Camperville Exposed

Page 14

Alfred James Sutherland and Estherine Sutherland (nee Simpson) have a difficult story to tell, a story they've been waiting for at least two decades to recount.

It's a story of loss, of painful separation and of theft.

Tucked just off the main road leading into this small Métis community of about 300 people lies the modest Sutherland home where a group of men, women and children wait inside.

On the walls of the Sutherland's living room are photos of their seven children at varying stages of their childhood and later adulthood. The pictures have a peculiar haunting quality because all seven children were taken by Child and Family Services in 1976, setting in motion a chain of circumstances that plagues the entire family to this day.

"I was at home one afternoon when there was a knock on the door and this woman came in and said she was here to take the children," said Estherine. "I was shocked, speechless, felt sick to my stomach and didn't know what was going on," said Estherine. "The next thing I know we're all in a car heading to Swan River where they told me the kids would have to stay awhile until they investigated things."

The 60-year-old Métis woman said the Child and Family Services worker told her the children were being apprehended because of allegations that her husband had been drinking. Sutherland said she was told not to return home and to stay with her parents.

A few days later the worker returned and asked her to sign a permission form allowing the children to receive vaccination and other medical examinations, to which she consented. It was only months later that she learned the forms were really release forms giving up custody of her children to the Children's Aid Society.

For Alfred the day has haunted him like a ghost for more than two decades. Neighbors say the 70-year-old tradesman, who has never been unemployed a day of his life, lost the warm, easy smile they had come to know him for on that fateful day.

"I remember coming home from work and finding the house was empty. That was strange, but I thought maybe they had all gone into town to shop or something." But when the sun set and the house darkened, Alfred said he felt a big knot start to build in the pit of his stomach.

"Something just wasn't right and then I got a call from a neighbor saying that someone had come to the house and taken all my kids."

The difficulty in revisiting that day sweeps over the weathered face of Alfred Sutherland. He excuses himself and leaves the room.

Of the seven children taken by Child and Family Services, three have found their way back to the parents and the home they loved so dearly. Three other children ended up adopted by couples in the United States. All three have become victims, in turn, as adults, and undoubtedly as a result of the trauma of being wrenched away from the only lives they had ever known and the only place they ever really belonged - with their family. Two of those three children are living on the mean streets of New Orleans, homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol, according to the third sibling, Wilfred Allan Sutherland (Scotty Meyers) who languishes in Angola State Prison where he is serving a 149-year sentence for attempted murder and attempted robbery - crimes to which he maintains his innocence. One other child remains unaccounted for, his whereabouts and fate unknown.

"They told lies about me and my wife, said I was a drinker, that Estherine didn't keep a clean house and that the kids were being neglected, but that wasn't true at all," said Alfred.

Long time neighbors confirmed that the Sutherlands provided a warm, loving home for their brood and that there was always food on the table, warm clothes for the children, and a safe place to lay their heads at night.

"They' re both hard workers and warm, loving parents. There was never any trouble over there. It was just an excuse to take the kids from them," shared one neighbor.

Alfred admits to taking a beer after a hard day's wrk, but never to excess. But for years he was plagued by guilt, thinking he had been the cause of the loss of his children.

"You'd see other people, non -Indians, having a drink, way more than a drink or two, and nobody came to take their kids. It was like, if you were Indian you were evil or bad somehow for having a drink."

A happy family of nine had been reduced to two in a matter of minutes that day and nothing would be the same again.

Laurie, 10, Margaret, 8, Florence, 7, Angela, 6, Alex James, 5, Wilfred Allan, 4, and Sandra, 3, all vanished that afternoon, taken from everything they had known, - a father, mother, friends, relatives, and their community.

Angola State Prison - infamous as "the farm" and one of the world's toughest prisons - is the present home of William Alfred Sutherland who is serving a 149-year sentence for attempted murder and robbery.

Scotty Meyers, his adopted name, said he has been living in the United States since he was spirited away from his natural family and adopted by a U.S. couple at only four years old.

