CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press
By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
IQALUIT, Nunavut – A witness at a child sex abuse trial in the Arctic wept as she described how her relationship with her parents and husband has been damaged by what she says happened to her.
The woman was testifying Thursday against Eric Dejaeger, who faces 69 charges going back to his time as a priest in Igloolik, Nunavut, more than 30 years ago.
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“My husband is a good man,” the woman told court. “But when it comes to sexual things, we argue and we fight.
“If he would touch me in a way Eric did, I start yelling and getting mad.”
The woman said Dejaeger would pluck her from among the children playing and colouring in the church in Igloolik. He would sit her on his lap, she said, and fondle her while moving his legs underneath her and massaging himself.
“He didn’t talk to me,” she said. “He’d just breathe hard and say, ‘Relax.'”
She said the assaults went on for at least three years, until she was eight years old.
“I was just a kid,” she said. “I didn’t know what he was doing.”
By the time she was 12, other family members realized she was acting strangely.
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