In the Matter of Kevin Annett v. Jean Chretien, Jorge Bergoglio, et al

The General Facts and Details of the Case

Kevin Annett is a former ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. As a married man with two small children, Annett was the minister of St. Andrew’s United Church in Port Alberni, British Columbia from July 15, 1992 to January 23, 1995, when he was fired without cause. (1)

During his Port Alberni ministry, Annett expanded his congregation from twenty to one hundred people and brought indigenous people into his church for the first time. He opened his pulpit to survivors of the United Church’s local Indian residential school. Shortly before Annett’s firing, they began to speak of children being murdered there and buried in the hills behind the school.

On January 23, 1995, Kevin Annett was fired from his position without cause, notice, or review.

Annett was dismissed by two regional church officials who lacked the authority to remove a minister, Art Anderson and Cameron Reid. These men acted under the secret instructions of the chief fiduciary officers of the United Church, Moderator Marion Best and General-Secretary Virginia Coleman; Brian Thorpe, the Chief Executive Officer of the church’s B.C. Conference; and John Cashore, a provincial government cabinet minister and United Church clergyman.

Annett’s illegal removal was precipitated by the aforenamed revelation of killings in the Alberni residential school and by a letter he wrote to top church officers. That letter protested the United Church’s theft and secret sale of land of the Ahousaht indigenous nation to MacMillan-Bloedel, a financial benefactor of the Church. In conjunction with its major shareholder, the B.C. government, MacMillan-Bloedel was soon acquired by Weyerhaeuser Ltd. for over $3 billion in the biggest corporate takeover in B.C. history. (2)

United Church officials subsequently stated on record that Annett was removed from his pulpit not for any wrongdoing or incompetence as a minister, but because he issued his letter about the Ahousaht land theft and revealed crimes in the Alberni Indian residential school. (3)

The day after Annett’s firing, his wife Anne McNamee was approached by United Church official Phil Spencer and church lawyer Jon Jessiman. On behalf of the church, Spencer and Jessiman offered to pay McNamee to leave Annett and divorce him, monitor and harass him, and estrange his children from him. McNamee agreed to do so. She subsequently won legal custody of both the Annett children with the collusion of B.C. Family Court judges Ronald Barber and Alan Donaldson. The latter was a close friend and associate of Bill Howie, a United Church official on Vancouver Island who helped instigate Annett’s removal. McNamee’s lawyer Ron Huinink was paid at least $36,000 by the United Church to handle McNamee’s divorce. (4)

United Church lawyer Jon Jessiman arranged Annett’s firing and divorce and prevented him from finding other work in the church. Jessiman also blocked his appeals and attempts to negotiate a resolution with Como-Nanaimo Presbytery officials.  In early February 1996, after Annett’s public protests against his firing had gained media coverage and the first Indian residential school lawsuits had begun against the United Church, Jessiman initiated the process of permanently expelling or “delisting” Annett from United Church ministry. (5)

During this same period, and in collusion with University of B.C. (UBC) President Martha Piper, Jessiman arranged the sabotage of Annett’s recently commenced doctoral studies at UBC and his subsequent efforts to publicly lecture on campus about Indian residential school crimes.

Also, during this period, Jon Jessiman and Brian Thorpe sabotaged Annett’s ordination with the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Vancouver, with the collusion of that church’s Pacific Northwest regional official Anne Heller and Unitarian minister Phillip Hewitt. (5a)

Jessiman, Thorpe, and other United Church officials were actively assisted in these assaults on Annett by Inspector Peter Montague of RCMP ‘E’ Division in Vancouver and his deputy Sgt. Gerry Peters. These RCMP officers personally harassed and threatened Annett after he began to publicly protest the death of Indian residential school children in December 1995. They also colluded with Annett’s wife Anne McNamee in these and subsequent ‘black operations’ against Annett, as did Thorpe and John Siebert, the United Church liaison officer with the RCMP. (6)

