Historic lawsuit filed with B.C. Supreme Court alleging abuse at Vernon, B.C. school

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After 60 years, Syilx Okanagan pistillate Laurie Wilson is taking her communicative of alleged abuse to B.C.’s highest court.

From 1963 to 1970 Wilson attended St James Parish School successful Vernon, B.C., which accepted some Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. She says the Catholic schoolhouse dehumanized Indigenous children portion stripping them of their culture.

“I ne'er thought I was thing but a beauteous small girl, precise loved, I ne'er thought determination was thing incorrect with me. But successful the archetypal week I knew what was incorrect with me,” said Wilson.

“It was blatantly said that we didn’t person the aforesaid brains arsenic the different kids, that we were heathens, we didn’t person souls.”

The suit filed Friday astatine the BC Supreme Court against the national authorities and the Kamloops Diocese details the alleged maltreatment Wilson suffered.

“Telling the plaintiff her tegument was achromatic due to the fact that she ne'er washed and that she was ‘dirty,'” reads the lawsuit.

“Permitting the children to routinely taunt Indigenous children, including the plaintiff, with radical slurs.”

Wilson besides alleges intersexual harm, with tribunal documents detailing astatine slightest 2 occasions wherever a monsignor sat Wilson connected his thigh and applied unit with his manus connected her vaginal region.

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“These tin beryllium vigorously defended claims. Having said that, I’ve seen a spot of a shift. Some dioceses are funny successful reconciliation and solution anterior to proceedings now,” said Sandra Kovacs, Wilsons’ lawyer.

“We person to perceive to these stories if we’re going to forestall them, forestall this benignant of maltreatment from happening successful the future.”

Global News reached retired to the defendants successful this case.

The Diocese of Kamloops said, “It is committed to responding reasonably and compassionately to each claims of historical abuse.”

“The Government of Canada volition reappraisal the connection of assertion erstwhile they person it,” said Eric Head, spokesperson for Indigenous Services Canada.

These claims person yet to beryllium proven successful court.