TORONTO -- Treatment of a group of psychiatric patients detained at an Ontario facility decades ago amounted to torture that resembled the experimentation Nazis performed on Jews, the opening of a civil trial heard on Monday.

More than two dozen inmates of what was the maximum security Oak Ridge facility in Penetanguishene, Ont., are suing the province and two doctors for $25 million in various damages.

Among other things, they allege that between 1965 and 1983, they were made to take mind-altering drugs, forcibly restrained or isolated, and confined nude and handcuffed to other men in the "capsule" -- a tiny windowless, soundproof room that was always lit.

They claim the treatment breached their rights and left them with severe and lasting psychological damage.

"Can I have a healthy relationship today? No," Danny Joanisse, 62, of Niagara Falls, Ont., testified as the first witness.

Joanisse was sent to Oak Ridge from the St. John's training school north of Toronto, where he claims he was sexually abused. The deeply troubled youth arrived at the psychiatric facility on the day before he turned 15 years old, court heard.

He testified he never consented to any treatment, which included solitary confinement, time in the capsule, and injections of various drugs.

"It was very brutal," Joanisse said.

In his opening statement, lawyer Joel Rochon told Superior Court Justice Ed Morgan that the boys and young men sent to Oak Ridge needed care, but the psychiatrists in charge of the special therapy unit -- Elliott Barker and Gary Maier -- failed to deliver.

Instead, he alleged, they violated their patients' basic human rights in defiance of international protocols. The evidence, Rochon said, is uncontested that there was no established scientific foundation for the "reckless human experimentation" visited upon the hapless patients.

The government and doctors deny wrongdoing, saying the treatment was in line with medical science of the day.

"A really important part of the case is the context in which the treatment occurred," Ontario lawyer Sara Blake said in her opening comments. "The purpose of treatment is to make these people safe ΓÇª to change them, so they can safely be released into the community."

Blake painted a more benign environment into which dangerous offenders were placed. The programs were designed to help patients get in touch with their innermost feelings, she said. Not only did patients give consent, they helped plan their own treatment, she said.

"It was group therapy. It was not novel therapy," Blake said. "It was intense. But then again, they had lots of breaks."

Regardless, the plaintiffs say, Barker's approach was to create a psychologically coercive environment to break down their personalities. Strapped for resources, the doctors frequently used other patients to exert pressure on others, they say.

The plaintiffs say they were subjected to solitary confinement and sensory and sleep deprivation. They were stripped naked in front of others and given powerful hallucinogenics drugs such as LSD, they claim. They were also tied up for long periods in painful stress positions, or had to sit quietly and motionless on a concrete floor for hours, they allege.

Barker, Rochon said, knew society would be "repulsed" by his methods, but believed he was justified because he was dealing with "throwaway people" society had rejected.

Given their circumstances, the inmates could not have legally consented to what was done to them, the lawyer said.

"The patients were absolutely dependent on the doctors and staff of Oak Ridge for their release," Rochon said. "There was no exit unless they did exactly what the doctors wanted."

The civil trial, almost 20 years in the making, is expected to last at least six weeks and hear from most of the patients -- some have died -- and expert witnesses.

One proposed witness is Brig.-Gen. Stephen Xenakis, an American military psychiatrist who evaluated former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Canadian Omar Khadr. Xenakis is of the opinion that what happened at Oak Ridge was similar to the abusive treatment meted out to the inmates at the U.S. prison in Cuba to extract information, court heard.