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This message was originally circulated by email on December 13, 2022.
By Peter Tatsuo Wallace.
Dear Community Members
This is a 2022 year-end message from the Project Office of the Healing Fund for Japanese Canadians who are addressing the abuse legacy of Mr. Nakayama. Please share this message with your community members. There are an estimated 1000+ survivors and survivor family members (relatives of those who were abused by Mr. Nakayama) living across Canada and we want everyone to be given the option to accept support from the Healing Fund. We are grateful to have been able to do so much work this year with survivors, their families, and the greater community. We thank the Anglican Church for acknowledging their responsibility to provide healing to those harmed by Mr. Nakayama, and for their financial support for the Healing Fund for Japanese Canadians. The Healing Fund is engaged with several healing efforts and our goal is to share these with the community as widely as possible to empower impacted community members with the option of receiving support. We will meet you where you are and support you as much as we can. That’s the purpose of the Healing Fund for Japanese Canadians.
Programs
The Healing Fund offers three main programs for support. To receive support, an application is required. We can support you in your application or put you in touch with a counsellor to help you through your application as these forms can be challenging to complete.
Counselling Support Up to $200/session; no current limit on sessions. *For survivors and their families to address primary and secondary / intergenerational traumas. In-person, telehealth, other forms of counselling can be accepted. Deadline: Contact us or apply before September, 2026. Click here for a link to the application page.
Education Grants Up to $10,000. *For survivors and their families to address primary and secondary / intergenerational traumas. Eligibility: for current students including those who were undertaking an education program, retroactive to June 15, 2015. University, college, vocational programs, etc. are accepted education programs. Deadline: December 31, 2022; April 30, 2023; August 31, 2023; etc. Click here for a link to the application page.
Community Healing Initiatives Up to $10,000. Open to the community to address community healing from community trauma. Funding can go towards a number of initiatives, including healing circles. Deadline: Contact us or apply before September, 2026. Click here for a link to the application page.
*Survivors are individuals who were sexually abused by Mr. Nakayama. Survivor family members are the families of survivors including, but not limited to, siblings of survivors and their descendants.
Confidentiality
All personal identifying information is kept confidential. For more information on how the Project Office will keep your information secure please contact Peter at the Project Office at anglicanhealingfund@najc.ca.
Two Important Definitions
Clergy Sexual Abuse (affects survivors):
A betrayal of trust, by overt and/or covert sexual contact or act which may include touching or non-touching; verbal seduction or abuse; anal or vaginal intercourse; oral sex; manual stimulation; direct or implied threats or other forms of abuse by a person believed to have religious and spiritual authority or power; including a minister, priest, bishop, nun, rabbi, elder, guru, or any other spiritual teacher or guide against another person under that guidance or authority.
Intergenerational trauma / secondary victims (affects family members of survivors):
People who were not the immediate recipients of sexual abuse, but suffered peripheral consequences of the abuse.
Timeline
1930s / 1940s / 1950s / 1960s / 1970s / 1980s / 1990s / 2000s / 2010s / 2020s
1930s-1980s: Mr. Nakayama takes advantage of his position as a priest of the Anglican Church and sexually abuses approximately 300 male children, including members of the Japanese Canadian and Caucasian Canadian communities. He travels to dozens of countries to preach, covering six continents during these sixty years. In 1952 he is caught abusing a child in Okinawa and sent home in disgrace, but allowed to keep his position as a priest. A full timeline is available on our website.
2015: The Anglican Church of Canada issues an apology to the Japanese Canadian community for not acting on a written confession from Mr. Nakayama in 1995.
2021: In a follow-up to the 2015 apology, the Healing Fund for Japanese Canadians is established with $610,000 from the Anglican Church of Canada.
The project is given a 5-year timeline (Sept ‘21 - Sept ‘26).
(Sept) 2021 / 2022 / 2023 / 2024 / 2025 / 2026 (Sept)
A community feedback form was created in 2021 to assess the need in the community for the Healing Fund and to receive feedback from the community on our healing initiatives. The feedback form will remain open for two years (Sep ‘21 - Sep ‘23). Respond today to have your voice heard.
2022 Events
(L-R: Peter Wallace, Noël Chun, Clinton Huey, Dr. Satsuki Ina; at the October 15, 2022, community workshop held at Nikkei Centre in Burnaby, BC)
This year the Healing Fund began our activities with a series of community outreach activities for survivors, their families and the community affected by Mr. Nakayama’s abuse.
