Priest guilty on 24 counts of sex abuse

A Canadian court has found a defrocked Roman Catholic priest guiltily of 24 of over 70 counts of sex abuse charges against him.

Eric Dejaeger, who has already pleaded guilty to eight counts of sexual assault dating back to 30 years ago, was found guilty on Friday of raping dozens of children and a dog in the Canadian Arctic, where he formerly worked as a missionary.

Justice Robert Kilpatrick, who is overseeing the trail, said the time gap between the alleged assaults and the trial had weakened the case.

“The quantity and quality of the evidence available to the court in this case has been substantially weakened by the passage of time. The reliability of the Crown’s evidence on many counts is suspect. This is reflected by the results of this trial,” he added.

Various victims told the court that Dejaeger used his position as a missionary to lure and trap them, then threaten them with hellfire if they told their families.

Referring to one of the victim’s testimonies, Kilpatrick said, “The sequence of events described by [the complainant] is both logical and complete. The evidence is internally consistent. There are no obvious gaps in this memory, at least in so far as the traumatic events were concerned.”

Dejaeger was arrested and returned to Canada by Belgian authorities in January 2011 on immigration charges.

In 1990, the former priest was convicted and sentenced to five years in jail for the sexual assault of eight children.

The Vatican has repeatedly been criticized for the manner of its handling of Catholic priests’ child sex abuse cases.

SRK/MHB/MAM