Jailed Paedophile Priest Still Wanted in Canada

Malta Independent
November 18, 2012

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2012-11-18/news/jailed-paedophile-priest-still-wanted-in-canada-401014789/

One of the two paedophile priests whose prison sentences were confirmed by the Appeals Court last Tuesday is still wanted in Essex County, Ontario to face sexual abuse charges.

Defrocked priest Godwin Scerri fled back to Malta from Ontario 20 years ago. Windsorstar.com, the website of Ontario daily newspaper Windsor Star, reported this week that, in 1993, a 22-year-old man had told Ontario Provincial Police that Scerri had abused him between 1983 – when he was 12 years old – and 1987 in the town of Emeryville and on Pelee Island, both in Essex County, Ontario.

Scerri had worked as a priest in Ontario from 1981 to 1991. He served as an associate pastor of St William’s Church, Emeryville, from 1981 to 1987 and then as pastor from 1987 to 1991.

He was arrested by Ontario Provincial Police in June 1993 on charges of sexual assault and gross indecency but fled to Malta before the case went to trial.

The report in the Canadian newspaper refers to Scerri having been charged in Malta, in October 2003, along with two other members of the Missionary Society of St Paul, with the sexual assault and abuse of boys at St Joseph’s Home in Sta Venera. It also remarks that the case went on for eight years.