History of Abuse by Catholic Clergy Still Felt in Native Communities

By Bill Radke & Allie Ferguson
KUOW
January 28, 2016

http://kuow.org/post/history-abuse-catholic-clergy-still-felt-native-communities

[with audio]

Attorney Vito De La Cruz in the KUOW studios.

The Seattle Archdiocese recently released 77 names of clergy accused of child sexual abuse, including priests who worked on reservation land.

The Catholic Church has had a presence on Indian reservations since the 1800s. Their missionary work was intertwined with early U.S. government policy toward native Americans.

Attorney Vito de la Cruz represents many victims of abuse by Catholic clergy in the Northwest, particularly Native American victims, who he says were particularly vulnerable to this abuse.

“The history of this country has promoted the stripping of natives of all of the things that are important to them, including their religion and faith,” De la Cruz said. “And that was done with the complicity and the participation of the Catholic Church and other religions as well.

"It is a profound trauma.”

According to de la Cruz, the Catholic Church often moved priests and nuns with a history of abuse to native lands because of its remoteness and isolation. “It did nothing but exacerbate the problem because it created a whole new pool of victims for those people to abuse,” he said.

De la Cruz hopes that this spotlight on the Catholic Church will protect children from future abuse. However he added that the poor economic and social conditions on reservations, including high unemployment and high suicide rates, make the Native American community much more vulnerable.

“A vulnerable community is less apt to speak up when something like this happens," he said.

Catholic boarding schools that forcibly took Native children from their families operated until the late 1960s. De la Cruz says this has left a profound wound in the community, and the Catholic Church still has a substantial presence among Native Americans in the Northwest.

“It's a cross-generational wound that a lot of the Native folks have endured," de la Cruz said. "When that fundamental trust between a lay person, a priest or a nun, has been violated in the most gross way imaginable, the scars that people endure lead to other scars and other problems."

De la Cruz is currently representing 37 plaintiffs against the Great Falls Diocese in Montana, including many Native Americans from the Crow and Cheyenne reservations.

He is also handling several claims against a priest in the Yakima Diocese.