B.C. man says son conceived in residential school abuse, both sue church
VANCOUVER — A British Columbia father and son are suing the Anglican Church of Canada, alleging the son was conceived as a result of sexual abuse by a female employee of St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay in the late 1960s.
The lawsuit says the father was 14 years old when he was victimized by a school supervisor in 1968, and he settled a lawsuit with the church in 2008 over the alleged sexual assault at the school on Cormorant Island, northeast of Vancouver Island.
Court documents filed this week in B.C. Supreme Court say the plaintiffs only recently found out they were related, leading to a “traumatic reunion,” and their relationship has been confirmed by DNA testing.
The notice of civil claim says the father, now 72, “had no idea” he had a son that was given up by the woman to a non-Indigenous family months after his birth, and the son, now 56, was traumatized by the “shocking revelation” he was a child conceived through the rape of his biological father.
