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Ex-priest Eric Dejaeger denied Nunavut legal aid in appeal of child sex convictions
By Nick Murray
Former Roman Catholic priest Eric Dejaeger has been denied funding by the Nunavut Legal Services board for a lawyer in his appeal of 24 convictions for sex crimes against children. Dejaeger was sentenced to 19 years in prison in February 2015 for crimes committed in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982. Dejaeger appeared Wednesday in an Iqaluit courtroom via video conference. He's being held at Warkworth Institution, a medium-security federal prison in Campbellford, Ont. It's not yet clear on what grounds he's appealing his convictions. The 69-year-old has 30 days to appeal the Nunavut Legal Services board's decision to deny him funding for a lawyer. Last year, Dejaeger was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to charges relating to the sexual abuse of three children in Edmonton between 1975 and 1978 when he was studying at Newman Theological College. That sentence is to be served at the same time as the sentence for his Igloolik charges. Dejaeger previously served a five-year sentence for sexually abusing children in Baker Lake, Nunavut, where he was posted between 1982 and 1989. After serving that sentence, in 1995 he was charged for the offences in Igloolik and he fled to Belgium, where he lived for 16 years despite an international warrant for his arrest. He was returned to Canada in 2011 to face the Igloolik charges.
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