A new report says students attending residential schools not only suffered abuse at the hands of authorities but also from fellow students.
The report was written by Amy Bombay for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Former AHF executive director Mike DeGagné says the cultural, sexual and physical abuse students suffered at the hands of adults in residential schools unfortunately led many to violently abuse their peers.
“A student learns to be violent, or learns to be abused in these institutions, and then later on in turn may, as most of the abused do, become abusive themselves,” he says. “And then they begin to abuse other children in these institutions.”
DeGagné says this cycle of abuse can often continue on for many years after the students have completed school and returned to their home communities.
“When these kids return home after many years of forced institutionalization, they’re in a community with others that are also similarly abused and they begin to act out against each other.”
Much of the research for the report comes from interviews with support workers who work with residential school survivors.
It is officially called Origins of Lateral Violence In Aboriginal Communities: A Preliminary Study of Student-to-Student Abuse In Residential Schools.
Mike DeGagné is also currently the president of Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario.