Wittney Spearing

Wittney Spearing

The lead investigator in the search for unmarked graves at a former residential institution near the Williams Lake First Nation in central British Columbia says the latest phase of their work has uncovered 66 additional ``reflections,'' indicating children's graves.

Whitney Spearing told a news conference that the results of Phase 2 of their investigation show there were crimes committed against children associated with the Catholic operation of St. Joseph's Mission.

Spearing says that in addition to the reflections found in a technical survey, their interviews with survivors and archival records revealed that babies born as a result of child sexual assault at the mission were disposed of by incineration on and off-site.

Spearing says they found ``a minimum'' of 28 children died at the mission, which operated between 1886 and 1981, many of them buried in unmarked graves around the site.

A year ago, the nation announced the first phase of its investigation had uncovered 93 other ``reflections.''

Williams Lake First Nation Chief Willie Sellers says the next steps will be to potentially exhume bodies in the areas that have already been scanned, showing a total of 159 possible unmarked graves.