Woman details allegations of priest's abuse

In emotional testimony before the court, a woman described the hurt and fear she allegedly experienced after being sexually assaulted by a priest approximately 50 years ago when she was a child.

“I was scared, I was traumatized,” the woman told the Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench on Wednesday. “I felt so dirty … I felt so dirty and hurt.”

The 63-year-old woman who lives at the Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids First Nation) filed a lawsuit against The Anglican Church of Canada, The Diocese of Brandon in 2014, claiming she was sexually assaulted twice by a priest in a church at the reserve.

As the assaults happened on church premises, the Anglican Church is liable,according to the woman’s statement of claim, which further claims various damages, including past and future costs of hospital, medical or health services under the Health Services Insurance Act.

In a statement of defence, the church denied the minister committed the sexual assaults and argued that even if it occurred, the church isn’t liable for the abuse.

A three-day trial is now underway to determine whether the church is responsible.

The woman remembered attending the Anglican church on the reserve as a child, she told the court, where a man named Jack Hopper was a priest of the diocese at the time.

Hopper died in the 1990s.

Her parents were church-going people, the woman testified, and she and her siblings were sent to Sunday school regularly.

“What did your parents say about Sunday school?” asked Winnipeg lawyer Norman Rosenbaum, who represents the woman.

“Listen to the priest, whatever he says … we would get disciplined if (we weren’t obedient),” the woman said, adding they would also discuss heaven and hell as consequences.

“If we didn’t listen, we would go to hell … I always had that in mind.”

The assaults happened when the woman was approximately eight years old, she said, after Sunday school had finished for the day.

It was Hopper and another woman who would run the Sunday school program, the woman said.

The first incident occurred in an area near the entrance door of the church, the woman testified, where Hopper pinned her against the wall, pulled down her underwear and touched her genitals under her clothes and digitally penetrated her.

“He was rubbing his hands on me … I was totally scared. I was frozen,” the woman said, wiping tears from her face.

The second assault took place a couple of months later, the woman testified, when Hopper threw her onto the floor of the church basement and raped her.

“I was scared, I was traumatized,” the woman testified. “It was very painful, I was bleeding.”

After both assaults, the woman said she ran home and isolated herself in her room.

She never told her parents, she said, and disposed of her bloodied underwear so her mother wouldn’t see.

“Did you feel like you could tell your parents?” Rosenbaum asked.

“They wouldn’t believe me because everything a minister says they would believe,” the woman said, adding she was afraid of being disciplined.

“He was just like a god — everybody had to listen to him.”

The abuse caused the woman to suffer depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, panic attacks and nightmares, she said. She also struggled with anger issues and the ability to trust others.

In her teens, the woman said she thought about harming herself multiple times, at one point going so far as to lie on the highway so a car would run over her.

She was pulled off the highway before a vehicle came.

“I thought life wasn’t worth living, all that hurt I was carrying,” the woman said.

Brandon lawyer Breena Murray, who is representing the church, questioned the woman on her age at the time of the assault and where it occurred.

“At eight years old, if something happened to you and you were bleeding, you wouldn’t have gone to your mom?” Murray asked. “If I suggested that your behaviour sounds more like something a teenager would do, would you agree?”

“No,” the woman replied.

The woman’s description of the area in which the assaults took place was similar to the day school she was also attending at the time, Murray suggested, but the woman asserted the abuse had taken place in the church.

More witnesses are expected to take the stand today.

» edebooy@brandonsun.com

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