Someone went to police late last year about alleged crimes in 1960s and 70s
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
CBC Indigenous: Ontario Provincial Police have laid three gross indecency charges against a 97-year-old Ottawa woman, alleging she was involved in sexual assaults in the 1960s and 1970s in northern Ontario residential and day schools.
In a news release, OPP said someone contacted them late last year about incidents “at residential and day schools in Fort Albany and Moosonee, as well as a detention facility in Sudbury.” After investigating, police said three charges of gross indecency were laid Wednesday against Francoise Seguin.
Gross indecency was a criminal offence before the late 1980s, when laws were updated. “Types of sexual activity that were historically considered to be ‘immoral’ or ‘unnatural,’ but fell short of intercourse, were prohibited by the ‘gross indecency’ offence,” according to a federal government backgrounder.
Seguin is scheduled to appear in court in Moosonee in December, police said.
Previous charges at Fort Albany school
Police did not name the residential and day schools.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) says St. Anne’s Residential School operated in Fort Albany from 1906 to 1976. Bishop Horden Hall Indian Residential School operated in Moose Factory just east of Mooosonee from 1906 to 1964, when it served as a residence for children going to public school in the area for 12 more years.
There were also day schools in the Fort Albany area from 1894 to 1990, including St. Anne’s.
For more than a century, Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend schools aimed at stripping away their culture and language. Many also suffered physical and sexual abuse at these institutions.
Residential schools kept children there overnight, while day schools allowed them to go home.
St. Anne’s had as many as 280 elementary and junior high students during the time of the alleged offences, according to the NCTR, which noted allegations of sexual, physical and mental abuse, suspicious deaths and use of an electric chair for punishment. Five other former staff members have been criminally charged.
There are plans to search the old St. Anne’s property with ground-penetrating radar this winter.
The Bishop Horden Hall residential school had 200 or more children up to Grade 7 at this time. The NCTR doesn’t similarly note criminal charges there in its school page.
A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.
RELATED STORIES
- Residential schools, day schools, day scholars: what you need to know
- ‘I grieve for the ones that didn’t come home’: St. Anne’s survivor helping to search for unmarked graves
- Federal government must search RCMP records for evidence of abuse at Bishop Horden
- CBC-TV visits a residential school in 1955