Category
Institutional abuse
Custodial abuse, forced labour, orphanage and residential-school misconduct.
Filed
5 entriesMount Cashel Orphanage
A 1989 Newfoundland royal commission established that the Christian Brothers of Ireland had subjected boys at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's to systematic physical and sexual abuse over decades, and that two previous criminal investigations had been suppressed.
FILED · 1922–1998 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALIrish Mother and Baby Homes
An Irish state Commission of Investigation — established in 2015 and reporting in 2021 — established that approximately 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through 18 Mother and Baby Homes and County Homes between 1922 and 1998, with approximately 9,000 infant deaths in those institutions and substantial documented incidents of forced family separation, illegal adoption, and unmarked burial.
FILED · 1922–1996 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALThe Magdalene Laundries
For most of the twentieth century, four Catholic religious orders operated commercial laundries in Ireland that held women and girls in unpaid, indefinite confinement under conditions formally acknowledged by the Irish state in 2013.
FILED · 1831–1996 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALCanadian Indian Residential Schools
For 165 years, Catholic, Anglican, United Church, and Presbyterian institutions operated a network of federally-funded residential schools in Canada that separated approximately 150,000 Indigenous children from their families; the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report concluded the system constituted "cultural genocide."
FILED · 1819–1969 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALUS Federal Indian Boarding Schools
United States Department of the Interior investigative reports released in 2022 and 2024 established that the federal government had operated, or funded religious institutions to operate, 408 Indian boarding schools across 37 states between 1819 and 1969, with at least 973 documented child deaths confirmed across both volumes of the investigation.
