Woman Tells Court Accused Priest Starved Children to Force Them into Sex

The Canadian Press
November 20, 2013

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/Woman+tells+court+accused+priest+starved+children+force/9189436/story.html

Eric Dejaeger leaves an Iqaluit courtroom Jan. 20, 2011.

IQALUIT, Nunavut - A witness at a child abuse trial in the North is describing how a priest once used hunger to force children into sex.

The woman says her family in Igloolik, Nunavut, was sometimes hungry for days at a time between 1978 and 1982, the years when Eric Dejaeger (deh-YAY'-guhr) was the priest in the remote community.

She says her grandmother, who was raising her, often sent her to the church for a meal.

The witness says that after one such meal, when she was eight years old, Dejaeger took her upstairs and raped her.

She says she was bleeding after the assault and Dejaeger took her into the bathroom to clean herself up, then spread garbage bags on his bedroom couch so she wouldn't stain it.

The witness says she told her grandmother about the rape, but the woman didn't believe her.

She says she stopped going to school after the assault so she didn't have to face Dejaeger during after-class Bible study.