A B.C. woman who was sexually assaulted on a school bus while attending a residential school has lost her opportunity to sue for damages with B.C.’s Court of Appeal.
In a judgement released Friday, a three-judge panel at B.C.’s Court of Appeals said the woman would not be awarded damages because there was no negligence on the part of the school bus driver.
The woman said the assault took place on a bus parked at the Prince Albert Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan after a hockey game.
Court documents do not provide the date of the assault, but the residential school operated from 1951 to 1969.
The woman, who is not named, made her claim thought the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), which was established to handle claims of serious physical, sexual or emotional abuse suffered at Indian Residential Schools. Claims are handled by adjudicators.
She told the courts that as soon as the bus stopped on school property, the driver got off. Immediately following that, she said, she and her female schoolmate were grabbed by the boys sitting beside them.
The woman said she was forced down to the floor and sexually assaulted by the boys. She then cried out, leading to an older female classmate going to get the bus driver. The bus driver returned immediately, and the assault stopped.
The woman’s claim centres on three questions: did the assault take place on school grounds? Did an adult employee of the school know, or should have reasonably known, that abuse of the sort was happening at the school? Did the adult employee fail to take “reasonable steps” to prevent the assault?
The IAP adjudicator found the woman was sexually assaulted on school grounds and that adult employees of the residential school knew that kind of abuse was occurring at the school. However, the adjudicator found that “reasonable steps” did not mean the bus driver had to constantly supervise the students and that there was “a reasonable level of supervision in that there was an adult bus driver who was for that time responsible for the children.”
He dismissed the woman’s claim.
She appealed the decision but adjudicator’s claim was held up during two reviews, by a supervising judge, and on Friday, by the appeals court.
In her reasons, Justice Barbara Fisher found there was no reason to disagree with the judgement of the supervising judge, who Fisher said had acted in “accordance with the appropriate principles” in deferring to the conclusions reached by the IAP process.
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