On August 29, 1996 in Vancouver, the United Church convened its public “delisting” hearing of Kevin Annett: the first of its kind in church history, at an eventual cost of over $300,000. Despite his role in Annett’s firing, divorce, and blacklisting, Jon Jessiman served as the “Chief Judicial Officer” at this hearing. Along with Brian Thorpe, Jessiman handpicked the three delisting panel members who would decide whether Annett retained his professional ordination. The panel’s chair, Mollie Williams, was a close friend of Jessiman and had nominated him for United Church Moderator in 1984. (7)

The Annett delisting hearing occurred from August 29, 1996 to March 7, 1997. Its stated aim was to consider a motion from Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery to place Reverend Kevin Annett’s name on the church’s “Discontinued Service List”. The onus was on the Presbytery to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Annett was an “unsuitable” minister. 

Paradoxically, the same motion stated there were no charges against Annett and he was not under any form of discipline, but that he had been removed from his ministry and prevented from seeking further church employment “for the peace and welfare of the church”: terms that were not defined.

Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery was represented at the hearing by a Catholic lawyer, Iain Benson, who was a friend of Jessiman. Benson received over $50,000 in remuneration from the United Church for his work. Kevin Annett was legally unrepresented and unpaid. He was expected to appear at his own expense without being given the cause of the action, any evidence or the names of his accusers, or any of the other requirements of natural justice and due process.

An independent legal examination of this hearing revealed the following uncontested facts:

1.    The hearing continually violated or ignored due process and legal rules of procedure. 

2.    Jessiman and the panel members demonstrated a consistent bias and made openly disparaging remarks against Annett on the record, including “We’ve come to expect this kind of thing from Kevin” (Jessiman) and “You have only yourself to blame for this situation, Kevin” (Williams), and “If Kevin doesn’t play ball with us, he’ll never work in this country again.” (Jessiman). 

3.    During the hearing, Jessiman, the panel members, and church lawyer Benson routinely went to lunch together, socialized, and examined copies of the hearing minutes without informing Annett. 

4.    The panel members continually allowed hearsay and unsupported allegations to stand as evidence against Annett and refused his request to know the grounds for delisting a United Church minister, which he required to conduct a proper defense. 

5.    None of the four witnesses called to “testify” against Annett had any first-hand experience of him or his work. One of them, Kathleen Hogman, had never met Annett. Their statements constituted hearsay and were therefore inadmissible under the law and the panel’s own rules. But regardless, the panel declared them to be admissible. 

6.    None of the witnesses called by Annett in his defense were allowed by the panel, nor were the thirty-eight letters of commendation for him that he submitted as evidence. 

7.    Against rules of legal procedure, Jessiman continually halted the proceedings whenever Annett asked Presbytery’s witnesses questions about Indian residential schools or stolen native land, even though Jessiman acknowledged that those issues were the reason for Annett’s firing.

8.    Under cross-examination, Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery officials Bob Stiven and Win Stokes stated on record that Annett’s removal had never been discussed or put to a vote in the Presbytery, and therefore his firing was illegal under United Church regulations. Stiven and Stokes also admitted and stated on record that Annett had done nothing wrong, faced no charges, was simply citing church policy when he objected to the Ahousaht land deal, and that Presbytery had “no concerns” about him until he wrote the letter about that issue. 

9.    Evidence submitted by Annett revealed that in April 1996, national United Church leaders Marion Best and Virginia Coleman had met with officials of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council and paid them to attack and undermine Annett’s investigation into the death of Alberni Indian residential school children. This plan was facilitated by Brian Thorpe and his fellow official John Siebert. According to Rev. Bruce Gunn, who was present at the meeting, 

“The payoff deal Best and Coleman made with the west coast chiefs is responsible for the present delisting actions against Rev. Annett. The issue before us is therefore not one of Kevin’s suitability for ministry, which has been amply proven, but rather the church’s efforts to silence an inconvenient whistleblower. I am convinced that Rev. Annett is the target of a definite criminal conspiracy by the United Church and others that is seeking his professional and personal destruction.” (8) 

