From the moment they arrived at residential school, students were taught that discipline and obedience were the two most highly prized virtues they could demonstrate. They were taught that they were to obey the people who held authority over them, not only because those people were older and stronger, but also because they were ‘godly.’ Students also were introduced to a new set of spiritual and cultural practices and values. This was a highly stressful and difficult experience for most students. The isolated nature of residential schools also left the children particularly vulnerable to sexual predators. Although no staff member was prosecuted or convicted for abusing students at residential schools during this period (from 1867 to 1939), it is clear that such abuse took place.
The term child sexual abuse did not come into common use until the 1970s, but it was discussed under a variety of euphemisms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Moral corruption,” “immorality,” “molestation,” and “outrage,” for example, could all be terms for sexual abuse.1 There were provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code of 1892 for the prosecution of those who sexually abused children. All sexual relations and attempts to have sexual relations with individuals under fourteen years of age were outlawed. (An exception was made in the case of spouses under the age of fourteen.) It was also a crime to seduce “any girl of previously chaste character” who was under the age of sixteen, or to seduce “or have an illicit relationship” with a ward. The Criminal Code also provided for the prosecution of rape and indecent assault (which was undefined in legislation, but generally prosecuted as non-consensual sexual contact). It was not possible to use consent as a defence in the case of charges of indecent assault of individuals under the age of fourteen. The Criminal Code also contained provisions outlawing acts of gross indecency between males. Although the Criminal Code did not define “acts of gross indecency,” the law was used to prosecute cases of same-sex rape and pedophilia, and consensual sexual relations between men.2
The federal government, having criminalized these activities, obviously was aware they could occur. It would also have been apparent that children in institutional settings were vulnerable to abuse. Although the churches and charitable orders that operated orphanages and industrial homes often were seen as being above criticism, there were reported incidents of the abuse of children in these institutions. For example, the reformatory in Citeaux, France, which Roman Catholic Bishop Vital Grandin thought could serve as a model for Canadian residential schools, was thrown into crisis in 1888, when a seventeen-year-old runaway accused the staff of brutality and sexual abuse. In total, fifteen members of the religious order responsible for that institution were charged with indecent assault against minors, indecent assault, and aggravated assault.3 The scandal led to the closing of the institution in 1888.4
A review of the records makes it clear that sexual abuse of students occurred during this period. When allegations of abuse were brought forward by students, parents, staff, or former staff, government and church officials often did not report the matter to the police. Frequently, investigations amounted to little more than seeking out and accepting the denials of the accused school official. Even when government and church officials concluded that the allegations were accurate, they were more likely to simply fire the perpetrator than bring in the police. In some cases, individuals whose predatory behaviour was recognized were allowed to remain at the schools, which provided them with continued opportunities to abuse children.
Many of these troubling elements surfaced in the handling of the case of Jean L’Heureux, who, in the 1880s, simultaneously worked as a translator for Indian Affairs and as a recruiter for the Roman Catholic industrial school at High River in what is now Alberta. By then, L’Heureux had a long and complicated history with the Oblate order.5
In the 1860s, L’Heureux sought to work for the Oblates at a mission near present-day Edmonton.6 According to one Oblate report, L’Heureux had been asked to leave the Lac La Biche mission in the 1860s for making sexual overtures to young First Nations boys.7 After being discovered in a sexual act that outraged the Oblates, L’Heureux was sent away from the mission with a group of Blackfoot people travelling to Montana. He spent much of the following two decades in the West among the Blackfoot, often falsely passing himself off as an Oblate or Jesuit. He served as a translator for the Blackfoot during the negotiation of Treaty 7 and also signed the Treaty as a witness.8
In his travels, he crossed paths with Oblate priest Albert Lacombe and is credited with having saved Lacombe’s life. He also served Lacombe as a translator.9 In 1881, he was hired by Indian Affairs to work as a translator.10 Three years later, he began recruiting students for the High River school. Given his understanding of Aboriginal languages and the length of time he had lived among First Nations people, he was the school’s most effective recruiter. He also began to take children into his own home to prepare them for admission to the High River school. In 1891, the Anglican missionary at Blackfoot Crossing, John Tims, accused L’Heureux, who was still a government employee, of “getting Indian boys into his house for the purpose of practising immorality of a most beastly type.” Tims said the allegation was based on information provided to him by Blackfoot Chief White Pup. In making this allegation to Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed, Tims wrote, “I daresay you will remember that I mentioned to you in 1886 that I thought something of the kind was going on.”11 Faced with the prospect of dismissal, L’Heureux resigned. Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet informed Reed that the department was choosing to treat the matter as a resignation, adding, “Possibly it would not be necessary to state the cause which led to the same.”12 The affair brought L’Heureux’s career as a school recruiter to an end, and he was forced to seek shelter with Father Lacombe, who let him serve as his cook at his retreat at Pincher Creek.13 From the records, it does not appear that the police were ever asked to investigate whether laying criminal charges would be appropriate.
