CANADA
Nunatsiaq Online
JIM BELL
After waiting nearly four decades, more than two dozen middle-aged Inuit sexual abuse victims from Igloolik and Kugaaruk filed into an Iqaluit courtroom Jan. 19 to begin describing how ex-priest Eric Dejaeger scarred their hearts and deformed their lives.
“Sometimes I would take showers to get the dirt off, the shame and dirty feelings, but I couldn’t get it off me,” one woman told the court, weeping as she spoke.
Dejaeger, 67, a former Oblate missionary, is guilty of 32 sex crimes against Inuit children he molested between 1976 and 1982
He entered guilty pleas to eight of those in November 2013. Following a long trial that ran from Nov. 18, 2013 until May 28, 2014, Justice Robert Kilpatrick of the Nunavut Court Justice found him guilty on 24 charges.
That included many counts of indecent assault on boys and girls, four counts of buggery, one count of bestiality with a dog, one count of forcible confinement, and one count of sexual assault.
Lawyers returned to court this week to start a lengthy sentencing hearing that began with numerous victim impact statements, most of them from Igloolik residents who flew to Iqaluit.
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