..
Residential School victims making progress in fight with government for fair compensation.
81 St. Anne's residential school compensation cases require
'significant review,' says court filing
St. Anne's survivors battled Conservative, Liberal governments over
suppressed police records
Jorge Barrera · CBC News ·
Posted: Sep 02, 2021 4:00 AM ET
Edmund Metatawabin is a former chief of Fort Albany First Nation who has led the legal battle for a compensation review on behalf of St. Anne's residential school survivors. (Erik White/CBC)
An official appointed by the Ontario Superior Court has found 81 compensation cases involving the notorious St. Anne's residential school require "significant review," as their outcomes could have been impacted by evidence contained in police records that the federal government failed to disclose.
According to an interim report filed with the court on Aug. 17, retired B.C. judge Ian Pitfield found those 81 cases included instances where survivors received either no compensation or a lower award over credibility questions around the severity of the alleged abuse.
"The claims that will require significant review ... number 81 in total," Pitfield wrote in the filing.
Pitfield was appointed last April to review 427 compensation cases that were resolved before an Ontario court ordered the federal Conservative government in 2014 and 2015 to turn over thousands of police records related to St. Anne's residential school.
He said he could not say when the review would be complete.
The horrors of St. Anne's
The records are from an Ontario Provincial Police investigation launched in 1992 into widespread historical physical and sexual abuse at the institution in Fort Albany First Nation, which sits along the coast of James Bay in northern Ontario.
The investigation lasted six years and produced thousands of pages of documentation, including about 900 statements from 700 victims describing assaults, sexual assaults, suspicious deaths and a multitude of other abuses.
St. Anne's survivors have been battling the current Liberal government over the past six years to have these compensation cases reopened, arguing the suppressed evidence in the police records would have substantiated claims of severe abuse that weren't believed.
Survivor Edmund Metatawabin, who has been one of the lead voices in the ongoing litigation, said he knows of one woman who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a bishop at the school, but wasn't believed because there were no witnesses.
"Somebody that received a slap one or two times [would be believed], because the compensation amount and the seriousness of the allegations will be quite low and harmless, so they were acceptable," said Metatawabin.
"That is the kind of decisions that were being made."
Police records would back abuse claims
With the OPP records in hand, Metatawabin said the cases involving serious allegations would not have been so easily dismissed by adjudicators deciding compensation amounts.
"And that is why we went to court to show the seriousness of the incidents that happened," he said.
Pitfield's ongoing review still falls short, Metatawabin said, because survivors don't know their cases are getting a second look via a purely a paper review, and survivors have no opportunity to retain legal counsel or provide input.
"You are treating them as numbers. You don't know their personalities, their identity, the nature of their suffering or the effects of their suffering," said Metatawabin. "So they are still invisible people."
St. Anne's Indian Residential School is shown in Fort Albany, Ont., in the 1940s. The school was run by the Catholic orders of Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Grey Sisters of the Cross from 1902 until 1976, and funded by the federal government beginning in 1906. (Algoma University/Edmund Metatawabin Collection)
The 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement created a compensation mechanism known as the Independent Assessment Process (IAP). Under the IAP, adjudicators would hear evidence from survivors to determine compensation amounts. The federal government provided the bulk of the documented evidence for claims and was also able to challenge allegations of abuse.
For the first seven years of the IAP, the federal Department of Justice, under the Harper government, withheld thousands of pages of OPP records, along with criminal and civil records from cases involving St. Anne's.
Mentions of the OPP investigation and subsequent court cases were deleted from the St. Anne's school history — known as the school narrative — provided to survivors and their lawyers for preparing compensation cases.
The Trudeau government then spent millions of dollars fighting attempts by St. Anne's survivors to reopen compensation cases based on the Justice Department's failure to disclose the police and court records.
But in late March, as the IAP process wrapped up, the Justice Department, acting under the direction of Crown-Indigeous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, requested the Ontario court review St. Anne's compensation cases.
There is more to this story at CBC News.
