CANADA
The Globe and Mail
LORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Apr. 28, 2016
A court is being asked to decide whether the secret nature of the compensation process for people who were abused as children at one of Canada’s Indian residential schools allowed government lawyers to persuade adjudicators to deny compensation unfairly to those who suffered.
Depending upon the outcome of the case, compensation claims from many of the schools’ survivors may have to be reopened just as the nine-year Independent Assessment Process (IAP) is winding down.
An indigenous man who says a priest sexually abused him over a number of years at one of the most notorious schools is asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to allow the public release of secret documents that could explain why he was denied a cash settlement.
He also wants government lawyers, whom he accuses of withholding evidence that could have backed up his story – and possibly the stories of other claimants who allege abuse at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont. – to be compelled to testify about why they acted as they did.
The man, who is known to the court as H-15019, attended St. Anne’s in the 1970s. People who were sent to that school report being tortured in a homemade electric chair, forced to eat their own vomit, raped and sexually molested.
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