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Two former students of the Manitoba School for the Deaf (pictured) are suing the province.
In the suit, filed Sept. 30 in Court of Queen's Bench, the students allege they were physically and sexually assaulted and harassed by staff and classmates for years.
The two women, now in their 40s, attended the school in the 1970s and 80s.
The allegations have not yet been proven in court. A statement of defence has not yet been filed by the government.
The school, located in Winnipeg, teaches both elementary and secondary students and offers both residential and day programs.
One of the women alleges she was sexually assaulted on numerous occasions.
The second woman alleges that during a weekend visit to a staff member's home, she and other girls were put in dog cages and deprived of food and sleep.
The lawsuit also claims deaf students were prohibited from using American Sign Language in class and were punished for it.
It also states the province forced deaf students who attended the residential school to be cut off from their families.
The claim seeks a court order certifying the case as class action.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From CBC News in Canada:
