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TORONTO — The federal government is thwarting compensation attempts from students at a former Indian residential school who say they were victims of horrific child abuse, including some jolted in an electric chair, advocates say.

They accuse the government of hiding thousands of pages of documentary evidence — much of it from a criminal investigation of St. Anne’s in northern Ontario — that might support their claims.

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“The federal government is turning its head and doing everything it can to keep the abuse from being uncovered,” said Fay Brunning, an Ottawa-based lawyer who acts for some of the claimants.

“(One client) said it feels the same as the past, when the Catholic church was pretending there was no abuse.”

Even within a system that has proven a dark stain on Canadian history, St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany was particularly ugly.

From 1904 to 1976, hundreds of aboriginal children from remote James Bay communities were sent to St. Anne’s, one of 140 church-run residential schools in Canada set up to “civilize” First Nations.