Orphanage Allegations

Has it ever been different anywhere in the world, at any stage of human history than to record the commonplace enough incidents of child abuse taking place at institutions that society has set up for the distinct purpose of providing group homes for vulnerable children?  Charles Dickens wrote in his time about the abuse of trust that took place all too often between orphaned children and society's response to their existential dilemma.

Group homes, orphanages, residential schools, they all harbour bitter memories of inmates' experiences relating to physical and psychological abuse.  Vulnerable children at the mercy of strict-minded, discipline-demanding adults who must have obedient children at their command.  Not to speak of the memories of those who suffered the miseries of physical and sexual abuse.  These were children who learned the bitter lessons of having no parents willing and able to see to their emotional and practical needs.

In Nova Scotia an orphanage that catered mostly to black children, children who had been orphaned, neglected or abused by their own families, has now seen itself accused and facing lawsuits brought by former inhabitants of the orphanage.  Claims of food deprivation, physical abuse and lack of staff training are now coming back to haunt an institution that clearly felt it had a responsibility to the young whom their own families had abandoned.

Fifty years ago, young children made claims to have been badly beaten, excessively and often, and in 1954, an investigator of the Yarmouth County Children's Aid Society, writing to the provincial child welfare director reported on the complainant that she had a "number of stripes on her back and also a bad bruise on her leg.  The girl claims that she has been beaten exceedingly with a switch and with a broom handle".  That the girl was dressed poorly, "looking like a tramp."

A dozen years later, a report written by the co-ordinator of foster home services wrote that none of the staff in the orphanage was trained in child care or had any nursing experience.  Appearing in the same report though was the comment that staff seemed to be "doing their best", and it was observed that the children seemed to be "happy and healthy".

There are now close to 90 former residents of the orphanage who have come forward with their allegations of abuse, and a proposed class-action suit names some of the plaintiffs, although individual lawsuits have also been filed.  The Nova Scotia Home for Colored children is still a going concern.  It is less a long-term residential facility now, having become a transitional one, operating the Akoma Family Centre.

Its purpose stated on its website now is to provide short-term residential care for children of all backgrounds and cultures, represented as a "safe place where brothers and sisters can stay together until that special foster family is found for them."  A decent society has an obligation to care for the well-being of its most vulnerable, and children certainly are represented in that category.

The best of all possible intentions sometimes go awry, sometimes due to insufficient funding, inadequate oversight, complacency, the social temper of the times.