10. Other evidence submitted by Annett revealed that it was Jon Jessiman who was responsible for stopping Presbytery negotiations with Annett after his firing when they were on the verge of a resolution, thereby provoking his delisting. Accordingly, Jessiman was compelled by legal procedure to step down as ‘judge’ of the hearing because of a clear conflict of interest. Annett asked that he do so, but Jessiman refused. Under legal advice, Annett then left the hearing, at which point panel chair Williams yelled at him, “If you leave now, Kevin, you’ll face dire consequences!” 

11. The delisting hearing continued without Annett present. At no point prior to or after Annett’s departure from the hearing did Presbytery lawyer Benson present any evidence that proved Presbytery’s case; namely, that Annett was unsuitable for United Church ministry. On the contrary, the bona fide evidence indicated otherwise. Nevertheless, with no basis in fact or evidence, the panel voted on March 7, 1997, to “delist” Annett and expel him from ministry. That concluded the hearing. (9)

Soon after the hearing, the government continued to assist these church attacks against Annett by helping to strip him of his legal rights and civil liberties. The Attorney-General, Ujjal Dosanjh - who was a cabinet colleague and friend of John Cashore – refused to review the fraudulent hearing. Responding to twenty-two letters of protest from eyewitnesses to Annett’s delisting, Dosanjh falsely claimed in writing that “The internal disciplinary processes used by churches … are outside the jurisdiction of this Ministry”; that is, outside the laws of Canada. (10)

Such official state sanction of the United Church’s fraudulent show trial and professional destruction of Kevin Annett encouraged a new round of assaults against him. These RCMP and church-led attacks intensified during 1998, when Annett and Indian residential school survivor Harriett Nahanee launched a public campaign to expose and prosecute genocide in the schools.

On June 12, 1998 in Vancouver, Annett and Nahanee convened a United Nations sponsored Tribunal into this genocide: the first such inquiry ever held. This event won international attention but also provoked an expanded campaign of state terror against them and their work that involved the Canadian government and the office of Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

After the Tribunal garnered media coverage outside Canada during the summer of 1998, Chretien ordered the destruction of Indian residential school records and the disinterring of mass graves of children near the schools. He also authorized covert actions against Annett, Nahanee, and indigenous activists on the west coast. Sources state that these directives were issued on August 12, 1998 in a confidential communique to the Privy Council in Ottawa. (11)

These covert actions were implemented and coordinated by RCMP Inspector Peter Montague and a former FBI informant and provocateur named James Craven, who had infiltrated the Tribunal in Vancouver. Craven began the first internet smears against Annett, spread misinformation about him, and paid his supporters to spy on and denounce him. The RCMP were assisted by ‘Chief’ Ed John of the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council, who sent strong-arm operatives to assault Annett during the June 1998 Tribunal and eliminate eyewitnesses. (12)

The covert operations against Annett and Nahanee intensified during the subsequent decade as they established their own Truth Commission and rallied genocide survivors across Canada in high-profile public protests, conferences, and church occupations. These escalating covert ops were aimed primarily at Kevin Annett as the main spokesman of the movement. They included a broad-spectrum assault on him, his children, friends, and associates, his public actions and livelihood, and his public and media image.

This state level assault represented the first major effort by Canada to censor, misrepresent, and de-criminalize its domestic genocide and murder of more than 60,000 indigenous children. It included silencing survivors with hush money, destroying grave sites and other evidence of the crime, restricting legal action against the guilty Catholic, Anglican, and United churches, muzzling the press, and eliminating natives who would not cooperate with this coverup: especially residential school survivors working with Kevin Annett. Between 2007 and 2012, seven indigenous allies of Annett were killed while in the hospital or police custody. (See WCCLCJ Case No. 1: The deaths of Harriett Nahanee, William Combes, and Bingo Dawson)

By 2003, these attacks had censored Annett’s name and work from the Canadian media and ostracized him in the academic world, where he was banned from campus speaking and his books removed from course curricula and local libraries. But Annett’s unswerving efforts to publicly confront the guilty churches eventually forced the Canadian government to publicly acknowledge the Indian residential school genocide. It did so on a date of statutory significance: June 11, 2008, one day before the tenth anniversary of the seminal June 12, 1998 Tribunal.

