</xta-asp/home.asp> <<...>> </xta-asp/home.asp> June 26, 2000 Cover Abuse of Trust What happened behind the walls of residential church schools is a tragedy that has left native victims traumatized BY JANE O'HARA with PATRICIA TREBLE in Toronto The school is gone now. But the hill where it stood is visible, down a dusty gravel road, from Lorne Pratt's grandmother's house on the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan. Sitting at the kitchen table, Pratt looks out the window and remembers the evening when, as a 12-year-old student, he tried to commit suicide on the second floor of the old brick residence -- the only way he could think of to escape the constant sexual abuse he had suffered over a five-year period. Now 32, an elegant man with high cheekbones and deep, sad eyes, Pratt recalls how he wrapped an elastic belt around his neck and hanged himself from the metal frame of his bunk bed, feeling the elastic pull, struggling for breath, finally blacking out. He was saved when school employees cut him down and rushed him to a hospital in Regina, where he remained in a coma for five days. When he was finally discharged, he was sent home to his mother, Leona, in Saskatoon -- never to return to the school. "It was," Pratt says, "the happiest day of my life." full story </pub-doc/2000/06/26/Cover/36179.shtml> No Forgiving Canada's largest churches are reeling under litigation costs arising from their days running native residential schools BY JANE O'HARA It was not your standard sermon. When Rev. Chris Rushton spoke from the pulpit at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in downtown Ottawa three months ago, his topic was native residential schools and the role of Canada's Oblate orders in running them. Most congregants were aware that such schools had existed -- in a long-ago time, in some faraway place. But suddenly Rushton's message hit close to home. After outlining residential-school litigation against his own order, the Oblates of St. Peter's Province, Rushton said that St. Joseph's -- a city landmark that also runs a soup kitchen and a women's centre -- was among the Oblate-owned assets that were vulnerable should settlements force the order to start liquidating assets. "I can understand them sitting in the pews there and saying 'Oh my gosh,' " said Rushton, his order's provincial superior. "St. Joe's would be the last asset to go. But does anybody really want to it be sold? Lives for 150 years have been connected to this place." [The full text of this article can be found in the June 26, 2000 edition of Maclean's.] www.macleans.ca <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html <A HREF="http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
