This is part 3 of a week-long series featuring Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell. When Arthur and the Merchant Law Group brought forward his claims of abuse against William Starr and the Anglican Church, he participated in a lengthy Examination for Discovery where he told his story for the first time. This document, while not included in the book, is a record of the process by which information was gathered from residential school survivors and how their claims were dealt with. The complete Exam for Discovery will be available for download from aupress.ca in December.
Q
Okay. Okay, is there any other physical abuse that you would like to tell us about that you haven’t covered already?
A
I guess—I can’t really remember because it was a daily occurrence with us, sometimes it’s hard for me to—to actually remember these things. You have to remember, ma’am, that a lot of these things I’ve suppressed.
Q
I understand.
A
I chose not to talk about them until now, so it’s hard for me sometimes to remember the exact how many times.
Q
Right, I understand that you can’t remember how many times, that’s why I was asking about frequency, if you remembered how often. In any event, those are all the incidents that come to mind today?
A
Yeah, those are some of the incidents that I could remember, eh. There were many other incidences that happened that I—that I wouldn’t—but those are—those things happened with these other kids.
Q
Yes, and I would like to focus on what happened to you—
A
Okay.
Q
—today. Okay, I would like to now go to paragraph 7 of your statement of claim. Maybe I’ll just have your counsel show you that paragraph. Now, in paragraph 7 you allege that on numerous occasions you were sexually assaulted by William Starr, who is the individual we talked about earlier who also physically abused you. Did anyone besides William Starr sexually abuse you at residential school, or was it just Starr?
A
Nobody else except him.
Q
Okay. What did he do?
A
It’s difficult to talk about it.
Follow the series here. For more information about the book, please visit our website.
