‘I got paddled a lot’: former student shares allegations of abuse at Saskatoon Christian school

Jillian Kudryk couldn’t say how many times she was physically disciplined while she attended Christian Centre Academy.

That number would exponentially increase, she said, if it included other forms of punishment like isolation from classmates.

“I got paddled a lot,” Kudryk said.

Kudryk is one of 18 former students of Saskatoon’s Christian Centre Academy — now Legacy Christian Academy — who have filed claims of criminal assault against the school.

In piece from CBC, where the allegations were first reported, other former students alleged abuses like a “violent exorcism” intended to “cure” a student of being gay.

Kudryk’s experiences weren’t quite so severe, but have still left the 31-year-old nail esthetician with feelings of anger when she looks back on how she was allegedly treated as a child and teen.

Scared and sad to leave her friends, Kudryk said she first started attending the Christian school in Grade 2, after her dad saw students from the school behaving politely at a Subway. She stayed there until she finished ninth grade.

Kudryk said she remembers one good teacher she had in Grade 4.

After that, she said, it all went downhill.

Kudryk called the school “very controlling,” and remembered her and other students being kept “isolated in their cubicles” during the school day.

“We weren’t able to really speak with anyone,” she said.

It was normal for students to have to correct their own schoolwork, she said, but there were consequences for those who got it wrong.

“You’d be put in a cubicle, you’d do your schoolwork, you’d go up, you’d correct your schoolwork,” Kudryk explained. “Let’s say you got five or more wrong that you accidentally marked right or something. They would consider that cheating.”

If a student earned that label, Kudryk said they would be sent to the principal’s office to be paddled.

“I would actually wear period pads on my butt to soak up the pain,” Kudryk said.

She said she could get away with that thanks to the extremely conservative dress code students were required to abide by. Female students would have to wear gowns that reached their ankles, Kudryk said, with a t-shirt or long sleeve shirt underneath. Skirts, also ankle-length, and black wedge heels were introduced in high school.

The dress code extended to church activities, which consumed most evenings and weekends, Kudryk said. There, t-shirts could only be worn if the neckline wasn’t lower than two fingers below the collarbone and no crop tops were allowed.

At one point, Kudryk said she received a baggy pair of University of Saskatchewan sweatpants for a Christmas gift. She got in trouble for wearing them to school because the “U of S” printed on the behind “attracted guys to look at my butt.”

Students also had to behave according to a code of conduct, Kudryk recalled.

Once, she tried to dye her hair brown but it turned out closer to black in colour. Kudryk said she was accused at school of “going goth and emo” because of it.

Kudryk said her parents went along with what the church and school did because they believed what was being taught was right.

“I believe they were so brainwashed by the church,” she said, noting that her parents had received a manual from the church that had been made by the pastor about how to raise and discipline their kids.

The school also frowned on students spending time with non-Christians outside of school, Kudryk said. That would have included Kudryk’s cousins, who were the reason she first started to question what she was dealing with at Christian Centre Academy. They didn’t go to the school, but did attend Sunday School with Kudryk sometimes. She said she’d tell her cousins what was happening, and they’d tell her that things like getting paddled at school weren’t normal.

Kudryk said it was then that she became more critical of the things that she was experiencing and seeing at school. When something weird would happen, she would voice to friends that something wasn’t right. She said she started getting in more trouble at school around that time.

The school even had a meeting with her parents to alert them that Kudryk should not be spending time with her cousins, she said.

“They were a bad influence on me, and it was only because they were making me question what was going on,” Kudryk commented.

Though many students did get punished, Kudryk said there were certain students who never seemed to get in trouble. They were the same students who were the most overt about their faith.

“They ran to the front at church and were dancing and singing and screaming for God,” Kudryk recalled. “They were also the ones who kissed everyone else’s butts.”

Kudryk wasn’t unfamiliar with Christian beliefs before attending the school, and came from a home where both her parents were Christians, but she said the behaviour of the school encompassed what the pastor of Saskatoon Christian Centre — now Mile 2 Church — believed, and not necessarily what the Bible teaches.

“I still believe in God; I don’t necessarily go to church anymore,” Kudryk said. “I guess it has pushed me away from wanting to go to church and do stuff like that.”

The former student said she was at the school for “too long” when her parents finally pulled her out at the end of Grade 9.

“I was thinking about running away from home just to get away from it,” she said.

Kudryk was finally transferred to Bishop James Mahoney School, located close by, after she wasn’t allowed to play on the volleyball team anymore. The school told her parents it was because Kudryk didn’t know her position, but she earned a captaincy on the team at her new school after transferring.

Now a mother herself, Kudryk said her two children are enrolled in a Catholic school, where she’s glad they can learn about God without the same negative experiences she had.

According to a statement from the Government of Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Education was made aware of a police investigation regarding historical allegations from former students of Legacy Christian Academy through a letter.

“The Government of Saskatchewan is committed to ensuring that all students feel safe, protected and respected in our schools and our communities,” the statement read.

“Ensuring everyone has access to a safe, welcoming and inclusive learning environment is a priority in our provincial education plan.”

650 CKOM has reached out to the school for comment.