For more than 100 years, Native American children were subjected to ruthless sexual abuse at the hands of priests and teachers after being forced to live in culture-destroying boarding schools, an investigation has revealed.
Through a systematic effort to eviscerate Native American society, the federal government sent tens of thousands of children to more than 500 boarding schools across the United States between 1819 and 1969.
While the measures were aimed at seizing indigenous lands and freeing generations of Native Americans of their identity, an investigation by the Washington Post revealed how they also opened the door to sickening sexual abuse.
Deborah Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip tribes and executive director of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told the outlet that Indian boarding schools run by the Catholic church are now “a national crime scene.”
“They committed crimes under the cloak,” he said. “They did it in the name of God.”
Staggering levels of sexual abuse have been uncovered at Native American boarding schools, where tens of thousands of indigenous children were forcibly sent between 1819 and 1969. Pictured: Students at Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian School in 1885
Most of the more than 500 boarding schools were funded by the United States government and essentially designed to strip Native American children of their culture.
To this end, teachers and priests would mete out punishments that included beating children if they spoke their native language instead of English, forcibly cutting their long hair, and humiliating them.
The measures deeply marked Native American society and, in 1900, one in five indigenous school-age children attended sadistic boarding schools.
But while the campaign remains a national disgrace, the problems ran much deeper at the more than 80 boarding schools run by the Catholic Church and its branches, extending the harrowing levels of pedophilia within the organization that have been revealed in recent years. .
According to the Washington Post investigation, at least 122 priests and ministers at 22 of the boarding schools were directly accused of sexually abusing Native American children.
Shockingly, 18 of these schools were found to have employed a credibly accused priest or minister for 91 consecutive years.
The abuses, most of which occurred in the final years of the federal boarding school program in the 1950s and 1960s, were allegedly perpetrated against more than 1,000 children who were torn from their families.
Clarita Vargas, 64, was left helpless at the age of 8 when she was sent to boarding school before being attacked by a Catholic priest, which she says “haunted me my entire life.”
St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Washington (pictured), where Vargas was sent, was among 80 boarding schools run by the Catholic Church that an investigation found were rife with sexual abuse.
Isolated and scared, children like Clarita Vargas, now 64, told the outlet that she was left helpless when she was sent to St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Washington, when she was 8 years old.
She said a priest guided her to his office to watch a movie with other students, before groping and abusing her while she sat on his lap.
Vargas said she had no one to turn to as the sexual abuse continued for three years since then, and even today she says it “haunted me my entire life.”
“The Church hurt my spirit, took away my soul and stole my childhood,” he said.
“If someone says you get over abuse, believe me, you don’t,” added Geraldine Charbonneau Dubourt, 75, who was sent to a boarding school in Marty, South Dakota.
At the age of 16, she said a Catholic priest raped her repeatedly in the basement of a church and then forced her to have an abortion.
She was one of nine sisters who were reportedly attacked by priests at school.
Survivors said the schools were designed in a way that made them feel isolated and unable to speak, while one expert described boarding schools as a “predator wonderland”.
In recent years, scrutiny has focused on the treatment of Native children in both Canada and the United States, amid the discovery of mass graves found at several boarding school sites.
In total, estimates put the number of Native American children who died in schools at around 40,000.
But the level of sexual abuse remained obscure even as victims spoke out about their ordeals, and the Washington Post admitted that its investigation likely overlooked victims who never came forward, or who never had the opportunity to do so.
For many, this was due to how boarding schools were designed.
Native American children were often moved hundreds of miles away from their families and alienated in a way that made it nearly impossible to speak.
Patrick J. Wall, a former Catholic priest who admitted he was a “fixer” for the church when facing sexual abuse allegations, told The Post that schools were a “wonderland for perpetrators.”
“They can scream for help, but no one will listen to them or believe them,” said the priest, who now works for boarding school victims.
Revelations about widespread abuse within the Catholic Church and the collapse of its ability to systematically cover up cases have led some survivors to finally feel like they can share their trauma.
“I’ve been waiting 67 years to tell this story,” Jim Labelle, a 77-year-old alumnus of the Wrangell Institute in Alaska, told The Post.
Like many, he was sent 700 miles from his home in the Inupiaq tribe, also in Alaska, and from the moment he was separated from his family and culture, he was not even allowed 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 Catholic Church’s crimes because after previous revelations, “it showed that people could stand up to a powerful entity like the Church, and that people could be held accountable,” the Native American victims’ attorney said. Vito de la Cruz. .
The Catholic Church, while apologizing to some victims, such as in Canada, for its role in “cultural destruction,” has never commented on or apologized for the rampant abuse at its boarding schools.
When asked by The Post about the abuse allegations, Chieko Noguchi, spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: The Catholic Church recognizes and accepts that the story coming to light about the boarding school period in the history of The United States can cause deep pain. in Native and Indigenous communities.
“But we also prayerfully hope that it can bring real and honest dialogue and lead towards a path of healing and reconciliation with the affected communities.”