Notorious UK child murderer and rapist Colin Pitchfork
released from prison despite protests
1 Sep, 2021 12:12
Convicted child murderer and rapist Colin Pitchfork was released from UK prison on Wednesday after serving 33 years, despite several attempts to keep him behind bars.
Pitchfork – who was the first person in the UK to be convicted of a crime using DNA evidence – was sentenced to life in prison in 1988 for the rape and murder of two 15-year-old schoolgirls in Leicestershire between 1983 and 1986.
In June, however, Pitchfork was deemed “suitable for release” by a Parole Board panel, which cited the murderer’s “progress made while in custody.”
Despite protests and several attempts to keep him in prison – including from South Leicestershire MP Alberto Costa, who said he was “appalled” by the Parole Board’s “immoral, wrong and frankly dangerous” decision – Pitchfork was released on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Justice issued a statement extending its “heartfelt sympathies” to the families of Pitchfork’s victims, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, and assured the public that Pitchfork would be monitored under strict conditions.
“Public safety is our top priority, which is why he is subject to some of the strictest licence conditions ever set and will remain under supervision for the rest of his life,” a Ministry of Justice spokesperson explained, adding that if Pitchfork ever “breaches these conditions, he faces an immediate return to prison.”
The mother of victim Dawn Ashworth warned in June that though Pitchfork “can’t hurt me any more than he has already by killing my daughter,” there will always be “other 15-year-old girls in the streets” that could potentially fall victim.
“If he was released, he could search for any victim he wanted to. He is a psychopath who should be kept in prison where he belongs,” she declared.
Brits on social media called Pitchfork’s release “absolute sickening” and “a scary decision.”
“This isn’t right. Young women and girls are at massive risk,” tweeted feminist activist Jean Hatchet, while journalist Charlie Peters declared, “This naive insanity has got to stop.”
Pointing out that “1 in 5 murders are committed on parole,” Louise Perry – a New Statesman columnist and campaigner against sexual violence – wrote, “If Colin Pitchfork rapes and kills another child, the individuals responsible for this decision should be held accountable.”
Sure, that's not going to happen in this world.
‘We need to start believing victims’: Football crisis in Iceland
as national stars accused of sexual abuse, prime minister shocked
2 Sep, 2021 12:28
Iceland prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir has spoken about sexual abuse allegations against the nation's players © John Sibley / Action Images via Reuters | © Geirix / Reuters
Iceland's prime minister has called for the country's football association to address sexual abuse after the organization's entire board resigned following a woman's claim that a national team player assaulted her in a nightclub.
Thorhildur Gyda Arnarsdottir told public broadcaster RUV that an Iceland star attacked her in a Reykjavik nightspot in September 2017, adding that she had joined another woman in filing police reports against a player for sexual assault that night.
The 25-year-old went public after the chairman of the Football Association of Iceland (KSI), Gudni Bergsson, said that it had not received any complaints about sexual offenses by players – but the supremo and his board resigned in the aftermath of Arnarsdottir's allegations.
The head of state, Katrin Jakobsdottir, held a cabinet meeting over the scandal and said she was saddened that the allegations had been needed to launch a wider exploration of abuse within football in her country.
"I hope this will be a learning curve for the football movement," she said, adding that she has "great admiration for the victims" who went public.
Icelandic media reports say accusations have been circulating about current and former national team players, and Thorhildur told the Visir newspaper that at least six other players have been accused of sexual assaults.
"I just hope that this has shown us, as a society, that we need to start believing in victims when they step forward," she said, expressing relief that KSI's board had resigned.
Swedish club Gothenburg said that one of its players, who was not named, was reported to police regarding allegations of "sexual harassment in 2017".
"The police investigation did not lead to any prosecution, but the parties agreed on a settlement," it said, with club director Hakan Mild adding: "IFK Gothenburg takes this very seriously, even if the case, in the legal sense, is closed," said.
Is the creep still playing for IFK Gothenburg? If he is, you're still not taking this very seriously.
