The Survivors Speak

Student victimization of students • 173
but they, like who would, who would they believe? You know, like would they believe
me or, or whoever I was pointing my, my finger at? You know because these older
boys, they could certainly, most certainly deny it.
Keewatin told his parents of the abuse, but they continued to send him to the school.
“It must have happened to them too because they’d always bring me back and, I figured,
‘Okay, you know, this is normal.’” 648 Gladys Prince recalled that her mother did not believe
her when she told her of the sexual abuse of students at the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school. 649
Students who were seen as being different were often particularly vulnerable to bullying.
Gordon James Pemmican said he was the subject of regular bullying when he was a
student at the Sioux Lookout school.
So, they used to beat me up quite a bit, and they teased me because of my voice. I was
born prematurely, and I sounded different. And I too, also as a result, I had, probably
had bladder problems, like peeing the bed, and so I got teased for that. The kids were
really mean there, and I never understood that, eh. And I got beaten up quite often,
almost every day. It was hard for me to find moments, you know, where I can actually
just relax and have fun with some, you know, some other, other little kids, eh. If we
got too exposed, and the other kids seen me, then they came over and, you know,
they would take me off and beat me up. 650
It was a world in which he felt completely powerless.
“This was their world. Their rules. And nothing I
said mattered, so let them do whatever they want. I was
sexually abused there for a long time, more than once.
And then I got sexually assaulted by a senior boy, one
of my own kind. So this confused me too.” 651
Students found it difficult to speak about what had
been done to them. Bernard Catcheway was sexually
abused by a fellow student at the Pine Creek school.
“I couldn’t tell anybody. Like it was a hush-hush thing
to staff members.” 652 Some students had been told by
their abusers they would be killed if they ever spoke Henry Bob.
about the incident. 653 Those who did report an incident
of abuse rarely received the sort of help they needed. Henry Bob said that when he told
a staff member of the Mission school that he had been sexually assaulted, “I was given a
strap.” 654 When Alphonsine McNeely told a staff member of the abuse she was undergoing
from another girl, “the girl told her that I was lying, so I got the licking.” 655
In other cases, complaints were taken seriously. When she was attending school at
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Mabel Brown was assaulted by a fellow student in the
school darkroom. “I reported that to the principal’s wife. And oh boy she, she, she, sure
didn’t like that and she dealt with it and he was sent home.” 656