Local Pedophile Priest Jailed in Malta after Failed Appeal

Windsor Star
November 14, 2012

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/11/14/local-pedophile-priest-jailed-in-malta-after-failed-appeal/

Father Godwin Scerri at the St. Joseph orphanage in Malta. (The Windsor Star-Handout)

A pedophile priest who fled southern Ontario two decades ago, only to be convicted of abusing boys at an orphanage in Malta, will spend five years in prison there after a failed bid to overturn his sentence.

Defrocked priest Godwin Scerri — still wanted in Essex County for alleged sex abuse in Emeryville and on Pelee Island — was convicted in 2011 of abusing boys in Malta.

The Malta Today news agency is reporting that Scerri was handcuffed and taken to jail this week after a judge dismissed an appeal.

Scerri abused an undisclosed number of boys at an orphanage in Malta. But he was cleared of a rape charge on a technicality, because the crime allegedly took place in a different location than the one listed on the charge sheet.

Scerri was born in Malta but worked as a Catholic priest in Ontario from 1981 to 1991. He served from 1981 to 1987 as an associate pastor of St. William’s Church in Emeryville, and from 1987 to 1991 as the pastor.

The OPP charged Scerri in June 1993 with sexual assault and gross indecency after a 22-year-old man came forward.

The local victim told police Scerri abused him between 1983 and 1987, starting when he was 12 years old. It happened on Pelee Island and in Emeryville.

But before the case went to trial, Scerri fled to Malta where he was named spiritual director of a girls’ secondary school.

Then, in October 2003, Scerri and two other members of the Missionary Society of St. Paul were charged with abusing and raping children at the St. Joseph Home, an orphanage in Santa Venera. The court case went on for eight years.