Canada’s June 2008 “apology” for Indian residential schools began the institutionalization of the official coverup. It did so by legally indemnifying the government and churches for their proven crimes against humanity, banning and censoring Annett and his work across Canada, and creating a false “substitute narrative” about the residential school genocide. This dissimulation manifested in the misnamed ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC), established by the guilty government and churches in direct response to Annett’s campaign in order to nullify its impact, fog and decriminalize the genocide, and exonerate the perpetrators. (13)

Undergoing a subsequent “Night and Fog” public erasure within Canada as part of this coverup, Kevin Annett expanded his work to Europe during 2009 and helped establish The International Tribunal of Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) in June 2010 in Dublin. But this heightened campaigning drew even greater repression down on Annett and his supporters after they began protesting at the Vatican and in London, and launching a court action against Pope Benedict, Queen Elizabeth, and others that caused Benedict’s resignation on February 11, 2013.

Intelligence sources indicate that the escalated covert operations against Annett and his movement were organized by the Vatican spy and assassination agency known as Santa Alleanza in collusion with MI6 and the RCMP. These agencies were responsible for the sabotage of the ITCCS and its courts, the deportation of Annett from England in May 2011, and the death or disappearance of four ITCCS activists and seven indigenous allies of Annett during this period. 

In addition, Santa Alleanza was implicated in the near-fatal chemical poisoning of Kevin Annett during the summer of 2021 while he was on a speaking tour in eastern Canada. (14)

The systematic criminal assault on Kevin Annett since January 1995 constitutes a single litany of permanent church and state terror that nearly beggars description and imagination. The evidence of these assaults reveals that they recurred routinely, intensifying whenever Annett made public headway in his campaigns.

For example, concerted attacks against Annett by church and state occurred when he first exposed the Indian residential school crimes and the United Church’s theft of native land (1995-1996); launched the first residential school Tribunal (1998) and the first Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada (2001); began national church protests and occupations (2005-2008); forced Canada’s public admission of genocide (June 2008); launched the ITCCS in Europe (2010); conducted the first excavation of a mass grave of children’s remains at the Anglican Mohawk school in Brantford (2011-2012); convened common law courts that prosecuted and forced into resignation Pope Benedict and three catholic cardinals (2013-14); helped establish Republic common law courts and assemblies across Canada (2020-2021); and launched a new campaign to expose and prosecute the ongoing genocide of indigenous people in western Canada by China, the Crown and the Vatican (2021-2023). (15)

According to a source within the RCMP,

“I don’t exaggerate when I say that millions of dollars and dozens of operatives have gone into discrediting and shutting down Kevin Annett since the nineteen nineties. It’s been one of the biggest bad jacketing operations in our history.”

These uncontested facts indicate that Kevin Annett is a targeted and persecuted political prisoner and an exile in his own country. He is unable to gain employment, establish any security, conduct his public work and human rights campaigns, or pursue a free and unimpeded life because of a permanent criminal conspiracy being waged against him. That conspiracy originated and is maintained and directed by the highest levels of church, state, and corporate power in Canada and abroad and by their agents, some of whom are named in this public Indictment. 

The Defendants

Based on these uncontested facts and evidence, the culpable participants in the criminal conspiracy and assaults against Kevin Annett and the defendants in his case include but are not restricted to the following persons and their accomplices:

Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada

Jorge Bergoglio, Chief Bishop of the Church of Rome and fiduciary head of the Vatican Inc.

