Nunavut trial on historic sex charges set for November in Pond Inlet

Billy Merkosak, a well known carver from Pond Inlet, will face 26 historic sex assault charges in his home community in November. The trial was set Mar. 16 at the Iqaluit courthouse, above. (FILE PHOTO)

Billy Merkosak, the prominent Pond Inlet carver facing numerous sexual assault charges stemming from incidents alleged to have occurred in the late-1970s and mid-1980s, will stand trial on those charges this fall in his home community.

Presiding over Merkosak’s March 16 case at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit, Justice Robert Kilpatrick set a date of Nov. 2, 2015, for a five-day judge-alone trial in Pond Inlet.

Merkosak will face 26 charges, most of them relating to sexual offences alleged to have been committed while he was a youth.

Those charges include:

• Two counts of buggery;

• Seven counts of indecent assault on a male;

• Five counts of gross indecency;

• Four counts of administering a poisonous substance to someone; and,

• Seven counts of sexual assault.

Crown prosecutor Jay Potter told Nunatsiaq News that most of those counts are called “historical charges” because the Criminal Code of Canada has been updated since the time the offences are alleged to have occurred.

“We’re charging Mr. Merkosak with offences that existed at the time that he allegedly committed the offences, but they’re no longer necessarily the same offences that are in today’s Criminal Code,” Potter said March 17.

Most of the historical offences were later merged into what is now called sexual assault, Potter added.

Merkosak is currently in his home community of Pond Inlet. A bail review brought forward by defence lawyer James Morton and held in the fall of 2014 changed Merkosak’s bail conditions to allow the carver to reside in his home community, Potter said.

Previously, Merkosak’s bail conditions stipulated that he not be allowed in Pond Inlet while awaiting the outcome of his charges.

If he is found guilty of any of the 26 charges, Merkosak, now 48, would be sentenced as a youth because he was a youth at the time the offences are alleged to have occurred.