For more than a hundred years, Native American children were subjected to brutal sexual abuse by priests and teachers after being forced to live in culture-destroying boarding schools, an investigation has found.
In a systematic effort to eviscerate Native American society, the federal government sent tens of thousands of children to more than 500 boarding schools across America between 1819 and 1969.
Although the measures were intended to confiscate indigenous land and strip generations of Indians of their identity, a study by the WashingtonPost revealed how they also opened the door to sickening sexual abuse.
Deborah Parker, a Tulalip tribal citizen and director of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told the newspaper that the Catholic Church-run Indian boarding schools are now “a national crime scene.”
“They committed crimes under the cloak,” she said. “They did it in the name of God.”
Staggering levels of sexual abuse have been discovered at Native American boarding schools, where tens of thousands of indigenous children were forcibly sent between 1819 and 1969. Pictured: the student group at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1885
The majority of the more than 500 boarding schools were funded by the U.S. government and were essentially designed to strip Native American children of their culture.
To this end, teachers and priests administered punishments, including beating the children if they spoke their native language over English, forcibly cutting their long hair, and humiliating them.
The measures had left deep scars on Indian society, and by 1900 one in five native school-aged children attended the sadistic boarding schools.
But while the campaign remains a national disgrace, the problems went much deeper into the Catholic Church’s eighty-plus boarding schools and its offshoots, exacerbating the dire levels of pedophilia within the organization that have been exposed in recent years. have increased even further.
At least 122 priests and ministers from 22 boarding schools were directly accused of sexually abusing Native American children, according to the Washington Post investigation.
Shockingly, 18 of these schools were found to have employed a credibly accused priest or minister for 91 consecutive years.
The abuse, much of which took place in the final years of the federal boarding program in the 1950s and 1960s, was reportedly perpetrated against more than a thousand children torn from their families.
Clarita Vargas, 64, was left helpless at the age of 8 when she was sent to boarding school before being targeted by a Catholic priest, who she says ‘haunted my whole life’
St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Washington (pictured), where Vargas was sent, was among 80 Catholic Church-run boarding schools that investigations found to be rife with sexual abuse
Isolated and scared, children like Clarita Vargas, now 64, told the newspaper she was left helpless when she was sent to St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Washington, at age 8.
She said a priest led her to his office to watch a movie with other students before groping and molesting her as she sat on his lap.
Vargas said she had nowhere to turn as the sexual abuse continued for three years from then on, and even today says it has “haunted me my whole life.”
“The Church has wounded my spirit, taken my soul and robbed me of my youth,” she said.
“If anyone says you’re going to get over the abuse, believe me, you’re not going to get over it,” added Geraldine Charbonneau Dubourt, 75, who was sent to a boarding school in Marty, South Dakota.
At age 16, she said a Catholic priest raped her repeatedly in the basement of a church, and was later forced to have an abortion.
She was one of nine sisters allegedly targeted by priests at the school.
Survivors said the schools were designed to leave them feeling isolated and unable to speak out, as one expert described the boarding schools as a “predator wonderland.”
In recent years, the treatment of Indigenous children in both Canada and the United States has come under scrutiny, amid the discovery of mass graves found at several locations where the boarding schools were located.
Overall, estimates put the number of Native American children who died in schools at about 40,000.
But the level of sexual abuse remained in the dark even as victims spoke out about their ordeals, and the Washington Post admitted that the investigation likely missed victims who never came forward or had the opportunity to do so.
For many, this had to do with the way the boarding schools were designed.
Native American children were often removed hundreds of miles from their families and alienated in ways that made speaking out nearly impossible.
Patrick J. Wall, a former Catholic priest who admitted he was a “fixer” for the church when confronted with sex abuse claims, told The Post that the schools were a “wonderland for perpetrators.”
“They can scream for help, but no one will hear them or believe them,” said the priest, who now works for the victims of the boarding schools.
The revelations of widespread abuse within the Catholic Church and the unraveling of its ability to systematically cover up cases led some survivors to finally feel they could share their trauma.
“I’ve waited 67 years to tell this story,” Jim Labelle, a 77-year-old former student at the Wrangell Institute in Alaska, told The Post.
Like many, he was sent 700 miles from home to the Inupiaq tribe, also to Alaska, and from the moment he was torn from his family and culture, he was not even given a name.
Native American boarding schools were essentially designed to destroy indigenous culture, with students torn from their families, subjected to horrific abuse, and even deprived of having a name or speaking their native language.
Now individuals are pointing out the crimes of the Catholic Church because after the previous revelations, “it showed that people could rise up against a powerful entity like the church, and that people could be held accountable,” said Native American victim advocate Vito de la Cruz . .
While the Catholic Church has apologized to some victims, such as in Canada, for its role in “cultural destruction,” it has never commented or apologized for the abuse rampant in its boarding schools.
When asked by The Post about the abuse allegations, Chieko Noguchi, spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: The Catholic Church recognizes and recognizes that the history being uncovered regarding the boarding school period in American history can cause deep sorrow. in indigenous and indigenous communities.
“But we also prayerfully hope that this will lead to genuine and honest dialogue and lead to a path of healing and reconciliation with the affected communities.”