TERRI THEODORE
Canadian Press
VANCOUVER (CP) – More charges have been laid in a broad, long-running investigation into abuse at aboriginal residential schools in British Columbia.
A 77-year-old former Vancouver Island man faces 21 sex and assault-related charges. Edward Gerald Fitzgerald now is living in Ireland and investigators are working to try to bring him back to Canada to stand trial. He is charged with 10 counts of indecent assault, three of gross indecency, two of buggery, and six counts of common assault.
The offences were said to have taken place while Fitzgerald was a dormitory supervisor at the Lejac Indian Residential School near Fraser Lake, in northern British Columbia, and the Cariboo-St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School near Williams Lake in the central part of the province, between 1965 and 1973.
Police said Wednesday the alleged incidents involved 10 male students.
The RCMP said the Native Indian Residential School Task Force now has completed its investigation of allegations of physical and sexual abuse at 15 residential schools in British Columbia.
The schools were set up under a federal policy aimed at assimilating aboriginals and run for decades by various Christian churches. The last one closed in the 1970s.
