Verna Daly- They’ll Just Blame Me
I was sent away to go to Blue Quills school, and I was just a little kid, five years old. So, I had to go stay in the school and I was ahead of some of my classmates because I knew how to write, this and that, and I had learned English at the Charles Camsell Hospital.
I was glad that my older sister, one of my older sisters was there with me, in the little girls room, and she said to me, “Don’t cry. Don’t talk our language.” I told her, “I don’t know my language, How would I know how to talk?”
She said, “You know, Dene, “he said, “don’t talk that language, you’ll get strapped, or you’ll get your mouth washed out with soap.”
So, I had to learn how to get along with other kids too, some of them, I was sexually abused by one of them. There’s no use telling the supervisors, they won’t do anything about it, they’ll just blame me, so, I’ve never said anything to anybody.
Never did, till I had to go for a hearing on this residential school. Also, when I went to the hearing on my residential school, I told them about the sexual abuse and they said, “you weren’t sexually abused by the supervisors, so that doesn’t count.”
To me, it does because they, they [with emphasis] were the supervisors, they’re [with emphasis] supposed to watch us! But why did they care anyways?
I don’t think I was treated good, when I went to this hearing it sounded like it was my fault, everything was my fault… I… But it takes lots of guts to get up here and talk about this.
It really hurts.
– Verna Daly
Notes:
Verna Daly Testimony. SP117_part11. Shared at Red Deer Hearing SP117-Sharing Panel. June 7, 2013. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation holds copyright. https://archives.nctr.ca/SP117_part11
