Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2022 at 8:18 PM EDT
WINNIPEG – A charge has been filed after a decade-long investigation into allegations of abuse at a Manitoba residential school.
The province confirmed Thursday that a person has been charged with indecent assault on a woman in connection with the investigation into the former Fort Alexander residential school in northeastern Winnipeg.
The Manitoba RCMP did not comment on the indictment.
The school opened in 1905 in the community of Fort Alexander, which later became the Sagkeeng First Nation, and closed in 1970.
Mounties said officers from the senior crime unit began investigating the residential school in 2010 and a criminal investigation began the following year.
Police said the investigation involved reviewing the school’s archived records, including student and employee lists.
Officers also interviewed more than 700 people in North America.
Mounties said last year that the RCMP was waiting for the advice of provincial Crown prosecutors on the charges.
Sagkeeng First Nation recently discovered 190 anomalies during a search near Fort Alexander School using ground penetration radar.
Initial data show that the irregularities meet some of the criteria for the graves, but community leadership has said more information is needed.
Fort Alexander School had a reputation for abuse.
Survivors told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about hunger and harsh discipline. Children from about two dozen First Nations attended school for about 10 months a year.
The commission’s final report said that Phil Fontaine, a former Grand Chief of the Manitoba Assembly of Chiefs and a former national leader of the Assembly of First Nations, put residential school experiences on the national agenda. 1990 when he revealed his own sexual abuse at the Fort. Alexandre School.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 16, 2022.