Article content

A Nunavut judge has found a former Roman Catholic priest guilty of 24 of the more than 70 sex-related charges he faced involving Inuit children more than 30 years ago.

Defrocked Oblate priest Eric Dejaeger had already pleaded guilty to eight counts of sexual assault when his trial began in December.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Defrocked Catholic priest Eric Dejaeger found guilty of 24 sex charges involving Inuit children Back to video

In his written decision, Justice Robert Kilpatrick noted that the time that had passed between when the assaults were alleged to have happened and the trial weakened the case.

“Judges and juries do not possess divine insight into the soul of witnesses who testify in a legal proceeding. Decisions must be made on the basis of evidence alone, not intuition or guesswork,” Kilpatrick wrote.

“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.”