CANADA
ABC News
IQALUIT, Nunavut November 17, 2013 (AP)
A former Roman Catholic priest goes on trial Monday on multiple sex-related charges involving Inuit children in a tiny arctic hamlet nearly 18 years after he fled to his homeland of Belgium to avoid prosecution.
Eric Dejaeger has pleaded not guilty to 76 sex-related charges and will be tried by a judge alone. The charges involve 41 complainants and 26 people from the hamlet of Igloolik on the Melville Peninsula are expected to testify.
Dejaeger was returned to Canada from Belgium in January 2011 for an immigration violation rather than on an extradition order. A Belgian journalist realized that Dejaeger had lost his Belgian citizenship in 1977 when he became a naturalized Canadian. He was kicked out because he had been living in Belgium since 1995 without a visa.
An Inuit woman who was among the alleged victims in Igloolik said she was relieved that the former priest is finally going to face trial..
“It’s almost a relief,” said the woman, who cannot be identified under a court order. “We were told that he was never going to be found. And when he came back to life and came to Canada, that was a shock to all of us.”
The charges against Dejaeger include allegations from February 1995 when he was originally charged with three counts of indecent assault and three counts of buggery, a charge no longer in the Criminal Code. They relate to his time as a priest in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982, where he was sent to serve the indigenous community by the Belgian Oblates, an order of Catholic priests.
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