Nunavut judge: Sanikiluaq teacher sexually abused students for 35 years

Johnny Meeko leaves the Nunavut Court of Justice building in May 2017, after a court appearance. Meeko, a teacher, church warden and Canadian Ranger instructor, sexually abused children for 35 years, between 1972 and 2007, Justice Neil Sharkey has found. Some of the abuse occurred at the school where Meeko taught, in full view of other children. Some of Meeko’s victims earlier tried to tell a school principal and their parents about the abuse, but they were not believed. (PHOTO BY STEVE DUCHARME)

A newly published verdict decision says convicted sex criminal and veteran teacher Johnny Meeko was “canny and devious” when he molested and sexually assaulted eight victims in a “decades-long pattern of abuse involving young students in his charge.”

Nunavut’s senior judge, Neil Sharkey, released on Monday, March 19, a massive 155-page written decision, as a follow-up to an oral verdict he delivered late last year, dubbing Meeko a “sexual predator” and convicting him of 27 sex crimes committed between 1972 and 2007.

“And throughout all this time, Johnny Meeko suffered no repercussion for this behaviour. As a respected teacher and church warden, he was above suspicion,” Sharkey said.

The decision also found Meeko not guilty on five other serious charges, including rape and forcible confinement stemming from another complainant whose testimony the judge did not deem credible.

The release of the written decision sets the stage for Meeko’s sentencing this April, which will take place almost three years after his trial ended in 2015.

While Meeko’s verdict has been on the public record since December, Sharkey’s point-form oral decision at that time did not elaborate on the specific stories told by Meeko’s victims.

The victims were mostly young girls, and one boy, who began to be assaulted by Meeko around the ages of eight and nine, when they attended his Grade 3 class at Sanikiluaq’s Nuiyak School.

Sharkey concluded that as a teacher, Meeko assaulted minors with impunity, without fear of repercussions from the school’s administration.

Of the eight complainant testimonies accepted by Sharkey as credible, one victim estimated that Meeko touched or grabbed her “approximately 100 times” from the time she began kindergarten in the 1970s until Grade 9.

That victim said Meeko continuously touched her and other students’ breasts over their clothes, in full view of other students, saying that by doing that “their chest would grow bigger.”

Sharkey said in his decision that he believed the victim when she told the court that Meeko would also ask her and other girls “whether they were growing pubic hair.”

After several years of these assaults, the victim testified that she and her younger sister reported Meeko’s assaults to the school’s principal, who she said “didn’t believe us,” Sharkey’s judgment said.

Other complainants testified they told their parents about Meeko’s behavior, and in at least one case the parents “did not believe Johnny would do such a thing,” Sharkey said.

Sharkey added that Meeko was careful to engage in more invasive sexual exploitation out of sight and after school hours, usually by making his victims serve detention “so that he could violate them in private, one-on-one.”

At least one of those acts included removing the victim’s pants during detention, where Meeko would stare at her, before engaging her “in simulated sex.”

“It is my view that Johnny tried to normalize much of the less invasive sexual activity in the eyes of his young victims by attempting to make it seem unremarkable, or even funny,” Sharkey said.

He said Meeko would routinely pat students on their bottoms, grab their chests or put his hands down the back of their pants during a school day.

Meeko also assaulted some of the girls outside of the school, and at one point threatened a victim who visited his mother’s home that if she told her own mother, “I’m gonna do the same thing to her.”

Throughout his career as an educator, Meeko suffered no repercussions for this behavior, the decision said.

“As a respected teacher and church warden, he was above suspicion,” Sharkey said.

In 2009, Meeko received a letter of reprimand written by a Government of Nunavut superintendent of schools for “patting students on the bottom” seven years earlier and delivered to him shortly before he retired.

Meeko also had the added benefit of teaching for several years in a portable classroom, which was detached from the main school building and gave him another level of privacy.

“In my view as well, while there was always a chance the principal might visit his classroom, Johnny was nonetheless confident that no students would complain about the abuse, and if they did, they would not be believed,” Sharkey said.

And he said Meeko was careful to only abuse students when he was the only adult in the classroom.

But the judge criticized Crown lawyers for not calling both the school principal and parents named in the testimony of some victims.

The Crown, Sharkey said, “was not able to say whether any attempt had been made by the police,” but the responsibility to follow up on that testimony ultimately fell on the Crown.

Meeko’s lawyers had argued that the complainants’ testimony was false, and while the bulk of the evidence disproved that theory, Sharkey warned that the lack of corroborative evidence that could have been obtained by the Crown was worrisome.

“Sexual assault cases deserve to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted,” he said.

“Courts should not be forced an oath-versus-oath dilemma in a case where all the available evidence was not mustered.”

Sharkey’s long-awaited written decision has faced numerous delays, largely stemming from legal actions by Meeko that threatened to reopen his trial, but which ultimately failed.

Meeko’s sentencing was delayed yet again in February after he fired his lawyer, resulting in Sharkey granting Meeko more time to find another lawyer.

Lawyers are expected to make submissions on Meeko’s sentence on April 13.

R. versus Meeko 2018 by NunatsiaqNews on Scribd