In June this year we had an online community outreach meeting with guest speaker Dr. Nic Harrison. At this meeting we were able to share with the community that access to counselling support was open for application. Dr. Harrison spoke about his personal experience with clergy sexual abuse as a way for our community to hear a testimony of the lifelong journey of healing. This meeting is available to see on our website. We also have many written testimonies from Japanese Canadian survivors available to read online.
In September and October this year we held several in-person community events directed at different audiences. We held a Gathering of Old Friends event for survivors of abuse that was directed towards older members of our community. This event was a follow-up to requests to gather made during 2017-2018 meetings. Those who were able to make the journey to Vancouver for this event engaged in a social weekend with one another and members of the Project Office.
Later in October the Project Office held a workshop event with Dr. Satsuki Ina (pictured above). At this event we spoke openly for the first time as a community and shared with one another the way we have all been impacted by this history of abuse. Joining with us at the event were siblings, children, grandchildren and friends of survivors. We were also joined by community members who recognized that Mr. Nakayama’s abuses against hundreds of children impacted the who Japanese Canadian community.
A Successful Year
The first application forms for counselling support were received and reviewed this year. Members of survivor families from Vancouver to Toronto and Montreal now accessing counselling services. The Healing Fund recognizes that many survivors and their family members have never been given the space to speak openly about their experiences. In fact, in the past this discussion was largely hushed-up and silenced. This area for support gives a voice back to survivors and their children, grandchildren, etc. to speak openly with a professional of their choosing. Couples counselling and family counselling can be covered.
The first round of education grants were distributed in September, 2022, with grants being distributed across the country for a wide variety of educational endeavours. This is one of the ways we are respecting the families impacted by Mr. Nakayama’s abuse, and providing support to address intergenerational trauma. We are approaching the next semester deadline for the second round of education grants, which ends December 31, 2022. Please submit your education grant application before December 31, 2022. This round of grants will be reviewed and awarded during the Spring semester in 2023. Grants are awarded each semester (three times per year).
Community Healing Initiatives is the third project area for the Healing Fund. This area of healing support is dedicated to providing community healing for community trauma, as the abuse of Mr. Nakayama had a deep impact on communities that involved secrecy, lies, loyalty, and the abuse of power. We have had one application received funding so far and are engaged with other communities about their project ideas. The first funded community healing initiative is a regional book club that will use written literature as a way to start a conversation on trauma and healing. More information on this initiative, and future ones, will be available as projects are implemented.
(Sept) 2021 / 2022 / 2023 / 2024 / 2025 / 2026 (Sept)
More Work Ahead
2023 will be a year spent administering healing support and communicating with Japanese Canadians across Canada. Our goal is to let everyone who may have been impacted by the abuse legacy of Mr. Nakayama know that the Healing Fund exists and with that knowledge give everyone the agency to seek healing support. We will meet you where you are and support you up to a level you are comfortable with. Not everyone wants to engage with this past trauma but it is important that we respect all members of the community and give everyone the opportunity to make their own choice.
Anglican Church Archives
2023 will also be a year spent working more closely with the Anglican Church of Canada, specifically the Diocese of New Westminster and the Diocese of Calgary regarding the community request for access to their archives. Some of you may recall at the October 15, 2022, event I (Peter) made an announcement that the Project Office was expecting archives to arrive “any day” from the Diocese of Calgary as documents were located, scanned, and ready to send. That commitment has not been fulfilled and the timeline has been changed from 1-2 days for arrival to an indeterminate timeline while the Diocese discusses the transfer internally. No records have been released to us from the archives in either Diocese in the past year. We will continue working with both the Diocese of New Westminster and the Diocese of Calgary in the coming year.
Want to learn more about Community Healing Initiatives?
Join an information session and Q&A on January 11, 2023
11am PT / 3pm PT / 6pm PT
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
When: Jan 11, 2023 11:00 AM Vancouver Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0oc-GhrzotHNYjD9ghJg6vq0KfQwzmbuU- When: Jan 11, 2023 03:00 PM Vancouver Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElcOCvpjsoGNMlLaqJUGpBhODC98A9M66q When: Jan 11, 2023 06:00 PM Vancouver Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lc-2trTsjGNdqzel1eSyAr7gx5lU5jx-q
Happy Holidays to you, your family and your community! Peter Tatsuo Wallace On Behalf of the Members of the Project Office Healing Fund for Japanese Canadians anglicanhealingfund@najc.ca
