A woman has been charged with assault after RCMP said a student was physically disciplined with a belt at a private religious school in a northwestern Alberta community.
A concerned parent reached out to RCMP in Fort Vermilion, Alta., on May 20 to complain about their child being physically disciplined in class.
The child had bruising and red marks across his thigh, police said. RCMP searched the child’s school and seized a machine belt, as well as related documentation.
The practice of physically disciplining students with the “strap” was being used at three private religious schools in the La Crete area: the Blumenort Mennonite School, Wilson Prairie Mennonite School and Tompkins Mennonite School, the investigation revealed.
The practice was per their collective constitution, which has been given to, and signed by, parents of students at the private schools.
RCMP also discovered the educators of the Mennonite schools are not accredited teachers, thus are legally considered adults supervising children.
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“We want the public to understand that these forms of corporal punishments are criminal offences and will be treated as such” said Cpl. Scott Coleman with the RCMP’s Western Alberta District general investigation section.
“We have made … Alberta’s Ministry of Education and Childcare aware of this investigation in order to prevent further harm to children.”
Located about 650 km northwest of Edmonton, La Crete is a unique bilingual hamlet made up heavily of people from the Mennonite community whose ancestors relocated to the remote region in the early 1930s, looking to to escape the modernization of the developing world.
About 1.5 times more residents of the hamlet report their mother tongue being Germanic (such as Plautdietsch, also known as Mennonite Low German) than English, according to Statistics Canada data.
La Crete is one of several Mennonite communities across Canada that sprung up over the past two centuries when the federal government offered incentives for people to work the land in exchange for autonomy to run schools and preserve their faith, language, and culture.
However, in the 1900s, the world wars and shifting provincial education policies dissolved many of those original federal accommodations, creating friction that led to some Mennonites leaving Canada for South America (with some eventually migrating back north) and attributing to a mistrust of authority which has carried into the modern day.
As a result of the investigation, RCMP said Eva Bueckert, 37, of Cleardale, Alta., is charged with assault with a weapon.
She is scheduled to appear in court Fort Vermilion on Aug. 11.
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