Indigenous advocates applaud compensation for student-on-student abuse

Indigenous advocates are praising thefederal government's plan to pursuesettlements with former residential school residents who suffered student-on-student abuse and they think the final number of victims will be far larger than the 240 cited by Ottawa.

"I think it's a really good thing and a steptowardhealing for those people who are affected by this particular aspect of the residential school experience," saidAmy Bombay,anassistant professor at the School of Nursingand Department of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University.

According to a government newsrelease, thisnew action to pursue negotiated settlements with survivors whose claims of student-on-student abuse were dismissed or did not receive fair compensation couldhelp roughly 240 eligible former students.

Both Bombay and Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, said they believe the actualnumber of victims is larger.

"I would estimate that it would be a lot higher," said Bombay.

More victims may come forward

"We know from theIndependent Assessment Processstatisticsthat roughly 40 per cent of all of theIAPclaims were related to student-on-student abuse," said Moran, adding there were about 40,000IAPclaimantsacross the country.

Moran said he believes the announcement might help other survivors come forward and share their stories of abuse.

"These schools were so unbelievably unhealthy and they were so dangerous for students on the inside that telling the truth in thoseenvironmentswas next to impossible," he said.

Bombay spent over a year researching student-on-student abuse at residential schools.

She interviewed 43 health care providers across the countrywho work directly with residential school survivors includingpsychologistsand support workers tobetter understand the nature of the physical, mental and sexual abuse that occurred.

"It really is part of the residential school history and legacy that hasn't really been acknowledged within the mainstream dialogue," she said.

Silence surrounding student-on-student abuse

Former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation CommissionSen. Murray Sinclairhas referred tostudent-on-student abuse as an"unspoken truth" of residential schools.

Bombay agrees and attributes the lack of publicity the problem has attracted to the nature of the abuse itself.

"All of those students who were abusing other students were also abused," she said."A common outcome of this type of collective trauma is collective silence."

Another factor keeping survivorsquiet, said Bombay, is the fact that many live in the same communities as their abusers.

"It's still an issue that people are grappling with," she said."It was particularly hard to experience abuse from those students where support was expected."

Moransaid that while it's not discussed as openly as other types of violence, student-on-student abuse was cited in reports by theTruth and ReconciliationCommission.

"Student-on-student abuse is different than the abuse inflicted on children by pedophiles," said Moran.

"[However] it all has itsroot in the pedophilia that was rampant in the schools in the first place. It was the adults abusing children in the most heinous and unbelievable ways that created this rampant process of student-on-student abuse."

A flawed process

The federal government has said the Independent Assessment Process established by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement wasan important tool for obtainingcompensation for some survivors but it acknowledged some former students may not have received fair compensation.

The IAPhas been criticized for the high bar of proof claimants had to meet when it came to student-on-student abuse. Claimants had to prove thatthey reported the abuse to a school staff member, or that a staff member should have known it was happening.

Moran said the IAP was flawed.

"The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, while it accomplished many things, was an imperfect agreement and the ongoing efforts to properly address the harms inflicted upon students and to properly compensate them for those harms are very important," he said.

"[Student-on-studentabuse survivors] absolutely deserve the same level of compensation, absolutely deserve the same level of recognition and absolutely deserve the opportunity for healing and recovery from that unwanted, unwarranted and totally unacceptable abuse."

A government source said the settlements will cover previously filed cases, not new ones, and won't introduce any new evidence.