The recently announced pay-out for some former residents of the Woodlands School is a classic and shameful example of too little too late. After dragging survivors of vicious abuse at the hands of public employees through years of legal delay, the province of B.C. will now be forced to do the right thing in terms of compensation for some of those who survived the snake pit environment at the New Westminster institution.
But the province has ignored the voices of survivors and advocates such as the We Survived Woodlands group, which has insisted that all survivors should receive a "common experience" payment that would recognize the systematic abuse inflicted on far too many Woodlands residents. Instead, after years of delay, the province has invoked a legal technicality to insist it need not compensate anyone who lived at the school before 1974, the date when the Crown Proceedings Act was passed, allowing suits against the government for damages. The order for compensation is based on a "points system" for suffering that many Woodlands survivors see as demeaning. Those who are compensated will receive between $3,000 and $150,000, depending on how severe the abuse they experienced. Survivors who left the school before the cut off date of 1974 will receive nothing, no matter how savagely they were abused. This mean-spirited legalism on the part of the province will mean that an estimated 300 former Woodlands residents will be left out in the cold.
The residents of the former "lunatic asylum" (opened in 1878) that was rebranded in 1950 as a school were the victims of systematic abuse, as revealed in former provincial ombudsman Dulcie McCallum's scathing 2002 report The Need to Know.
In a 2006 interview, McCallum described some of her findings about what these children endured: "Details of the physical abuse found in the records include hitting, kicking, smacking, slapping, striking, restraining, isolating, grabbing by the hair or limbs, dragging, pushing onto table, kicking and shoving, very cold showers and very hot baths resulting in burns to the skin, verbal abuse including swearing, bullying, belittling, inappropriate conduct such as extended isolation, wearing shackles and a belt-leash with documented evidence of the injuries including bruises, scratches, broken limbs, black eyes and swollen face. The sexual abuse included assault, intercourse and, as a result, injuries and, in a few cases, pregnancy."
And now, having exhausted "the law's de-
lays" the province is going to have to compensate the survivors who lived at Woodlands after 1975, but it still insists it has no legal obligation to make the earlier residents whole for the abuses they suffered. No legal obligation, perhaps. But a moral obligation to recognize and do something about the suffering of all Woodlands survivors seems obvious to any observer who is not on the government payroll or boasting a conscience sedated by the government's claim to loophole exemptions.
Woodlands was not the only "total institution" in B.C. that inflicted unnecessary suffering on residents. First Nations communities across the province are still living with the cascade of trauma inflicted on their children by a network of essentially racist residential schools, and the Jericho School for the Deaf on our posh West Side saw residents suffer a rampage of sexual abuse for decades.
The lessons of history are clear. If we marginalize people into total institutions like the Woodlands School, the chances are they will suffer abuse at the hands of some staff and some other residents. Great harms were experienced by innocent children at Woodlands and now the provincial government is trying to divide those who suffered into a group that can be compensated and another that will continue to suffer. "Families First," Premier Clark? Woodlands survivors have families, but the government seems disinclined to do right by them. Is our real provincial motto "Some families first if we can't weasel out of our obligations?"
