Bullying is not good, even if some people get a rush of dopamine out of that sort of thing.

"'Donald Neconie was 10 when an older student at Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Okla., began attacking him.

The 17-year-old — nicknamed 'The Big Guy' — crept into his bunk bed in a dorm room.

'I felt a hand on my mouth, and the next thing I know, he took off my underclothes and molested me,' Neconie said. It happened 'almost every night' for years to him and at least three other boys, Neconie said.

'He’d turn us over and bury our heads and do this,' he said.

One night after drinking a bottle of stolen vodka, Neconie and the other boys got up the courage to tell a matron about the abuse. She said she’d 'look into it,' Neconie recalled. But later that day, the local sheriff came and got him and the other victims. He took them to a jail, where they were forced to stay the night.

'We ratted on him, and we became the prisoners,' Neconie said. The next day, Neconie and the other boys were taken back to the boarding school in handcuffs.

'That jailing was to teach us and others a lesson — ‘keep your mouth shut,’' Neconie said.

As far as Neconie knows, 'The Big Guy' was never charged."

For decades, Neconie used the internet to track the man. In the mid-1990s, he saw him in person at a powwow in Maryland. The man sat at a drum, and the two made eye contact.

'He knew me,' Neconie recalled. 'He glanced at me and then never looked at me again.'

His attacker has since died, but the nightmares remain for Neconie."

~ Dana Hedgpeth

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/08/07/indian-boarding-school-survivors-abuse-trauma/