Drugs at 4 months. Sexual abuse as a child. Now he fights to keep the monster inside – The Star
Gabriel Smarch shared his story: that of a victim who repeatedly cried for help and was ignored, and the story of a victim becoming a violent abuser, a cycle that is far too common in Indigenous communities.
Oct. 14, 2017
WHITEHORSE—His mother puts the painkillers in the 4-month-old’s milk bottle to stop his crying and make him sleep. And he does — so quietly that she may have forgotten he was even there. She disappears that December night in 1978 and never comes back.
By the time his grandparents find him, the infant is alone, unconscious, the codeine eating through his stomach lining.
The emergency surgery in Edmonton marks the beginning of 39-year-old Gabriel Smarch’s 2,000-page government case history.
