Native Sun News Today Correspondent
RAPID CITY -- When Carla Douglas, 54, was born, her mother wanted a daughter so badly she named the young child, Carla Georgina and began dressing her in girl's clothing.
Douglas is a First Nations woman born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. Off and on for the last thirty years, she has called Rapid City home. She is currently volunteering with several organizations in the Black Hills town, including Rapid City Community Conversations and One Rapid City.
She brings her experience, background and education to the table of any discussion which may include topics such as discrimination and crisis intervention. Douglas is active in these discussions because she is a survivor herself.
When she was born, her mother was incarcerated and had “wanted a girl”. She dressed Carla in girl’s clothing and this was how it was.
During the early stages of her life, Douglas remembers the random beatings she endured in the middle of the night from a mother who was an alcoholic. These beatings would occur for trivial reasons; over chores that were not done, or for getting her clothes dirty. Douglas learned early on to pretend to be sleeping, so she could be prepared to defend herself should her mom come in her room after a night of drinking.
During these late night beatings, Douglas said she developed a comforting relationship with pain. At age 5, she made her first of many attempts at suicide. One day, she went into the bathroom and took all of the pills in the medicine cabinet. She survived because her body rejected the pills and she “threw them back up”.
The young girl said she was taken advantage of sexually many times by family members and persons in the homes where her mom would leave her.
At the age of 6, Douglas was made to go to a mission boarding school in British Columbia. When she entered the school, she came in with both a boy’s and a girl’s uniform, but she felt most comfortable wearing the uniform which matched her gender – girl. She said children her age didn’t know what to think of her, so they didn’t pick on her as much as the older children.
“The ones near my age didn’t get it. They weren’t the bullies. They didn’t know how to act around me. I looked queer to them, strange,” she said. “When they heard to older ones make fun of me, they didn’t understand that either. All of us ‘boys’ had to be in one dorm and I didn’t fit in.”
The bullying did not stop with the children. Douglas says it was the priests and nuns who would yell and shout at her which inspired the children to do the same. The priests and nuns would refer to her as being evil, or a heathen.
“I was called an abomination. I was called a devil’s child. I could not conform to their ideology of being a boy,” she said.
While at the boarding school, Douglas recalls a priest who had gained interest in the girl. She said the man had taken her under his wing and he had become a place of comfort for her. He took favor to her and gave her special treatment. That was until one day when he called her into a room, alone.
“There was a father there, that when I first got to boarding school, he started to be nice to me. He showed me a little bit of affection,” she said. This was at a time when Douglas was being harassed and bullied on a daily basis. “He made me feel safe. He used to give me a treat.”
“One night he called for me and he told me that this was a time that we were going to pray. When I started praying, I was saying Our Fathers (prayers), I was doing the Virgin Mary (prayer). There was another prayer I had to recite, and as I was doing this he started to…” Douglas said. This was the first of several incidents in which she was sexually abused at the boarding school by men of the cloth.
At this point, Douglas had been emotionally abused, mentally abused, physically abused, sexually abused and now spiritual abuse had entered her life. She was not yet 8 years old.
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