Dadi Rafnsson, the head of football development at top-flight side HK, said a "toxic boys' culture" exists around football in Iceland which is "so hard to work against".
"It permeates everything and is everywhere, so people do not see when things are not right," the doctor of psychology told Kjarnin.
"It is not limited to football but it is a problem for boys. We may be preparing them a little badly for the real world.
"It is as if they are to sail through things without putting in the effort while the women are supposed to be responsible and work hard and maybe they will get the progress – but the boys think they deserve it.
"The interesting thing is that when you reach out to boys and young men one by one, they know exactly what is true, good and right. But when they get together in a group, some bad culture arises."
Vidar Halldorsson, a professor of sociology at the University of Iceland, warned that accusations against footballers put parents in a difficult position when their children admire the team.
"This is naturally a huge issue in Icelandic society and it just shakes society," he told Visir. "There are our heroes, fallen from a pedestal, and role models for children and young people, so parents do not quite know which foot to step on.
"This is a very big issue and a very complex issue in many places and we know that this sexual harassment of women has been going on for centuries but is now manifested in this way in football.
"But this naturally applies to the whole of society; this is what women and girls have been fighting against for a long time, to eradicate this and bring it to the surface, and this is happening in all areas of society."
KSI issued a statement pledging to root out problems and work for change.
"Work is already underway with external professionals to review all responses to sexual offences and violence within the association and how support was and will be provided to victims," it said.
That's a start! Good for you, Thorhildur.
A British mum who sexually abused her children and even
urinated in their drinks was caught by the FBI
11 hours ago
The woman in her 20s boasted of urinating in the children’s juice cups and exchanged sick fantasies with paedophiles on the internet.
Oxford Crown Court heard the mum-of-two who cannot be named for legal reasons was snared in an FBI sting last summer, with the file passed to the UK authorities.
She was also found to have exchanged messages with a paedophile since jailed for more than a decade after an investigation by the Metropolitan Police.
Jailing her for six years on Thursday, Judge Nigel Daly said: “I find this behaviour quite impossible to comprehend.
“As you will appreciate, anything that appears on the internet will in all probability remain there forever and you have subjected your own infant children to this very real possibility.”
Prosecutor Lisa Goddard told the court that accounts belonging to the Oxfordshire woman were identified in a sting operation by the FBI’s child exploitation team last May and June.
The woman said she was living with her two children and urinating in cups and making them drink it.
An undercover FBI officer, posing as a paedophile, exchanged messages with the mum that betrayed the woman’s disturbing sexual interest in her own and other children.
She claimed it would be ‘hot’ to see a man be sexually aroused by the children and sent a naked image of herself with a baby’s foot touching her bottom.
Ms Goddard read another message from the defendant to the undercover officer in which she said she ‘needed to marry a paedophile’.
The woman was also found to be swapping messages with a paedophile later caught in a Met Police probe. She appeared to be arranging for her children to be abused by the man, although she told him: “I don’t really want them in pain or anything.”
How utterly motherly of you!
Police arrested her last summer and seized two phones on which were found 377 indecent images and videos of children in the most serious category including films showing the rape of babies. She had 313 images in category B and 191 in category C.
Also found on a phone was an app designed to hide image and video files.
The woman, who admitted sexual assault on a child under 13, sexual activity with a child, possession of an extreme pornographic image and making and distributing indecent images of children. She had no previous convictions.
Mitigating, James Reilly said his client was remorseful. She had had a ‘troubled childhood’, during which she was raped by an uncle, and had also been abused by a partner.
“She wants to get as much help as she can and try to move on,” he said. She wanted to teach English to adults in the future.
Mr Reilly added his client ‘hopes when they are older her children will seek her out’. He said: “That is the one thing that keeps her going.” She no longer had custody of the children.
Judge Daly imposed a sexual harm prevention order, which will run indefinitely. The woman will remain on the sex offender register for life.
Written by Tom Seaward
No comments:
Post a Comment