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LibertadLatina.org
focuses on the severe sexual harassment
and brazen sexual assault with impunity faced by
Latin and indigenous school children across the
Americas.
Canada
Indigenous Children
Canada's system of forced-attendance boarding
schools for indigenous children, that existed
through the 1970's, has resulted in over 90,000
survivors of a system of intentional physical
torture and sexual assault.
Canadian government and church institutions have
openly admitted their guilt and have apologized,
while facing 1,700 class- action lawsuits.
As one byproduct, 90% of prostituted
Canadian children are Native.
The
above link is to our Canadian section, which
covers the extensively documented crisis of
school rape faced by indigenous (First Nations)
children for close to 100 years.
From:
Soul Wound: The legacy of [Canadian and
U.S.] Native American Schools.
A 2001 report by
the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada
documents the responsibility of the Roman
Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada,
the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal
government in the deaths of more than 50,000
Native children in the Canadian residential
school system.
The
report says church officials killed children by
beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation,
prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked,
and medical experimentation, including the
removal of organs and radiation exposure. In
1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school
officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls;
British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is
no accurate toll of forced sterilizations
because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995
after police launched an investigation. But
according to the testimony of a nurse in
Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of
Native children when they reached puberty. The
report also says that Canadian clergy, police,
and business and government officials “rented
out” children from residential schools to
pedophile rings.
The consequences of
sexual abuse can be devastating. “Of the first
29 men who publicly disclosed sexual abuse in
Canadian residential schools, 22 committed
suicide,” says Gerry Oleman, a counselor to
residential school survivors in British
Columbia.
The United
States
Indigenous Children
Soul Wound: The legacy of Native American
Schools
Mass sexual assault
against indigenous children also occurred in
United States residential schools through the
1980's. "...Rampant sexual abuse at [U.S.]
reservation schools continued until the end of
the 1980s..."
...Rampant sexual
abuse at reservation schools continued until the
end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990
loopholes in state and federal law mandating the
reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse.
In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone,
a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in
Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys
from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The
principal failed to investigate a single abuse
allegation. Boone, one of several BIA
schoolteachers caught molesting children on
reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of
child abuse, and he received a life sentence.
Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that
the agency had not been sufficiently responsive
to allegations of sexual abuse, and he
apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose
children BIA employees had abused.
The effects of the
widespread sexual abuse in the schools continue
to ricochet through Native communities today.
“We know that experiences of such violence are
clearly correlated with posttraumatic reactions
including social and psychological disruptions
and breakdowns,” says Gone.
Lakota (Sioux) sue Catholic Church for Boarding School Rape
...Sonny One Star says he learned not to
cry or scream when he was beaten and sexually assaulted at his Roman
Catholic boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation.
Four decades later, he says it is time for a different approach.
"Today, I'm ready for retaliation," said One Star, a leader on the
reservation.
He and five other Sioux are suing the federal government for $25 billion
on behalf of perhaps thousands of students allegedly abused at Indian
boarding schools around the country. They hope to have the case
certified as a class-action.
"The nuns and the priests -- the ones who are still living -- I just want
to let them know I'm coming after them," said One Star, 46, who attended
the St. Francis Mission school, one of the three Catholic schools named
in the lawsuit. "It was fun for them back then, but I want to get
justice. I want to get even."
Mr. Gary Frischer was in
Pine Ridge this week. Frischer is a Multi-District Litigation
Consultant. Mr. Frischer said that Attorney Jeffrey Herman, who has
previously and successfully sued the Catholic Church, is representing
hundreds of Lakota who have been sexually, mentally and physically
abused.
"It's about the alleged stripping of the Lakota Culture from many children
who attended Catholic schools in the past," Frischer said. "And the
federal lawsuit will be filed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on 17 March
[2003]."
PIERRE -- Six members of Sioux tribes have filed a lawsuit seeking $25
billion in damages from the federal government for the alleged mental,
physical and sexual abuse of students at Indian boarding schools
nationwide.