He found his parents again only by accident when he found their number through a directory assistance call.

Despite being the second youngest child of the seven Sutherland children, Scotty said he can still remember his life in Camperville, surrounded by his siblings and a loving family. And he also remembers in startling detail the day he and two sisters arrived in the United States to be met at the airport by people who greeted him as his new parents.

"These people came up to me and said 'Hi, we're your new mom and dad.' I was really scared, 'cause I knew who my real mom and dad were. My sisters ended up in Louisiana, too, but with different parents. I remember being really afraid and wondering what had happened to my family and to my parents for this to be happening."

While the Meyers family provided obvious material and social advantages, Scotty said they told him his real parents had not loved him, that they had given him p for adoption and that they had not cared for him or his sisters properly.

"It really hurt to hear that and tore me up inside. I had nightmares about it. I guess that even as a kid though, you sense when something's not right, thats something's wrong."

Scotty's life was made all the more difficult by the fact that his adopted parents had no other children.

"It was really lonely. I came from a big, loving family and suddenly I was alone, didn't have other kids to play with in the neighborhood."

Another Camperville child who was scooped in the '70s confirmed Scotty's story. Michael Clayton Sutherland, a second-cousin, also ended up in Louisiana and remembers Scotty from occasional gatherings their adoptive families would hold for the children.

"Scotty was really lonely, like we all were, I guess. We all knew somehow that we didn't belong there, but my adopted parents were different, I guess, because they told me right from the start where I was really from. In Scotty's case, his adopted parents wanted him to think the worst about his family. . . . They were told those lies by the adoption agency who arranged the whole thing. Scotty and I sort of hung around when we were kids, but later on we kinda drifted apart. You know, like kids do sometimes."

Both Scotty and Michael agree that life as a Métis in Louisiana was rife with discrimination at the hands of a predominantly white society that regards blacks and "breeds" as something less than equal.

"You gotta understand that people would look at us and call us "niggers" or "half-breeds" cause of the color of our skin," recounts Michael.

That sense of racism combined with the alienation from their natural families and culture served to force both boys to seek refuge with other perceived "social outcasts" on the streets of New Orleans.

New Orleans is a tough town. You have to be street-wise and hang together or people are going to come after you and either rip you off or hurt you so you try to find someone else to hang wih that can back you up.

Michael said his adopted parents provided a warm, loving environment where he was encouraged to stay in school, but he remembers Scotty's parents as being more aloof and far less loving.

"I only met them a couple of times, but Scotty would say the big house he lived in was lonely."

It's a theme repeated by Scotty himself who says he wasn't allowed to play outside like other children, or to make any of the usual boisterous noises a young boy makes.

"All I can tell you is that I didn't fit in there. I don't know why they (the Meyers) wanted kids. It's like they didn't have any idea of what it meant to be a kid and what a kid needs to be happy."

While Scotty did attend school, by his teens he started to hang with other kids who also felt they existed on the fringes of society.

"I got into the usual trouble but never anything too serious, you know, bustin' stuff, some nickle-and-dime theft but never anything to get me into any real trouble."

While Scotty's home life was anything but great, the young man managed to become fully trained at a technical school as a welder working in the shipyards and dock that are off the Louisiana port city.

"I'm really proud that I learned a trade and was good at it. I was building a life, I guess, but I still hung around from time to time with some characters. I was doing some drugs, drinking and the like, but always showed up for work. You know, it was mostly recreational stuff. That's the culture down there, and growing up surrounded by it, I learned it too, I guess."

But in 1996, Scotty's life took a sharp turn for the worse when two friend picked him up to visit another acquaintance one evening.

"These guys said we were going to visit another guy, 16-year-old Christopher Rouse, who owed [his friend] $100 and that we would go out from there and party."

However when Scotty joined his friends at Rouse's house, the evening turned into a nightmare when Rouse said he didn't have the money after all.

"They started b