Pedophile priest denied legal aid to appeal Nunavut convictions

By Thomas Rohner
Nunatsiaq Online
July 14, 2016

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674pedophile_priest_denied_legal_aid_to_appeal_nunavut_convictions/

Eric Dejaeger is lead into the Nunavut Court of Justice during previous court proceedings in Iqaluit. He is currently appealing some of his sex crime convictions but Nunavut's legal aid society has turned down his request for a lawyer.

Notorious Nunavut pedophile Eric Dejaeger may have to find money in his own bank account to appeal some of the dozens of sex crimes against Inuit children of which he has been convicted. 

His application for legal aid in Nunavut has been turned down.

That’s what Justice Neil Sharkey heard at the Nunavut Court of Appeal in Iqaluit July 13.

“You’re funding application at this time has been denied,” Lana Walker, a defence lawyer with the Baffin region’s legal aid office said in court.

“You have the right to appeal directly to the [Legal Services] Board of Directors… within 30 days,” Walker told Dejaeger, who appeared via videoconference from an Ontario detention centre.

Dejaeger, a defrocked oblate priest, wore a blue V-neck institution-issued shirt, the hair on his head and face now snow-white.

At times, Dejaeger stood against a white brick wall emblazoned with the words “Warkworth Institution” in block letters, his knuckles resting on a tabletop.

The Nunavut Court of Justice convicted Dejaeger of dozens of sex crimes against Inuit children and at least one dog while Dejaeger worked as an oblate in the communities of Baker Lake and Igloolik in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Justice Robert Kilpatrick sentenced Dejaeger in February 2015 to 19 years in prison for those crimes, minus eight years of credit for time already served.

Dejaeger’s most recent convictions came in September 2015 when the Belgian-born missionary pleaded guilty to four sex crimes against Edmonton-area children while training to be a priest in the late 1970s.

Those charges, transferred from the Alberta court system to Nunavut, resulted in four more five-year prison terms to be served concurrently — or at the same time — as the other 11 years he is currently serving.

In March 2015 Dejaeger filed a notice of appeal, which listed six convictions he intends to appeal.

But it was not clear which six convictions he was contesting, or if more convictions would be added to the motion of appeal.

Justice Sharkey asked Dejaeger July 13 if he intended to appeal legal aid’s rejection of his funding application.

“Yes, I think so, your honour,” Dejaeger said.

Sharkey told Dejaeger that if legal aid also rejects that appeal, that Dejaeger can then make an application to the court to have a court-appointed lawyer.

That application is based, in part, on Dejaeger demonstrating a lack of resources to hire his own lawyer, Sharkey said.

Sharkey scheduled Dejaeger’s appeal to be addressed in court again on Nov. 9.

And the judge asked the legal services board to respond to Dejaeger’s appeal, if he makes one, before that date.

“I don’t want to wait until the ninth of November to find out legal services says no,” Sharkey said.