Nunavut court: ex-teacher denies molesting children

Johnny Meeko, 61, sat in the witness box Aug. 22 to give evidence in his own defence. He recanted a video statement that he made in 2012 at the Sanikiluaq police station and denied all the allegations that complainants made during his trial. Crown lawyers were scheduled to begin cross-examining Meeko on the morning of Aug. 23. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

At a special Saturday sitting of the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit Aug. 22, Justice Neil Sharkey heard former Nunavut teacher Johnny Meeko admit to sex crimes against students in a 2012 police video statement played in court.

But later, when Meeko testified in his own defence, Sharkey heard Meeko, 61, deny all of them.

About three hours into the five-hour police statement — taped over seven hours in August 2012 — Meeko makes his first clear admission that he molested former students.

“Is what [the complainants] are saying the truth?” RCMP Const. Allan Beaton asks Meeko in the video statement, taped at the Sanikiluaq RCMP detachment on Aug. 14, 2012.

“It’s the truth,” says Meeko, wearing green sweat pants, a grey T-shirt and sitting at a table with his back against the wall while holding a cup of coffee in his hands.

In the video statement, Meeko says “maybe” the abuse happened because of the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of a teenager when Meeko was 11.

“Did you enjoy touching [students’] chests or their private parts?” Beaton then asks in the statement.

“Um…,” Meeko begins.

“I don’t want you to say ‘maybe’, I want you to tell me the truth,” Beaton says.

“Yes,” Meeko answers.

But on the stand, Meeko said he was “very scared” when giving the 2012 statement because the RCMP spoke “loudly and aggressively” and threatened to send him to the Baffin Correctional Centre if he didn’t cooperate.

“My grandfather taught us that… the police are the club of God. You have to respect the police or they’ll knock you down,” Meeko said.

“Did you in fact ever touch any of your students in a sexual way?” defence lawyer James Morton asked his client Aug. 22.

“No,” Meeko answered.

“Did you have sex with any of the complainants while they were children?” Morton asked.

“No,” Meeko replied.

“Did you ever hit, punch, squeeze or touch any student to discipline them?”

“No … the information is not true,” Meeko said, crying.

Over the first four days of the trial, which began Aug. 17, the court heard nine complainants alleging that Meeko committed 32 offences against them while he taught at Nuiyak School in Sanikiluaq between 1972 and 2007.

The most serious of those allegations, almost all of which are sex crimes against children, came when the final complainant alleged Meeko raped her three times over two school years when she was around 15 years of age.

The identities of all of the complainants — eight women and one man — are protected by a court order.

While in the witness box, Meeko said that in 1972, when the first count of rape is alleged to have occurred, he was in Chesterfield Inlet taking a teaching assistant course.

Meeko also attended the Churchill Vocational Centre in Manitoba until June 1973, Morton said, entering into evidence the centre’s 1972-73 yearbook showing pictures of Meeko.

Morton asked his client Aug. 22 if it was well known in the Belcher Islands community that victims of convicted pedophile Ed Horne — who Meeko worked with as a teacher’s assistant — received compensation for the abuse they suffered at the hands of Horne.

“The money was flowing to the victims of Ed Horne, and I realized that has gone [on] for 10 years, and after that I was arrested,” Meeko said.

“Was it common knowledge that people got compensation for what Ed Horne did?” Morton asked.

“Yes,” Meeko replied.

“Everybody knew that?”

“Yes.”

But in Meeko’s 2012 statement to Sanikiluaq police, the former teacher admits to many of the specifics that eight of the nine complainants alleged during the trial.

For example, he admits to groping numerous complainants over their clothes and to telling the female complainants that their bodies would develop in time.

“I”ve seen [the] development of the girls, so that’s what I told them,” Meeko says to Const. Ian Allen in the 2012 video statement.

“What did you tell them?” Allen asks.

“That they’re gonna have nice body, breasts, nice bum.”

Multiple female complainants testified that Meeko told them their breasts would “grow bigger.”

Meeko also admits in the video to fondling the lone male complainant’s penis, “rear end” and nipples, and to fondling one of the female complainants while he was a Canadian Junior Rangers supervisor — all of which the complainants alleged during the trial.

Meeko did not admit to the allegations of rape in the statement — those were filed with police after the video statement was made.

But it’s clear from the video statement that at least three RCMP officers used various tactics over seven hours to elicit a confession from Meeko at the Sanikiluaq detachment in August 2012.

Const. Beaton, for example, tells Meeko at the beginning of the statement that police already know Meeko has committed the crimes the complainants allege.

After 45 minutes of small talk about coffee, the local weather, Meeko’s family and teaching experience, Beaton turns the conversation to pedophile Horne, saying that known child molesters are often molested themselves as children.

“Maybe as a kid, you were touched also, am I right?” Beaton asks Meeko.

“Yeah,” Meeko answers, adding that a teenager performed oral sex on him twice, against Meeko’s will, when Meeko was 11.

Hours later, when Meeko admits to the crimes, Meeko consistently offers Beaton’s explanation as his own.

For example, Meeko says, “It’s something that was done to me, [so] maybe I thought it was right for me to touch [students].”

And just before Meeko makes his first unequivocal admission of guilt — about three hours into the interrogation — RCMP Sgt. Dave Knibbs enters the interview room and accuses Meeko of lying.

“There’s not a question that [Meeko] remembers what happened… And frankly for him to say that he doesn’t remember is just a lie,” Knibbs tells Beaton in front of Meeko.

Knibbs asks Meeko if he is a religious man, and Meeko answers yes.

“[Then] you understand that the wages of sin are death,” but that God forgives sins, Knibbs says to Meeko.

“But it’s conditional, you have to confess your sins in order to be forgiven. You don’t just get forgiven.”

Just before Knibbs enters the interview room, Beaton plays for Meeko audio messages of Meeko’s cousin, wife and son, pleading with Meeko through tears to “do the right thing” and “tell the truth”, which leaves Meeko himself in tears.

And for the last hour of the interrogation, police repeatedly ask Meeko to name other students he molested.

When he finally names another student — who eventually testified as a complainant at Meeko’s trial — one of the interrogating officers hugs Meeko.

“Thank you very much buddy… I care about you,” Const. Allen says.

But on the stand, Morton asked his client “if you didn’t touch [that student], why did you pick her name for the RCMP?”

“The RCMP told me, ‘we know what you have done and if you give us one more name then the interview will be completed,’” Meeko answered.

While the video statement played in the Iqaluit courtroom over Aug. 21 and Aug. 22, Meeko sat beside his lawyer with a crossword book open on the table in front of him.

Meeko drank iced tea out of a styrofoam cup, at times took his black sneakers off, and at other times idly watched the video statement.

Crown prosecutors will cross-examine Meeko when the trial resumes Aug. 24 at 9:30 a.m.