Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Inuvik, NWT / Manitoba, Canada · 2004

Canada: Grollier Hall supervisor convicted in the 1960s — then ordained a priest in 1990

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

residential-school supervisor, later an ordained Catholic priest

Organization

Grollier Hall

Spiritual nexus

Indigenous children were removed from their families into church-run residential schools, where staff held total custodial, disciplinary and spiritual authority — the institutional structure the courts and the TRC identified as the mechanism of the abuse.

  • Institutional obedience or isolation
  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2004-08-01 · convictions across three eras

    NWT courts (1962); Manitoba (1975); Yellowknife (2004). Martin Houston, a Grollier Hall supervisor, pleaded guilty to ten sexual-assault charges in the early 1960s and served nine years as a declared dangerous offender; was convicted again of gross indecency in Manitoba in 1975; was nonetheless ordained a Catholic priest in 1990 and served a Manitoba parish with his history undisclosed until 2002; and in August 2004 pleaded guilty in Yellowknife to further Grollier-era abuse, receiving three years' probation. He died in 2010.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • custodial authority over resident boys
  • later parish ministry with his history undisclosed

Primary record

Sources

archival compilation with press corroboration conviction history report 'Grollier Hall and the Devil of Grollier Hall', theinquiry.ca compilation, corroborated by Edmonton Journal (8 June 2002).

Documents the conviction sequence and the undisclosed ordination.

Related record

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