Domenico Giani, Director of Santa Alleanza, covert operations agency of the Vatican

Ujjal Dosanjh, former Attorney-General of British Columbia

Marion Best and Gary Paterson, former Moderators of the United Church of Canada

Virginia Coleman, former General Secretary of the United Church of Canada

John Cashore, Jon Jessiman, Brian Thorpe, Mollie Williams, John Siebert, Phil Spencer, Foster Freed, Brad Newcombe, John Mayba, officials or clergy of the United Church of Canada

The Estates of Art Anderson, Bill Howie, Cameron Reid, Fred Bishop, Terry Whyte, Bob Stiven, deceased officials or clergy of the United Church of Canada

Michael Miller, Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church

Fred Hiltz, former Primate of the Anglican Church in Canada

Ronald Barber, former Master of the Supreme Court of British Columbia

Alan Donaldson, former Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia

Ron Huinink and Iain Benson, lawyers, British Columbia Law Society

Peter Montague and Gerry Peters, Officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ‘E’ Division, and James Craven, RCMP operative

Ed John, former head of the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council

Martha Piper, former President of the University of British Columbia

Neil Guppy, professor at the University of British Columbia

The Estate of Murray Elliott, deceased professor, University of British Columbia

Anne Heller and the Estate of Phillip Hewitt, officials of the Unitarian-Universalist Church

Anne McNamee

Jack Thornburgh
 

The Indictment and Charges against the Defendants

The Chief Prosecutor of the Court hereby indicts and charges the aforenamed culpable persons and their bodies corporate with the following criminal acts:

1. Planning and participating in a criminal conspiracy to assault, denigrate, and destroy the life, work, family, public reputation and good name, and civil liberties of Kevin Annett, deliberately and with malice aforethought.

2. Planning and participating in the attempted murder of Kevin Annett and the successful murder of his associates, and in the destruction of their efforts and campaigns to expose and prosecute genocide and child trafficking and killing in Canada and abroad.

3. Actively engaging in and concealing these crimes to enable and protect the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Canada and abroad, and to obstruct and deny justice.

Accordingly, based on this indictment by the Chief Prosecutor, the Court is today issuing Public Summonses to the aforenamed culpable defendants to appear before the Court to answer these public charges and specifications made against them.

The Summoned persons are required by law to present themselves before the Court at its opening trial proceedings on Monday, October 16, 2023, at 10:00 am in the City of Vancouver, at a location to be announced. If the summoned persons fail to appear, a pro confesso uncontested verdict of guilt and an arrest warrant may be issued against them by the Court.

This Indictment and Summons will be communicated to international courts, human rights agencies, and governments, along with a formal request to them for official peacekeepers and observers to aid the Court in its work.

https://youtu.be/kB11tuuG6x4

Issued by the West Coast Common Law Court of Justice on Friday, September 22, 2023

The Court is an affiliate of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (Established June 15, 2010)

       itccsoffice@protonmail.com , www.murderbydecree.com

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Notes

(1)  See the dismissal letter signed by Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery member Phil Spencer that falsely claimed to be on behalf of the entire Presbytery, dated January 23, 1995 and archived in the General Docket Evidence of Case No. 2. 

(2)  See the extensive media references to this unprecedented corporate acquisition in the Docket File, ibid. Annett’s letter protesting the sale of Lot 363 in Ahousaht is below. 

(3)  Cited in “A Report on the Wrongful Expulsion of Kevin Annett from his Ministry and Livelihood”, Part Three, of Crimes against Humanity in Canada: The Evidence (Amazon, 2023). Annett’s targeting by the church is described by Rev. Bruce Gunn, below.

(4)  Taken from the personal records of Kevin Annett and interviews with Rev. Bruce Gunn. In the letter below, Gunn testifies about the admission of church officials that their lawyer met with Kevin Annett’s wife to plan her divorce from him.

(5)  Cited in the Annett records, ibid.

(5a) The role of Anne Heller and other Unitarian Church officials in blocking Kevin Annett’s involvement in their church is described in the letter of Dr. Jennifer Wade, following.

