As a rule abuse fell into three categories: physical, sexual, and emotional.

      The arbitrary and unpredictable use of physical violence in the guise of discipline and correction was disturbingly common in the residential schools. To violence and arbitrariness must be added staff's widespread use of humiliation of the students. 'The principal at the short-lived Presbyterian Crowstand school on Cote reserve in Saskatchewan used to force the runaways he retrieved to trot back behind his buggy by means of a rope tied round their arms. The principal at the Round Lake school punished a boy who stood too near a window (one of four windows in a small room, apparently) naked while bathing by dragging him into a room where the principal's wife, a female teacher, and 'some of the school girl[sl were.' On another occasion his wife, the school matron, punished a small girl by hitting her hard enough on the ear to knock her down and hurt her. As noted earlier, the common practice of forcing children who had wet their beds during the night to parade through the building with the damp sheet over their heads was also excruciatingly humiliating to the young people, who in many cases had medical or emotional problems that had caused the nocturnal accidents. The insensitivity of many supervisors in such situations was staggering.

      Then there were the outright sadists and the people who found it necessary or pleasurable to exert their power over small children by the use of force. A Sister of Charity at Shubenacadie school ordered a boy who had accidentally spilled the salt from the shaker while seasoning his porridge to eat the ruined food. He declined, she struck him, and told him to eat it. When he downed a spoonful and then vomited into his bowl, the sister hit him on the head and said, 'I told you to eat it!' A second attempt produced the same result. On his third try, the student fainted. The sister then 'picked him up by the neck and threw him out to the centre aisle' in the dining hall. On one occasion at St Michael's school at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, the boys' supervisor ordered two boys who had broken the rules to kneel in front of him and then he began 'kicking the boys as they knelt in penance before him.'