Student-on-student abuse in residential schools an ‘unspoken truth’: Sinclair
OTTAWA — The former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls “student-on-student” abuse one untold story of Canada’s residential school legacy — an issue he says is linked to persistent sexual abuse and discrimination against LGBTQ individuals and “two-spirited” indigenous people.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, appointed to the upper chamber in 2016 the year after his commission delivered its final report, described the physical and sexual abuse among residential school students as a means for young people to inflict violence.
Sex was often used as a tool of violence between the school’s students, resulting in an intergenerational legacy of trauma that continues to haunt families to this day.
“These are perpetrators who brought to that relationship of violence a belief that people who were like that were not worthy of respect,” Sinclair said in an interview.