Years of abuse in Cambridge Bay group home went ignored, lawsuit alleges

WARNING: This story discusses the physical and sexual abuse of children.

On a dusty plot of land in the western Arctic community of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, sits a slightly out-of-place modern looking building full of government offices. 

Though Paul has lived his entire 50 or so years in the remote community of 1,500, he's never been inside.

"It's the only building I haven't stepped foot in," he told CBC News. "I won't."

Decades ago, long before the shiny new government building, this was the site of the Cambridge Bay group foster home, a place at the heart of a disturbing civil lawsuit between nine former residents of the home and the governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut and the Attorney General of Canada.

Paul — not his real name — is one of eight plaintiffs who allege they were sexually assaulted and beaten for years while in the care of the couple who ran the home in the 1970s and '80s. The couple, Walter and Annie Pokiak, are now dead. A separate plaintiff says she was later assaulted by a fellow resident while the home was operated by another couple.

Together they are suing the government of the Northwest Territories, which was responsible for the administration of the home, and the federal government who funded it, for $11 million in damages.

None of the allegations have been proven in court. 

The case was first filed in 2018 in the Nunavut Court or Justice. The plaintiffs, two men and seven women, lived in the home for various amounts of time from 1975 to 1993. 

Five years after filing the case, they're still waiting for a resolution. 

Paul said he lived in the home for "about five or six years" around 1980 and suffered both sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the Pokiaks.

CBC spoke with five plaintiffs for this story and is using a pseudonym for Paul. That's because a court order prohibits anyone from publishing the name of the plaintiffs, who were minors at the time of the alleged events.

Paul described how he was swept up into foster care while walking outside after midnight. At the time, he said, his parents were working at the DEW Line site and had left the two children in the care of siblings.

"There was this social worker vehicle, it was a van. [The social worker] put me in the back of one of the vehicles. I was about 11 or 12 years of age."