychiatric patients.

Vienneau believes doctors performed lobotomies and other experimental surgeries on the children he calls "human guinea pigs."

"They had the best people in the world. They had people that were unknown to anybody and nobody was asking any questions," Vienneau says.

Vienneau suspects the nuns sold dead bodies to universities for medical studies, and he claims they were returned and buried unceremoniously in unmarked graves.

The graveyard is between Hochelaga and Notre Dame streets, south of the Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital. It was closed in 1958 and is now on the grounds of a building belonging to the Société des Alcools du Québec, Quebec's liquor board.

The surviving orphans have hired lawyer Daniel Lighter, who is preparing a motion to ask the court for permission to have the bodies exhumed for forensic examination.

"The allegation would be that those bodies would demonstrate...or the forensics will confirm the experimentation that was done by doctors during the course of those years," Lighter says.

Lighter says the evidence from the grave site would serve as the basis for a claim for compensation for the relatives of those who died, and for some of the orphans who are still alive.

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