Children victimized in residential schools

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Ed Yorke has something to celebrate. The former residential school student has found great relief in a report which describes the abuses Native children endured while attending government sanctioned boarding schools.

The 200-page report by psychologist Wilma Spearchief and Louise Million is further proof he is not alone in his fight to see the federal government acknowledge its role in the systematic mistreatment of Indian children in its care, he said. It was mistreatment Yorke believes ruined his life.

Breaking the Silence tells the personal stories of victims of the Residential School Program which operated for the mid 1800s into the 1970s. The tales told include dark memories of sexual abuses, severe beatings, and other mistreatment at the hands of the religious and lay staff at the schools.

But Yorke doesn't have to read the report to understand its contents. He's been there.

Yorke was born in 1941 in British Columbia and lived in a discordant family. His father was abusive and his mother seemed powerless against his assaults, Yorke claims in a law suit brought against the Ministry of Social Services and Housing in B.C. and various individuals, including former premier Williiam Van der Zalm.

In an effort to protect her son, Yorke's mother surrendered him to B.C. social services and Yorke was made a ward of the Superintendent of Child Welfare in 1953. Little did his mother know what abuses would be in store for her son in the 'care and protection' of the province.

Yorke was 'institutionalized', deemed "too damaged to be recoverable", and was placed into the Boy's Industrial School of Coquitlam, B.C. He was later transferred to

the Brannon Lake School for Boys where, he said, the children were "preyed upon by pedophiles masquerading as provincial civil servants."

Yorke began his stay at Brannon Lake when he was 13 years old and stayed until he was 18. He said he witnessed small boys coerced into sex by adults and was sexually abused himself by supervisors at the school.

The sexual abuse at the hands of a married couple of civil servants began when he was 17. Yorke said the husband watched while he was forced to have sex with the wife. The couple threatened to have him charged with rape if he were to disclose any of their activities, York said.

He feared being sent to a B.C. penitentiary if any staff complained he was not being co-operative. He was told "all the inmates would take turns buggering him."

Yorke was a troubled child at best and did gravitate toward lawlessness. His first arrest came for stealing half-rotten food out of garbage cans at a retailer's in Vancouver, B.C. Next arrest was for running away from foster homes and joy-riding. He has since received pardons for these youthful crimes, he said.

But in 1956, when York was 14, he was involved in what he describes as an accidental death. A judge found him not guilty of any criminal offence, but he claims he was labeled a murder from that point on in his life.

Yorke alleges many children at the school, including himself, were drugged by workers to obtain information and confessions for a variety of crimes.

Yorke also complains school authorities conducted experimental psychiatric treatment on him and other children in order to obtain specific government funding.

He accuses government, officials and RCMP of knowing about the abuses and turning their backs on it. Yorke said they knew at least as early as 1978 when, while working at the Caribou Student Residential School at Vanderhoof, B.C. he reported the sexual assault of two girls at the hands of a fellow worker.

Yorke maintains the police and government officials failed to take action against the offender and chose to censure the whistle-blower.

Yorke said the province fired him for breach of his oath of office taken by all civil servants in B.C. to prevent the disclosure of the magnitude of the abuse of children in the schools.

The case is currently before the courts, and Van der alm has recently filed a statement of defense saying he has no knowledge of the events in the suit brought against him.

With the release of Breaking the Silence, Yorke believes more fuel has been added to the fire that drives Yorke's fight for acknowledgment and compensation.

"They can't look at me now like I just stepped out of a spaceship," Yorke said.