Despite their knowledge that L’Heureux had attempted in the past to sexually abuse Aboriginal children in one of their own missions, the Oblates chose to put him in charge of recruiting and transporting students to one of their schools. Their dependence on his skills as a recruiter led them to make decisions that placed children at risk. The government appears not to have taken action on the first complaint, made in 1886. When the second complaint was lodged, the government did not undertake a criminal investigation. Instead, it simply forced L’Heureux’s resignation. In both cases, it is clear that church and school officials placed the interests of their own organizations ahead of those of the students L’Heureux victimized.
In 1897, a former staff member made allegations of improper behaviour against the principal of the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school. Ellen Applegarth described Principal J. F. Fairlie’s conduct with the older girls at the school as “incredible.” She was particularly concerned about four girls whom he “behaves with more like a man void of all propriety.” She provided a detailed list of dates on which Fairlie had been observed engaging in inappropriate behaviour with female students between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. In one case, she suggested that two of the girls had spent the morning in Fairlie’s office “receiving his caresses.” In other cases, the principal had been seen in the school with his arm around the waist of one or another of the girls. To her, this was “a most undignified sight.” Fairlie, she said, was also “in the habit of going into the girls dormitories when they were undressing and preparing for bed and on several occasions remained so long that the girls were obliged to make their preparations for bed in his presence.”
When she had questioned him about this, his explanation was that he had gone into the dormitory to turn down the heat and had merely stayed to ensure that the room cooled down. On another occasion, he entered the dormitory without knocking at a time when several of the girls were “with out clothing.” She also said he was in the habit of kissing some of the girls good night. “It was,” she wrote, “the joke amongst the girls that Mary Hall never went to sleep untill [sic] Mr. Fairlie had gone in and kissed her when all the other girls were asleep.”14 Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget did not contact Applegarth to discuss or verify her concerns. Instead, he sent a copy of her allegations to Fairlie, who termed them “tissue of falsehood & untruths,” the product of Applegarth’s spite at being dismissed from the school two months earlier. He said Applegarth had taken “acts & circumstances which are daily occurrences in every family almost and while making no charge of improper conduct on them she endeavors by innuendo to suggest the idea that the conduct was improper.”15 Forget accepted Fairlie’s version of the story, although, in a letter to Indian Affairs Minister Clifford Sifton, he noted that a portion of Fairlie’s defence was in fact “a qualified admission of certain of the statements made by Miss Applegarth.” However, he concluded that these acts, “however imprudent they might be, had been free of any criminal intention.”16
Apparently, Fairlie remained imprudent. Two years later, the St. Peter’s Band Council submitted a petition complaining about Fairlie’s behaviour. A new Indian commissioner, David Laird, held two days of closed hearings at the school, one in the Indian commissioner’s office, and one in the town of Selkirk.17 Several of the girls, including three of the girls Applegarth had named as Fairlie’s favourites, testified that the principal had been in the habit of coming into their dormitory at night and kissing them. In his defence, Fairlie stated he did not do this every night. “I have not kissed any one in particular more than twelve times on an average, and when I kissed them it was in a sympathetic way and in order to quiet restless, or sleepless, or surly moods.”18 This time, the defence did him little good, and he was dismissed.19
At the Presbyterian school at Shoal Lake in northwestern Ontario, girls complained in 1911 to the assistant matron that the principal had them “put their hands under his clothing and [play] with his breasts.” It was also stated that he was in the habit of kissing some of the older female students. The convenor of the Presbyterian Church Foreign Missions Committee, R. P. McKay, conducted an investigation. A former staff member informed him that there were “things even more unpleasant” going on.20 However, the principal remained in office. The complaints and the investigation do not appear to have been reported to Indian Affairs.
In 1916, former student Mary Sandoval wrote a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Valley Journal, outlining the sexual abuse she said she had witnessed and experienced while she was a student at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, five years earlier. She said the problems arose when, due to the illness of the principal, a staff member was given authority over the school. She said Fuller took to entering the girls’ dormitory at night and the kitchen in the early morning.
