Monday, February 25, 2008
SEXUAL ABUSE AT AN INDIAN SCHOOL
I've been skipping over the sexual abuse stories that keep appearing in the headlines, but this one is especially awful, so I decided to blog it.
For years, Joe Courtoreille refused to go into St. Albert.
"I just couldn't come through on that road," he says. "Too many bad memories. I'd always have to go around."
Just thinking about the nine years he spent "imprisoned" at St. Albert's Indian Residential School used to anger Courtoreille.
"It was awful," he says, "just like jail."
He checks himself, then adds: "No. Jail is more better."
Courtoreille says the children were virtual slaves in the service of the Catholic Church and sexual playthings for the school's staff.
Once, as a young teenager, he was forced by a nun to masturbate her with a bottle.
When he was nine, a priest ordered Courtoreille into his private room and made the boy perform sexual acts on him. If he refused, the priest warned, he'd beat him.
Keep on reading...
