This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language, along with references to sexual assault.

Listener discretion is advised.

Why? Why were they trying to escape?

You know, why would a seven-year-old or an 11-year-old set out in the ocean and an open boat in the middle of the winter?

It's clear that the children understood that they didn't want to be there

and there was a reason why.

Yeah. that they didn't want to be there and there was a reason why. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a non-fiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right.

And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects

has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported

on notorious true crime cases. This is about the choices writers make,

both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

Cooper Island is a remarkable podcast. An investigation into one of Canada's most notorious so-called Indian residential schools.

Journalist Duncan McHugh explores the unsolved death of a student,

a tragedy that sheds light on rampant abuse and exposes the trauma of three survivors.

A trigger warning, we talk about suicide in this episode.

When people ask you what the podcast is about, in the elevator pitch, really simple terms here, what do you say that Cooper Island is about?

When people ask, I tell them it's about four kids.

I tell them it's about four kids that attended a school, an Indian

residential school. Three of them survived and one didn't. It is about a long, long history in our country.

...