I find him with some girls in bad conditiones [sic], so I do my best to keep away, same is other girls that refuse to go.
One day I was in the Bath Room neckiet [sic] when [name redacted] come after me, start to handle my body, but I ran and halloo till make him go away.
When she turned thirteen, she said, the same man had raped her and then abducted her, keeping her as if she were a prisoner. He let her go when her stepmother asked to see her. She wrote that the treatment she received had destroyed her health.21 Rather than publish the allegations, the newspaper forwarded them to Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott. By then, the man in question was principal of the school, and Scott asked him for a response.
He denied the allegations, saying they were motivated by Sandoval’s husband, who was angry that the Shingwauk Home had refused to readmit Mary to the school. He said that while she had been a student at the school, she had become pregnant. It was for this reason that she had been originally discharged.22
Scott informed the principal that he found his response to the charges “quite satisfactory.” He said his request for an explanation had been “actuated by a desire to protect you.” With that, he pronounced the matter closed.23 As with the initial charges against Fairlie, the investigation went no further than an inquiry to the principal—the very person under suspicion of wrongdoing.
Principal W. McWhinney’s handling of the behaviour of the farm instructor at the Presbyterian school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, precipitated a crisis in 1914. The farmhand, H. Everett, confessed to McWhinney that he had been “having unlawful intercourse with some of the girls in his room.” His confession was not sparked by bad conscience, but by the knowledge that a co-worker had discovered this. Everett’s behaviour clearly merited a police investigation. However, instead of calling in the police, McWhinney told Everett to leave town on that night’s train. The principal chose this course of action because he did not feel up to the strain of an investigation into the affair. He viewed Everett as “a well meaning young man who had fallen in a time of weakness and to prosecute him would only ruin his life and give publicity to a matter that I hoped might otherwise be kept quiet.”24 It was not possible to keep the matter quiet, however. Students complained to their parents, who in turn complained to the Indian agent. A warrant was issued for Everett’s arrest but, by then, he had fled the area. According to Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham:
The Indians think that Mr. McWhinney had no right whatever to allow Mr. Everett to escape punishment for the offences with which he is charged. They think Mr. McWhinney should have been the first to see that he was punished, and say that if he had reported the matter to the Agent they believe he would not have been allowed to go unpunished.
Graham could only agree with the parents’ assessment of the situation.25 In September 1914, Duncan Campbell Scott recommended to the Presbyterian Church that it send McWhinney “at an early date to some other field of work,” since he had lost the confidence of the First Nations people.26 The Kamsack school remained in operation, with McWhinney as principal, until the end of November 1915, when it was closed.27
This case underscores the important point that, by 1914, government and church officials were well aware that notifying the police was a key element in an appropriate response to allegations of a staff member sexually abusing a student at a residential school. Despite this, no official policy was issued in relation to this question. In coming years, church and government officials would continue to dismiss staff rather than call in the police.
In 1924 in Saskatchewan, an officer with the Yorkton Mounted Police detachment investigated why three children living on the Muscowequan (sometimes Muskowekwan) Reserve had failed to return to the Lestock school after a vacation. The oldest of the children, a sixteen-year-old girl, told him she was reluctant to return because “improper advances were made to her by Father Poulette.” The investigating officer concluded that since the family was “half-breed” and not Treaty Indians, he should “report these circumstances before taking any action.”28 Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham wrote to Scott about the matter, complaining that “you have not dealt with the serious part of the Constable’s report: i.e.—the charges against Father Poulette.”29 In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate evidence of any further investigation into this matter. Principal J. Poulet (his name was misspelled in both the police report and Graham’s letter) continued as school principal until 1932.30
In 1930, Birtle, Manitoba, school principal H. B. Currie was reported by officials of the Presbyterian Church to have been “honourably acquitted at his recent trial.”31 It was the opinion of Presbyterian Church official H. R. Horne that the charges of “immoral conduct” against Currie were “absolutely groundless.” Three of the four charges were not sent to the jury. After acquitting Currie, the jury was reported to have recommended “that an investigation should be made to see who was responsible for starting such absolutely groundless charges.”32 Currie’s successor, J. F. Lockhart, wrote of the event in 1940, saying that two of Currie’s accusers were given prison terms and a third was relieved of her teacher’s certificate.33 In its review of documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could locate no further information on this case.
