Priest's Sexual Assault Sentence Reduced

By Hannah Spray
StarPhoenix
May 21, 2015

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Priest+sexual+assault+sentence+reduced/11074160/story.html

A retired priest was released from custody after he appealed his sentence for a sexual assault he committed in 1978.

Omer Desjardins, 82, was sentenced in January to six months in jail, plus one year of probation, for sexually touching a 10-year-old girl in 1978 in a small community north of Saskatoon.

On April 16, having served just under four months of his sentence, Desjardins was released after a panel of three Saskatchewan Court of Appeal judges reduced his sentence to time served.

"The court of appeal essentially said they're going to allow the appeal and sentence him to time served, as there were mitigating factors the judge didn't take into account or give adequate weight to," said Desjardin's lawyer, George Green.

Those factors included Desjardins' age, the passage of time since the offence and the fact the assault was committed at a time when Desjardins struggled with alcohol. In a factum filed with the appeal court, Green argued the sentencing judge made errors in determining a conditional sentence - a jail term served in the community - wasn't appropriate. For example, Judge Byron Wright wrote that ordering Desjardins to perform community service wouldn't be effective because he spent his entire life in community service.

"(We) submit that an offender's exemplary lifestyle, good conduct and/or service to the community should never, as a matter of public policy, be held against an offender and utilized by a sentencing judge to impose a harsher sentence, because such conduct and service to the community is in the public interest to encourage rather than discourage," Green wrote.

Desjardins was ordained as a priest in 1958 and worked most recently as a chaplain in Winnipeg until he retired last fall. He had no prior criminal record and pleaded guilty at his second court appearance on the sexual assault charge. At his sentencing hearing in Saskatoon provincial court, the victim, now 46 years old, spoke about the effects of the assault.

"You deceived me and your crime has affected my life so drastically that it has been a life of pure sadness, hatred and mistrust," she said in court. Desjardins will still be on probation for one year. The conditions include that he have no contact with the victim and that he participate in sexual offender treatment programming as directed by his probation officer.

Contact: hspray@thestarphoenix.com