CANADA
Nunatsiaq Online
JIM BELL
Though the Oblates of Mary Immaculate sent Father Eric Dejaeger to Igloolik in 1978 for the express purpose of learning Inuktitut, the Flemish priest put little effort into learning the language, Father Robert Lechat said Dec. 6 in the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit.
“Eric could not speak to the Inuit in Inuktitut, only in English,” Lechat said.
One of the eastern Arctic’s oldest surviving Christian missionaries, Lechat, 93, hobbled into an Iqaluit courtroom that morning to appear as a witness for the Crown at Dejaeger’s trial, which enters its fourth week Dec. 9.
When the trial opened Nov. 18, Dejaeger pleaded guilty to eight of the 77 criminal charges he faces, most of which allege the sexual abuse of children in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982.
He’s asked to be tried on the 69 remaining charges. Justice Robert Kilpatrick presides over that trial alone, without a jury.
Still robust and lucid, Lechat, dressed in a long grey cardigan and grey trousers, made his way into the courtroom with the help of a cane. Two workers helped him ease his five-foot-six-inch frame into the courtroom’s narrow witness box.
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