(6)  Kevin Annett describes these RCMP threats in his book Unrepentant: Between Sodom and Zion (2016). Anne McNamee also admitted these facts while under oath during the McNamee-Annett divorce proceedings in Provincial Family Court (April-August 1996), and in a letter to the Vancouver Courier newspaper dated September 28, 1997. (Below)

Note: In this letter, Ms. McNamee contradicts the United Church’s claim that their officials met with her rather than her lawyer. (See Footnote 4) She is also untruthful when she states that the church’s ‘suitability’ report on Kevin Annett was “available to anyone interested in the matter”. In fact, the report was a confidential document that could be released only with Annett’s permission, which was never obtained. Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery never released the ‘suitability’ report, raising questions of its existence. 

(7)  From the personal notes kept by Dr. Jennifer Wade, who witnessed the entire delisting hearing, and from Kevin Annett’s records. Most of the delisting sessions were held at the west end United Church of a close friend of Brian Thorpe, Brad Newcombe. 

(8)  From the letter submitted to the delisting hearing by Rev. Bruce Gunn and reproduced by Kevin Annett in his biographical accounts and at www.murderbydecree.com . 

(9)  As described in the records of Kevin Annett and Bruce Gunn and by Merva Cottle, William Kiborn and Dr. Jennifer Wade, who remained in the hearing after Annett’s departure. A collection of these eyewitness accounts is found in the Docket Evidence File. The independent account of Annett’s delisting hearing is found in Part Three of Crimes against Humanity in Canada: The Evidence (Amazon, 2023).

(10) From the letter of B.C. Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh to Jennifer Wade. (see below) Dosanjh’s characterization of Annett’s hearing as “disciplinary” is false, since the United Church stated many times, including in print, that Kevin Annett was not facing disciplinary or any other charges. Two years later, Dosanjh continued to use his office to aid criminality when he not only appointed a notorious child trafficker, Ed John, as B.C. Minister of Children and Families, but threatened legal action against those who criticized the appointment.

(11) This information was provided by a retired parliamentary assistant to Jean Chretien and by Grant Wakefield, a former covert operative of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in conversations he had with Kevin Annett during 2006 and 2007.

 (12) James Craven admitted to his role as a paid RCMP operative to Amy Tallio early in 1999. Craven was publicly named as a police provocateur by the American Indian Movement and Greenpeace during the 1990’s. Ed John’s chief strong arm operative was a native man named Dean Wilson, who physically assaulted Kevin Annett on June 12, 1998, during the first day of the Tribunal. Wilson grabbed Annett by the throat and yelled at him, “Eddie John’s pissed off with you and he says no more talk of dead rez school kids or you’ll get it worse!” (From the personal records of Kevin Annett)

(13) The TRC was established by the Privy Council, its Commissioners were appointed by the guilty churches, and it was prohibited from conducting a legal inquiry, subpoenaing documents, laying charges, or naming names of crimes or perpetrators. (Its original mandate to this effect can be viewed in its archive at www.trc.ca) The TRC’s first Chairman, Judge Harry Laforme, resigned because of its “irregular and improper nature”. (www.murderbydecree.com)

(14) See the accounts of the sabotage of the ITTCS and its court, and the attempted murder of Kevin Annett, in the ITCCS Archives found at www.murderbydecree.com, and in the personal records of Kevin Annett, ibid.

(15) The entire chronology of Kevin Annett’s work is found in the aforenamed website and its archives, and includes detailed accounts of the important achievements of those years: for example, the first positive identification of children’s remains at the Anglican Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario during 2011-2012, documented in “ITCCS Archives”: (Mass Graves of Children in Canada – Documented Evidence – Murder by Decree), and the successful prosecution and forcing from office of ‘Pope Benedict’ in February 2013: (The International Common Law Court of Justice: Case No. 1 – Genocide in Canada – Murder by Decree . Those achievements are also described in detail in many of Kevin’s two dozen books.