The walking wounded: In Canada, survivors of Catholic Church sex abuse await a reckoning

CANADA
The Globe and Mail

September 22, 2019

By Tavia Grant

While countries around the world make meaningful change in the wake of devastating abuse, Canadian survivors are left to make things right on their own

Rob Bowden, a goldsmith in Sydney, Cape Breton, is plagued by nightmares from the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. Evelyn Korkmaz in Ottawa has recurring flashbacks of the mental, physical and sexual abuse she experienced in the early 1970s at the notorious St. Anne’s residential school in northern Ontario, and sometimes stutters when she tries to speak. Across the country in Tsawwassen, B.C., Nicholas Harrison still bears a scar that snakes across his chin from when he says he was thrown down the stairs at school as an eight-year-old.

All three are survivors of clergy abuse. Yet, even after decades of abuse-related scandals in the Catholic Church, there is little understanding of how many other walking wounded there are across Canada and the true scope of the damage.

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