Canada (1945): Gordon's residential-school staff member convicted — documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
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Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
staff member at the Anglican-run Gordon's Indian Residential School
Organization
Gordon's Indian Residential School (Anglican)
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Indigenous children held in a church-run school's total custody — the same institutional-authority nexus as the corpus's Mount Cashel and Ryan Report records.
- Institutional obedience or isolation
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
1945-01-01 · conviction
Canadian court (documented in TRC final-report appendix of convicted abusers). Ewald Holfeld, a staff member at the Anglican-run Gordon's Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, was convicted in 1945 on two counts of buggery, one of attempted buggery, and common assault against children of the school — one of the earliest convictions listed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's appendix of convicted residential-school abusers.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- total institutional custody of Indigenous children in a church-run school
Cited record
Sources
- official commission finding commission conviction listing Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report, Appendix 3 (convicted abusers).
The commission's official listing of residential-school convictions.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://nevillepark.github.io/trc/appendix-3/ Corpus classification: official-commission-finding; evidentiary role: commission-conviction-listing. SHA-256 b645911e247ea90cda934eb6e055c58ea1cd6d506341efaeeab0329d2153309f
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts
- 2018 · Harrisburg, PA, USA PA grand jury: 301 priests, 1,000+ child victims documented ('weaponized' faith)
- 2009 · Dublin, Ireland Ryan Commission: abuse 'endemic' in Catholic-run institutions (state inquiry)
- 2021 · Paris, France CIASE/Sauvé Report: est. 216,000 abused by French clergy since 1950
- 2019 · Vatican City McCarrick: ex-cardinal found guilty by Vatican canonical process, laicized
- 2010 · Oregon City, OR, USA Beagley faith-healing death: parents convicted (criminally negligent homicide)
- 2014 · Philadelphia, PA, USA Schaible: 3rd-degree murder, second child dead of untreated pneumonia
- 2001 · London, UK Victoria Climbié: murder convictions; possession belief; Laming Inquiry followed
- 2012 · London, UK Kristy Bamu: kindoki 'deliverance' murder convictions (30/25-yr minimums)