Agnes Benn's death and the hidden history of Birtle residential school's predatory principal

WARNING: This story contains details of sexual abuse and experiences at residential schools.

The night was mild and the March moon bright when Agnes Benn fled the Birtle Indian Residential School through the playroom window, a few weeks after she told a friend that the principal, Henry Currie, put his hand over her mouth so she wouldn't scream in his office.

Helen MacKay, the teacher on duty that Tuesday evening in the playroom, said the teen girl was acting up and hanging out the window, "which is strictly forbidden," and ignoring commands to stop. 

"To make sure she heard me, I twitched her dress. Still there was no response," said MacKay in a handwritten letter to Duncan Campbell Scott, the notorious deputy superintendent for the federal Department of Indian Affairs. 

The teacher said Agnes only stopped playing in the window after she threatened to send her to the principal's office. While MacKay was distracted, Agnes jumped out the window sometime after 7 p.m. on March 11, 1930.

A search party of some older male students led by a staff member spent about two hours looking for Agnes, but found no trace and gave up, according to Indian Affairs records. 

Principal Currie and Percy Lazenby, the Indian agent, "were not unduly alarmed" by Agnes's escape. 

Agnes was "strong and able-bodied" and an "experienced truant" who had walked 18 kilometres south from the institution in Birtle, Man., to her home on the Birdtail Sioux reserve on five previous occasions. Currie and Lazenby let the girl go, "knowing they'd bring Agnes back to the residential school soon enough," said an Aug. 25, 1930, memo sent to Scott about the case.

Several weeks before running away, Agnes told 14-year-old Maggie Whitecloud that Currie took her into his office, "put his hand under her clothes and got on top of her," according to a typewritten transcription of a statement Maggie gave to RCMP and Manitoba Provincial Police officers months later.  

"She started to scream and Mr. Currie put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming," said Whitecloud in her statement.  

It wasn't the first time.

Agnes Benn was found dead on April 16, 1930, about 12 kilometres from Birtle residential school. Her body was partly eaten by wolves, according to department records.

Manitoba's "Official Notice of Death" says her date of birth was "not known exactly"; the document guessed her age to be 17. The information in the document was provided by Lazenby, who, as the Indian agent, oversaw and manged affairs in Agnes's home reserve on behalf of the federal government.

The details of Agnes's escape and what she told Maggie about Currie were omitted from the historical record compiled by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was created to delve into Canada's residential school history as a result of the multibillion-dollar 2006 residential school settlement agreement between the federal government and survivors of the institutions.