Why didn’t these children matter?
Was it because they were black?
Horrifying affidavits filed in court Friday allege a long history of abuse at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Nearly a decade after lawsuits filed in court have failed to yield results, 63 former residents joined together to apply for a class action against the home and the provincial government.
Wagners, a Halifax law firm, will represent the group in court this fall in an effort to have the action certified.
Jane Earle, a former social worker who was executive director at the home for 10 months in 1980, has little doubt about why complaints and concerns raised about the treatment of the children at the hands of some staff members were not dealt with by various government officials.
She said she hoped previous lawsuits would spark some government effort to address past injustices at the home, but she was disappointed. She has also filed an affidavit in support of the class action.
"Frankly, I couldn’t wait any longer," Earle told Chronicle Herald reporter Eva Hoare. "Nothing was happening. The province knew all that and let it continue . . . because they were black."
Tony Smith is well known in the Halifax area as the talented former head vocalist and founder of Tony Smith and the Mellotones. He went public in 1998 with allegations of abuse over three years when he lived in the home during the 1960s. He made complaints to the RCMP that failed to produce any charges and then followed up with an individual lawsuit.
He said he had previously asked the Justice and Community Services departments to look into his complaints, without success.
In 1999, he made a public appeal for others who were abused to come forward. Smith said at the time the RCMP had told him they needed more information to warrant further investigation.
The allegations that have been brought forward, filed in court last week, are sickening. The stories of sexual assault, beatings, poor conditions, lack of adequate food and medical care are deeply disturbing. They span decades.
Yet the government did nothing to follow up or investigate. Indeed, as Earle said, the government treated the children at the Westphal home differently even as late as the 1970s.
The per diem the province paid to homes where white children were placed was as much as triple the amount provided to the Home for Colored Children, said Earle.
When she left in 1980, it had risen to $27 per children from a meagre $3.50 in 1976, she said. But the higher 1980 rate was still less than half the $55 per child that was paid to at least one other provincial home at the time, she said.
Lack of awareness, education, cultural differences and social evolution are among the excuses often given for past racism.
But even these pathetically insufficient explanations do not begin to shed light on why proper investigations were not carried out when complaints were made.
It appears that at the very least, the people responsible for ensuring the welfare and safety of these former residents of the home let them down.
Now the matter is headed to the courts for determination.
Whatever the outcome, the complainants will finally be provided with an opportunity that should have occurred a long time ago: a chance to be heard.
