Sex-abuse trial adjourned as priest critically ill

WINNIPEG (CANADA)
Winnipeg Free Press

July 19, 2019

A fall trial for disgraced former priest Ronald Leger has been adjourned after it was disclosed he is in failing health and in palliative care.

“At this stage he is only periodically conscious and is in the latter stages of palliative care,” Leger’s lawyer, Saul Simmonds, told court Friday.

In February 2016, Leger, now 81, was sentenced to two years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting three boys in the 1980s and early 2000s.

Leger was rearrested in October 2016 after several men came forward and accused Leger of sexually assaulting them when they were youths.

In 1980, Leger founded Teen Stop Jeunesse, a teen drop-in centre, also known as Ron’s Drop-In. He became a priest of the Holy Family Parish on Archibald Street in 1995.

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