Never heard of abuse until now

By Patrick Lee, an administrator at Oglala Lakota College and a former chief judge of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. | Saturday, June 21, 2003

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

Re: "Indians come forward with tales of abuse at SD schools," by Sharon Waxman, June 8 edition of the Rapid City Journal.

I am a former student of Holy Rosary Mission, a.k.a. Red Cloud Indian School. I was a boarding student for 11 years, from 1942 until 1953. I was a student at Holy Rosary because my mother placed me and my siblings there. My friends and relatives were also placed there by their parents because they wanted us to get a good Catholic education.

I found Holy Rosary to be strict, disciplined and structured. It was run much like a military academy with a religious flavor. We would line up and march or walk to church, dining hall, picnic grounds, and other places. We learned academic disciplines throughout the years, and in high school we learned trade skills in addition to academics.

Yes, there was corporal punishment in the form of spankings. In those days, parents and teachers alike would give spankings as a way of dealing with misbehavior. By today's standards it could be called abuse because corporal punishment is no longer tolerated.

As to the charges of sexual abuse by priests and nuns, I knew of no such thing. My wife, Faith, who also attended Holy Rosary in the early 1950s, was unaware of the alleged sexual abuse of children at the school.

The fact that we had no knowledge of such things is significant for the following reason. The boarding school system had a very elaborate and effective communication system. When something unusual or out of the ordinary occurred, someone told, and we all became aware of such things.

The information system we had is common in closely knit communities, such as boarding schools, military units, prisons, and other institutions. We all knew or heard about boys who would get into fights, get expelled, get into trouble with authorities, who had to miss a movie, or who ran away from school. There was nothing that was kept secret from us, and I would dare say that if any priest, nun, brother, prefect, or employee of the school was practicing predatory sexual activities on children, we would have known about it. We were constantly in each others' lives, day in and day out.

We were shocked to learn about child sex abuse in other parts of the country, because it never occurred to us that such things happened anywhere, especially by Catholic missionaries who preached hell and damnation for even thinking about such things. Sadly, the abuse did occur in some parishes, but the scene which Ms. Waxman describes was nonexistent during my presence at Holy Rosary, and many of my contemporaries agree with my perception, which is based on our experiences.

I cannot speak for others, but I often wonder why these "victims" report their story only to the newspapers. Newspapers tend to publicize one side of a story at the expense of truth and accuracy. Some journalists have a knack for slanting their stories so that all Catholic boarding schools are painted with the same tarnished brush.

Some of us get a little tired of would-be plaintiffs who appear to be seeking either personal attention or perhaps a windfall monetary profit based on fabrications and exaggerations. Most of us have learned to appreciate the benefits of a Catholic education, including the discipline and work ethic that we learned because our parents entrusted our growth and development to the Jesuit priests and Franciscan nuns of Holy Rosary Mission. That is why I have decided to respond with another side of the story.