In some cases, it appears that the Roman Catholic Oblates had internal conflicts over how members of the order who violated its moral codes—and possibly the law—ought to be treated. In at least one case, to the displeasure of some members, one of these individuals was provided with accommodation at a residential school. In 1930, W. Byrne Grant reported to a fellow Oblate that “the police have been after [name redacted] for his doings with the Chinese in Vancouver.”34 Later that month, Grant sent a cable to church officials in Rome that read, “Pro honore Eaclesiae revoca [name redacted]” (For the honour of the church recall [name redacted]). He also informed his colleague, “If we get an order to send Father [name redacted] to Europe he will leave by the first train.”35 Rome, however, refused to recall the priest. As a result, he was given “one more trial at Penticton.”36 In 1931, he was listed as one of the order’s “retired Rev. Fathers.”37 The Oblate order was prepared to allow him to live out his retirement at a residential school. In 1932, Father G. Forbes, the principal of the school in Williams Lake, British Columbia, protested the appointment of this individual to his school.
You know what happened to him in a French hotel, when only a speedy retreat saved him from prison; you know about him in Vancouver; you know why Fr. Maillard had him sent away from Mission. Perhaps you do not know that during the retreat he indecently approached another Priest. Were you in my place you would not want one who is a “pest among the children, and causes trouble and perhaps scandal.”
In addition, Forbes said the man was a “genius at picking locks,” and, as a result, “our money and our wine would not be safe.” If he were sent to Williams Lake, Forbes said he would immediately inform the Indian agent and the police of his character.38 This was decisive action on Forbes’s part, and apparently stopped the appointment to Williams Lake.
In 1938, this individual was still in British Columbia and still a concern to Forbes. In a letter to the Oblate leadership, Forbes reported he had heard that the man was going to be sent to the school at Mission. This was the same school from which he had been sent away several years earlier. He reminded the Oblates that in the past, Mission principal Maillard had told the man
that if he spoke to the children he would kick his pants up to his shoulders. He said it with such force that it worked. Father [name redacted] told me that he had asked the Superior General to allow him to return to France and had been told to wait a while. It would be better if he went. A person in the Indian Dept. told me that if it were brought to the attention that he was in an Indian School, the Dept. would raise such objections that we would have to remove him.39
Despite these concerns, the man returned to Mission. At the end of the year, the Mission school principal reported he had had “very little trouble with him so far.”40 He died in 1940.41
Forbes’s comments make it clear that he believed the priest should not be allowed to live at a residential school because he presented a threat to children. They also indicate that an Indian Affairs official believed that if his departmental superiors knew that he was living at a school, they would demand that he leave. Despite this information, the Oblate order allowed him to live at the Mission school. In its review of documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was unable to locate any record of either the Oblates’ or the unnamed Indian Affairs official’s informing senior Indian Affairs officials that the priest was living at the school.
At the end of this period, the type of scandal that Forbes had fretted about overtook the Roman Catholic school at Kuper Island, British Columbia. The ongoing sexual abuse of students at the school came to public attention because of two interrelated factors. The first was the decision of a group of students to run away from the school to avoid further abuse. The second was the decision of the members of the British Columbia Provincial Police, who had been assigned to return the students to the school, to listen to the students and to take their complaints seriously.
On January 9, 1939, two British Columbia Provincial Police officers interviewed two of six boys who had escaped by canoe from the Kuper Island school the day before. Both boys said they did not want to go back to the school because of the way they were treated. One of them said he “was afraid of Father [name redacted], as he has been trying unnatural acts with him, also other boys.” The second boy said he was afraid of one of the fathers at the school. Corporal S. Service wrote, “I would suggest that an investigation be made by the Department of Indian Affairs re the conditions at this school, as I am convinced that things are not as the [sic] should be.” When Service contacted the school, he told Principal J. Geurts (sometimes reported as Geurtz or Guertz) that two of the six boys did not wish to return to the school. When the principal told him he must return the boys, the corporal said he would leave that decision to the Indian agent.42 The parents of all six boys refused to allow their sons to return to the school.43
Over the next few days, Corporal Service interviewed several students and former students. One of the boys who ran away gave the following account as to why he had fled the school.
