The Vancouver Sun
February 14, 2002
Not all abuse claims deserve money
by Tana Dineen, special columnist
Decades ago, misguided government policies resulted in thousands of children
being placed in residential schools. In the 1990s, we questioned this
well-intentioned philosophy. We came to look back on these institutions as
dens of physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
But in the rush to make amends, governments compounded their mistakes. The
newly released Kaufman report, Searching For Justice, is a riveting account
of such harm. Written by Fred Kaufman, former justice of the Quebec Court of
Appeal, it chronicles an in-depth investigation into Nova Scotia's handling of reports of
institutional abuse and its program of compensation to a staggering total of
1,246 "victims." Using phrases like "recipe for
disaster," he describes how "pernicious notions" contaminated
the process, causing it to be "so flawed, that it left in its wake true
victims of abuse who are now assumed by many to have defrauded the
government, innocent employees who have been branded as abusers, and a public
confused and unenlightened about the extent to which young people were or
were not abused while in the care of the province of Nova Scotia."
Instead of alleviating pain, it distorted justice and left both the genuine
victims and the falsely accused forever under a cloud of suspicion.
This happened, Kaufman said, because "The government was swept up by the
prevailing opinion that abuse was widespread and systemic."
While he doesn't identify the source of this influence, I attribute it to
advocates of social justice. Chanting the mantra of
"revictimization," altering words' meanings to fit their cause and
assuming guilt based on anecdotes, their dogmatic ideas, assumptions and
attitudes have infiltrated media, politics and governments.
They have us tiptoeing around, hesitating to doubt the honesty of anyone who
claims to have been abused and fearing to reject subjective definitions of
abuse like the one in a 1995 Nova
Scotia audit that held abuse to be "usually
someone exerting power over someone else, leaving the victim feeling powerless."
It was this Alice-In-Wonderland
mentality that led to genuine cases being lumped in with false ones. Even
eminent jurists, it seems, have come to view reality through a social justice
lens. In 1995, the former chief justice of New Brunswick,
Stuart Stratton, undertook an investigation in Nova Scotia and concluded, "the abuse
claims presented to him (by 89 former residents) were generally reliable and
accurate."
Presuming the credibility of the claims, however, he did little to
investigate.
Sixty-nine claimants, Kaufman said, alleged they'd been abused. Eleven
supplied accounts in writing only. Stratton saw just one of the 58 others. No
one provided accounts under oath. No comparisons were made between accounts
given to Stratton and to the RCMP. At least three former residents who made
allegations against a staff member weren't even at the school when he was.
"That a jurist of Mr. Stratton's stature found the abuse claims to be
generally reliable and accurate," Kaufman says, "could only
contribute to the perception of the public and the government that an
objective, detailed investigation had confirmed the existence of widespread
systemic abuse, perpetuated through a 'conspiracy of silence and
inaction.'"
Once Stratton's assumption was accepted as fact, accusations went
unquestioned. Claims swelled. The accused, tainted with assumed guilt, were
excluded from the process. More than $61 million of taxpayers' money
disappeared.
From Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland,
to Grandview School
for Girls in Ontario, to Jericho School
in Vancouver,
clouds of doubt should be rising.
The moral and financial costs may already be unbearable. Last December, when
the Diocese of the Cariboo became the first Anglican diocese in the
Commonwealth to be sued into bankruptcy, we felt a ripple of shock. There are
many more to come.
Last week, the anticipated financial crisis caused the Anglican Church of
Canada to break away from the other churches involved in multimillion-dollar
residential school lawsuits in a desperate attempt to negotiate independently
with the federal government so it might avoid collapse. Ottawa had announced that it was
considering lumping thousands of claims of residential-school abuse into one
class action suit in which compensation would likely be meted out with little
attention to separating real from false victims.
Other nations, too, are caving in. In Ireland last week, an agreement was
worked out for up to $680 million of public and religious funds to be paid in
compensation and counselling to about 3,500 claimants who were former
students in state schools.
Recently, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice of England, expressed concerns
similar to Kaufman's when he said child abuse allegations "were easy to
make" and might be motivated by claims for compensation.
He urged fellow judges "to use their discretion to make sure juries did
not hear overtly prejudicial evidence. With pedophiles it can be very
difficult; the natural reaction is one that we have got to protect the
children, and juries will be affected by this. It may be that in some
respects in relation to some sexual offences the balance has gone the wrong
way already."
But will governments listen? Will they ever learn?
I certainly hope they heed Kaufman's reminder of their duty to "educate
the public to recognize, and avoid, myths, stereotypes and assumptions.
Although government must be alert to public opinion, it cannot be swept away
by an uninformed public. In this regard, it must lead, not simply
follow."
But I fear that, instead, they'll continue to blindly follow the pied-piper
call of social justice until, in some future decade, attention becomes
focused on these abuses of today.
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