Open secret: sexual abuse haunts children in indigenous communities
Freda Ens says she was a baby when her birth mother sold her for a bottle of beer.
The buyer was an unrelated man she would later call “Grandfather.” Her earliest memories include being sexually molested by a number of men in his extended family.
“I don’t ever remember being able to say, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ or, ‘No, I don’t have to do that,’” recalled Ens, 59, who grew up in B.C.’s Old Massett Village, a Haida community.
“I would wake up and it would be dark and I wouldn’t know who it was … It could have been an uncle … it could have been another cousin.