...The lawsuit was started with the allegations of former students from
South Dakota. But it also will involve accusations at boarding schools
in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Minnesota and California, said
Jeffrey Herman of Hollywood, Fla., the lead attorney in the case.
The six allege they were beaten and sometimes sexually assaulted by
priests or nuns who ran the boarding schools.
..."I was witness to a lot of these things. I was beaten myself in the
middle of the night. I was tortured in the middle of the night. When I
saw one of my relatives being sexually abused, I tried to run, and I was
caught," Zephier said Thursday at a news conference in Los Angeles.
"They would whip us with boards and sometimes with straps," he said.
His sister, Adele Zephier, cried when she described her time at St.
Paul's. "I was molested there by a priest and watched other girls," she
said, and then broke down crying.
The Rape of indigenous
girls in U.S. boarding schools
From Charles M. Goolsby, Jr.'s 1994 report:
The Sexual and Economic Exploitation of Latina immigrant Women and Girls
in Montgomery County, MD - Chapter 4.
While researching Native-American issues at the
undergraduate library of the University of Maryland - College Park, I
found an article regarding this 'code of silence' in the nation's
largest Native-American newspaper, Wassaja, published by the
Native-American Historical Society in San Francisco, Ca. This article
mentioned the work of a well known Lakota (Sioux) psychiatrist, who had
taken a team of Native-women to a boarding school for junior high school
girls from far-away reservations. It was located in a 'White' town in
the upper northwestern U.S. This doctor's team concluded that 80 of the
120 students had been raped by [white] town locals, who took advantage
of the fact that Native-American victims of abuse, especially women and
teen-aged girls, would not speak to law enforcement authorities
regarding their victimization. Within this article the local Sheriff
expressed the hope that some of the girls would come forward. None had
at that time. The team of Native-women had been the key to bringing this
story out.
Latina Children in the United States
Over 38 million Latin Americans live in the
United States today in 2004. The sexual
harassment and other forms of sexual
exploitation affecting Latina teenagers is thus
a significant problem in this country.
...Latina
girls reported most likely to stop attending
school activities and sports in order to
avoid sexual harassment...
July 4, 2002 -"Compared
with whites and blacks, Hispanic children are
much more likely to..." "attempt suicide if
they're a girl..." - From a recent report on
Latino children's health issues.
More detail on the crisis of community-based
sexual harassment and sexual assault facing
Latina girls may be found on our
U.S. community exploitation issues page.
Ecuador
,,,In Guayaquil [Ecuador's largest city],
approximately 25% of young girls suffered
various forms of sexual abuse at school, and
8.1% were raped by their own teachers.
-
UNICEF
Convergence
These decades-old patterns of impunity in anti-
indigenous and anti-Latina child sexual assault
within schools (and communities) match closely
what is happening today to Latina and
indigenous girls and boys across the
Americas.
Currently, children are subjected to rape with
impunity and severe sexual harassment with
little effective law enforcement response.
These abuses together with domestic physical and
sexual violence push many of these young girls
into early, un-equal marriages with adult men,
pushes them into street prostitution from ages
as young as 10, and pushes these children into
the hands of ruthless sex trafficking gangs.
In any given capitol in Latin America, 5 to 10
thousand or more girls have been forced in this
way into street homelessness, or have been
forced into the hands of pimps and sex
trafficking gangs.
This dynamic of the social abandonment of girl
children may be seen especially on the
Mexico-U.S. border in places like
the San Diego, California child rape camps.
Latina girls in the
Washington, DC region (see below
article) and across the United States also face
these open forms of exploitation.
Only activist political pressure by the public
will move institutions away from past
apathy and complacency in their reactions to
these abuses of our children.
Why does little Ms. Maria in school (see
below article) get less attention than
other child victims of these crimes?
- LibertadLatina.org
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