Documentary record Bound by Fear
← Explore all cases
Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Fort Albany, Ontario, Canada · 1998

Canada: St Anne's residential-school nun convicted of assaulting female students

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

nun and supervisor of female students at a church-run residential school

Organization

St Anne's Indian Residential School, Grey Nuns of Montreal (Sisters of Charity)

Spiritual nexus

The victims were Indigenous children removed into a church-run residential school where a nun's religious office and total custodial power over female students were the same authority; refusal or disclosure was not available to children held under that combined institutional and religious control.

  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1998-01-01 · conviction and sentence

    Ontario court, Canada. Jane Kakeychewan, an Ojibwe nun who had herself attended a residential school as a child and later served as a nun and supervisor at St Anne's Indian Residential School, was convicted in 1998 of three counts of assault causing bodily harm against female students in her care. She received a six-month conditional sentence. The conviction arose from a 1992-1998 Ontario Provincial Police investigation into abuse at St Anne's that interviewed roughly 700 victims and witnesses.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • custodial and disciplinary authority over Indigenous children removed from their families
  • physical punishment inflicted under religious institutional cover

Primary record

Sources

national public broadcaster verdict report 'Former St. Anne's nun 8th person charged for alleged abuses at that residential school', CBC News.

CBC News retrospective on the St Anne's investigation confirming Jane Kakaychawan's 1998 conviction on three counts of assault causing bodily harm and her six-month conditional sentence, distinct from Anna Wesley's separate 1999 conviction.

encyclopedia secondary background 'St. Anne's Indian Residential School', Wikipedia, citing the OPP investigation and prosecution outcomes.

Summary of the OPP investigation (1992-1998, ~700 interviewed, 74 suspects, 7 charged, 5 convicted) and the individual dispositions including Kakeychewan's.

Related record

Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts

← Explore all cases