The revelations that occurred in the autumn of 1990 were merely the latest in a series of exposés, some of them known to missionary authorities and covered up. The Oblates' Williams Lake school had had several instances of mistreating students, outbreaks that had led to runaways and resulted in one death, and later to a suicide pact by nine male students. In 1988 a police investigation in the interior of British Columbia uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse by priests at Williams Lake. In June 1989 Father Harold Mclntee was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and three years' probation for assaults on a number of boys, including thirteen who had lived at the residential school. 'According to court documents and testimony, the priest had assaulted many of the boys more than 30 times each while they slept in the group dormitory or after luring them to a shower.' Two former staff members of the Anglican school at Lytton in the Fraser Valley were also charged in the late 1980s with assault of students. The administrator of St George's school in 1988 was convicted and sentenced to twelve years on eight counts of sexual abuse and six counts of indecent assault against boys in his care in the 1970s, while an Anglican priest associated with the same institution was acquitted of similar charges in 1989. In 1995 Arthur Plint, a supervisor at Alberni school, was imprisoned for eleven years after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting eighteen boys, ranging from six to thirteen, between 1948 and 1968.

       In fact, of course, the record revealed that sexual abuse of children in these institutions was widespread and long-standing. Although particularly acute among school workers, improper behaviour towards students was not confined to them. A woman who gave testimony before a task force of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons investigating sexual misbehaviour by medical doctors claimed that Native women 'have been raped, fondled and abused mentally, physically and spiritually' by doctors at residential schools and elsewhere. In her own case, she had been subjected at the age of fourteen to a pelvic examination that took fifteen minutes rather than the usual minute or so at a school in Manitoba. 'The more attractive girls spent longer on the examining table,' she testified. At that school visiting doctors examined all the boys in half a day, but required three days to check the female student population.