Cruel sexual abuse of Indian children uncovered: Survivors report new crimes in Catholic boarding schools

Native American children were subjected to brutal sexual abuse by priests and teachers for more than 100 years after being forced to live in culture-destroying boarding schools, an investigation has found.

As part of a systematic effort to wipe out Native American society, the federal government sent tens of thousands of children to more than 500 boarding schools across the Americas between 1819 and 1969.

The goal of these measures was to take away Native American land and rob generations of Native Americans of their identity, but as a Washington Post investigation found, they also opened the door to heinous sexual abuse.

Deborah Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribe and executive director of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told the news agency that the Indian boarding schools run by the Catholic Church have now become “a scene of national crime.”

“They committed crimes under cover,” she said. “They did it in the name of God.”

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 imposed punishments such as beating the children if they spoke their native language instead of English, forcibly cutting their long hair and humiliating them.

These measures left deep scars on Native American society, and by 1900, one in five Native American school-age children attended a sadistic boarding school.

But while the campaign remains a national disgrace, the problems run much deeper in the more than 80 boarding schools run by the Catholic Church and its affiliates, where the appalling extent of paedophilia within the organisation has progressed even further, as has come to light in recent years.

According to the Washington Post’s investigation, at least 122 priests and pastors from 22 of these boarding schools have been directly accused of sexually abusing Native American children.

Shockingly, it emerged that 18 of these schools had employed a priest or pastor who was credibly accused of the crime for 91 consecutive years.

The abuse, which occurred primarily in the final years of the state’s boarding school program in the 1950s and 1960s, reportedly targeted more than 1,000 children who were torn from their families.

Isolated and frightened children like Clarita Vargas, now 64, told the newspaper that she was helpless when she was sent to St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Washington, at age eight.

She said a priest took her to his office to watch a movie with other students before groping and molesting her as she sat on his lap.

Vargas said that for three years from then on, she saw no way out as the sexual abuse continued, and even today, she says, it has haunted her “all my life.”

“The church hurt my spirit, took my soul and robbed me of my childhood,” she said.

“If someone says you get over the abuse, believe me, that doesn’t happen,” added Geraldine Charbonneau Dubourt, 75, who was sent to a boarding school in Marty, South Dakota.

At the age of 16, she said she was repeatedly raped by a Catholic priest in the basement of a church and was later forced to have an abortion.

She was one of nine sisters who were reportedly targeted by the school’s priests.

In recent years, the treatment of Indigenous children has come under scrutiny in both Canada and the United States after mass graves were discovered at several sites where residential schools were located.

Overall, the number of Indian children who died in schools is estimated at around 40,000.

But the extent of the sexual abuse remained unclear, even as victims spoke about their experiences. And the Washington Post admitted that its investigations likely overlooked victims who never came forward or never had the opportunity to do so.

For many, this was due to the design of the boarding schools.

Native American children were often taken hundreds of miles away from their families and alienated to the point where it was almost impossible for them to express themselves.

Patrick J. Wall, a former Catholic priest who admitted to acting as a “fixer” for the church when it came to allegations of sexual abuse, told the Washington Post that the schools were a “wonderland for abusers.”

“They can scream for help, but no one will hear them or believe them,” said the priest, who now advocates for victims of the boarding schools.

Revelations about widespread abuse within the Catholic Church and the exposure of its ability to systematically cover up cases led some survivors to finally feel they could talk about 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 others, he was sent 700 miles from home to the Inupiaq tribe, also in Alaska, and from the time he was separated from his family and culture, he was not even allowed to have a name.

Now individuals are pointing out the crimes of the Catholic Church because the previous revelations have shown “that people can defend themselves against a powerful institution like the Church and that they can be held accountable,” said Vito de la Cruz, a Native American lawyer specializing in victim crime.

Although the Catholic Church has apologized to some victims, such as in Canada, for its role in “cultural destruction,” it has never commented on or apologized for the abuse rampant in its boarding schools.

When asked by the Washington Post about the abuse allegations, Chieko Noguchi, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: “The Catholic Church recognizes that the story of the residential school period in American history that has been brought to light can cause profound suffering among Native Americans and indigenous communities.”

“But we also sincerely hope that it will lead to a genuine and honest dialogue and a path of healing and reconciliation with the affected communities.”