Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Fort Albany, Ontario, Canada · 1999

Canada: St Anne's residential-school nun convicted of assaults and administering a noxious substance

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

nun and supervisor at a church-run residential school

Organization

St Anne's Indian Residential School

Spiritual nexus

The victims were Indigenous children removed into a church-run school where a nun's religious office and custodial power were one authority.

  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1999-01-01 · conviction and sentence

    Ontario court, Canada. Anna Wesley, a nun and supervisor at St Anne's Indian Residential School in the 1950s–60s, was convicted in 1999 of three counts of common assault, three counts of administering a noxious substance, and one count of assault causing bodily harm against students in her care, receiving an 11-month conditional sentence. St Anne's is separately notorious for a homemade electric chair used on children.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • custodial and disciplinary authority over Indigenous children
  • punishments including forced ingestion

Primary record

Sources

national public broadcaster verdict report CBC News coverage of the Anna Wesley convictions at St Anne's (1999; retrospectives).

Canada's public broadcaster on the convictions and the institution's history.

Related record

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