One day just before Christmas, it was December 23rd, 1938, Father [named redacted] took me out in his boat, we went to the other side of Gabriola Island, he told me to take my pants down in the boat, he anchored the boat and told me to take my pants off as we were going to bed. It was day time, I took them off because if I didn’t he told me he would throw me off the boat into the water, I lay down on the bed, he got into bed beside me, he was playing with my thing, he was trying to put his thing into me, he could not get it in so he asked me to play with his thing. I played with his thing, he told me to pull it back and forward, I had to do it because I could not get away from him, I then started to cry so he left me alone and returned to the school, then we came to Chemainus then we left Chemainus and went to Tent Island, he stopped the boat there again, anchored her, he told me to fix his underwear on, and then he told me to take his cockout [sic], I took it out and he asked me to rub it back and forward again, something came out of it, I then told him that I wanted to get back to the school, we went to the school.44
As the investigation continued, other boys came forward with similar stories about this man, who, although he was not a staff member, lived at the school.45 Complaints also were registered about other staff. One boy, who had been a student at the school until 1934, told the police he had left the school after a “quarrel” with an Oblate staff member. He said that the school baker
came after me and wanted me to take my pants off and he had a bottle of wine and wanted to give me a drink before I took them off, I asked him why he wanted to give me a drink, and he said that it would make me so that I wouldn’t be scared when I took my pants off, I then ran out and started to cry and told him that I would tell the principal about it, he then started hitting me and kept on trying to force me to take my pants off until [the school engineer] got there and asked what was the matter.
According to the boy, the engineer was fired for taking his side in the dispute. The boy said said that, on another occasion, the baker had carried him from the dormitory to his own bedroom. Another former student said that another one of the school employees had exposed himself to the female students and lifted their dresses against their will. In his report, Corporal Service wrote that he would be interviewing other students and former students, saying, “It appears to be common gossip amongst the Indians about the existing conditions at this school.”46 A Sergeant R. Dunn took similar statements from other former students and parents, one of whom had removed his daughter from the school and was described as “very hostile as to the way his boys had been treated.”47
When the police arrived at the home of two of the boys who had run away, they were met by the boys’ father, who approached them carrying a sledgehammer, asking what they wanted of his sons. The father let the police interview the boys, but made it clear he was not letting the boys return to school until conditions changed. If the boys had drowned while escaping the school, he said, he would have gone to Kuper Island and shot every priest. In his report, the inspecting officer wrote, “I feel that had his boys drowned he would have carried out his threat.”48
Indian Affairs officials were not pleased with the way the British Columbia Provincial Police was handling the affair. The department’s expectation was that the police would simply return the runaways to the school. A meeting was arranged between department officials and the deputy commissioner of the police force. Before this meeting, Indian Affairs officials prepared a list that outlined what the department viewed as police failings. In particular: “The Indian Commissioner feels that it was not the duty of either Constable Service or Sergeant Dunne [elsewhere Dunn] to recommend that conditions at the Kuper Island School be investigated before returning the children.”49 Their clear intent going into the meeting was to discredit the police officers and the students and former students. Indian Affairs had to abandon this approach when the police officials presented them with a detailed and explosive report on the problems the officers had identified at the school. In the face of such evidence, the Indian Affairs officials were forced to back down. Indian Affairs school inspector G. H. Barry wrote that the information presented at the meeting “throws a very different light on the whole matter.”
Despite this belated recognition of the seriousness of the issue, Indian Affairs officials still mishandled the situation. Barry was instructed to travel to Kuper Island to conduct an investigation. Prior to leaving, he spoke with Roman Catholic Bishop J. C. Cody, who told him that “arrangements had been made to make a complete change of the male staff at the Kuper Island School BEFORE any mention had been made of an investigation into conditions there.”50 This suggests that the Oblates were aware of their problems at the school and that they had refrained from informing Indian Affairs about those problems.
Prior to his investigation, Barry wrote that although the allegations against Principal Geurts were ‘slight,’ it was appropriate that he be removed as principal, since he had lost the confidence of the parents. Barry suggested that, given the “grave charges made by the children and ex-pupils agains [sic] various members of the school staff … he would be well advised to request his Superior, the Rev. Father Lemmens to send him to Mission Work outside British Columbia.” As for the priest who had taken boys out in the boat, Inspector Barry wrote that it was best if he were
given Mission Work outside of B.C. He would appear to have acted in a rather unwise manner apart from the actions suggested in the Police reports. He may have indulged in excessive drinking, though I have no evidence of a positive kind that this is so. Recruiting would not be aided by his presence in the Province.
Barry also recommended that the school employee alleged to have exposed himself should be fired immediately and given a month’s pay. After considering the police reports, Barry wrote that he could not see “where there was any real evidence that could be produced in a court. I believe that there may be indications of wrong doing by some at the Kuper Island School but I may say that I am just as certain that the statements made to the bc Police are very highly exaggerated.”51
The school quickly acted on Barry’s recommendations. Lemmens and the priest who had taken the boys out in the boat left British Columbia and the school employee was fired. Without consulting with the police, Barry arranged for individuals who were at the centre of a criminal investigation to leave the province.
