[Editor’s note: This article contains stories about trauma and abuse. It may be triggering to some readers.]
“Peace.”
That was one witness’s simple request when asked what she hoped to gain from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal currently examining potential bias by the RCMP when it investigated allegations of historic abuse at two northern B.C. schools.
Over the first two weeks of May, the tribunal heard from more than a dozen former First Nations students of Prince George College and Immaculata Elementary School in Burns Lake. They testified that they had endured or witnessed physical, emotional and sexual abuse as children attending the schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The complainants say their allegations were never properly investigated by police. When one survivor, Beverly Abraham, took her story to the Burns Lake RCMP detachment in July 2012, she