Student-on-student abuse in residential schools an ‘unspoken truth’: Sinclair
OTTAWA The former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls “student-onstudent” abuse one untold story of Canada’s residential school legacy — an issue he says is linked to persistent sexual abuse and discrimination against LGBTQ individuals and “twospirited” indigenous people.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, appointed to the upper chamber in 2016 the year after his commission delivered its final report, described the physical and sexual abuse among residential school students as a means for young people to inflict violence.
Sex was often used as a tool of violence between the school’s students, resulting in an intergenerational legacy of trauma that continues to haunt families to this day.
“These are perpetrators who brought to that relationship of violence a belief that people who were like that were not worthy of respect,” Sinclair said in an interview.
“As adults, they still carry that belief with them.”
Sinclair said he heard about older students abusing their younger counterparts — male and female alike — both physically and sexually.
“Part of that can be attributed to that fact that’s how they were abused, and that’s how they were treated by ... the adults within the schools that they went to.”
Many former victims who haven’t come terms with their abuse go on to mistreat their own children, he added.
“Many people didn’t want to talk to (the commission) about student-on-student abuse because they were often still living in the community with their abuser,” he said.
“They were often still in a position where their abuser was now a person of prominence in their community, a leader, an elected leader or an elder.”