The director of Indian Affairs, Harold McGill, found himself having to reprimand his staff for their handling of the affair. His letter of January 27, 1939, to Major D. M. MacKay, the Indian commissioner for British Columbia, said that while it was wise to relieve from their duties those against whom serious charges had been made, he did not “think that it was a wise course to suggest that any of them should leave the province.”52 McGill had reason for concern. On February 18, 1939, the deputy attorney general of British Columbia forwarded the student statements to the minister of Indian Affairs, saying that the provincial government was giving active consideration to the prosecution of the main suspects.53 By telling the suspects of this inquiry to leave the province, Indian Affairs had effectively foiled a police investigation into abuse at the school.
Bishop J. C. Cody took the position that the scandal had nothing to do with the school, even though he had previously indicated that it had been his intention to remove all the current male staff from the school. He informed Indian Affairs that
there was one priest, a convert to the church from protestantism, and not a member of the Kuper Staff whose conduct to me at any rate does look quite blameworthy. What view, however, a sane jury would take knowing to what lengths the mendacity Indians can go when pushed on by subversive elements, is an entirely different matter.
He continued:
Though quite cognizant of certain lamentable breaches of morality in connection with individual members of certain public institutions in this province, I have always taken the quiet way in quest of amendment because I fail to see any advantage in ruining an institution because of some individual’s supposed or even real misdeeds.54
The reputations of the school and the church were viewed as being more important than the investigation and prosecution of any wrongdoer. Bishop Cody was correct in stating that the man in question was not a member of the school staff, but he certainly was living at the school and had access to the students.
Indian Affairs Director McGill instructed British Columbia Indian Commissioner D. M. MacKay to undertake a new inquiry. In his report, MacKay noted that since 1931, the school had been inspected on an almost annual basis. The inspections were described as “thorough” and had led to a number of improvements, particularly in diet. However, according to MacKay, the school inspector had never received any complaints of any sort at any time from students or staff.
He also reported that it had been common practice for the priest whom the boys who ran away had complained about to take an older boy with him on missionary visits to nearby reserves. Usually, these were only day-long trips. However, in the summer, they were sometimes overnight trips. MacKay endorsed Barry’s decision to send Geurts and the priest away, since their continued presence at the school would hurt its ability to attract and retain students. He wrote:
My opinion is that most of the information obtained of alleged immoral practices would be of very doubtful value as evidence, should the police decide to prosecute. I am prepared, however, to accept in the main the information involving Rev. Father [name redacted] and Mr. [name redacted] as sufficient evidence of their misconduct, although in the case of the acts of the former, no direct corroborative evidence could be obtained.
He also reported that Principal Geurts had “failed to take strong and effective action in December, 1938, following information he received regarding Father [name redacted] alleged immoral activities.”55
For their part, Indian Affairs officials prejudged the issue. The department refused to recognize that truancy might be sparked by criminal behaviour on the part of the staff. It further refused to recognize that the police had a legitimate role to play in investigating potential criminal activity at residential schools. Once the department had been made aware that a serious situation existed at the school, its major concern was to protect the school’s (and, by association, the department’s) reputation. Rather than co-operating with an ongoing criminal investigation, the department undermined it. Indian Affairs officials were not qualified to determine whether there was enough evidence to sustain a prosecution, and it was not their role to make such a determination. Although senior Indian Affairs officials later disapproved of these actions once they were made aware of them, it is clear from the broader history, beyond this specific incident, that the long-term Indian Affairs policy generally had been to attempt to suppress and contain information that was potentially damaging to the schools. As for the church, it refused to accept any responsibility for the events that took place at a church-run school. Instead, it preferred “the quiet way.” Indian Affairs did not gain any new sensitivity to the views and concerns of Aboriginal parents: even while MacKay was still carrying out his investigation into the school, the department had threatened a father with prosecution under the Indian Act if he did not send his daughter to the school.56
It is not possible to quantify the extent to which children were sexually abused at residential schools during this period. It is clear, however, that such abuse did take place. The evidence indicates that when they were alerted to the existence of such abuse, church and government officials rarely acted in an appropriate manner. Investigations were limited, complaints by anyone other than school officials were ignored, and people who had been identified as potential risks were not removed from the schools. Knowledge of the extent of abuse is limited, in part, because the officials in charge of the schools did not want to hear about it, talk about it, or do anything about it.