Court orders new trial for former Sanikiluaq teacher charged with abusing children

The conviction of former Sanikiluaq teacher Johnny Meeko on 14 sex-related charges has been overturned by the Nunavut Court of Appeal.

In a decision released Friday, the court ruled serious legal errors during his June 2023 trial deprived Meeko of a fair hearing.

It ordered a new trial for Meeko, who previously faced multiple proceedings.

The appeal court acknowledged the toll a retrial will take on complainants, the community and Meeko, but said “only a fair trial resulting in a safe verdict will ensure that justice is served.”

Meeko was convicted in June 2023 after a nearly three-week trial in Iqaluit that heard testimony from 11 complainants and three additional witnesses.

At Meeko’s sentencing, Justice Paul Bychok, who has since retired, described Meeko as a “lifelong pedophile” and a “serial child predator” whose crimes were premeditated and calculated.

Meeko denied all accusations, claiming a “vision” from God that would make his accusers “vanish” and described the allegations as “incredibly unbelievable.”

At that trial, he faced 17 charges — three that were laid in 2019, and 14 that were being retried after Meeko won an appeal after being convicted on them in 2017.

The charges stemmed from incidents spanning several decades in Sanikiluaq, where Meeko worked as an elementary school teacher for 36 years and was a community leader.

Most of the allegations involved his Grade 3 students between the 1970s and early 2000s, according to the court’s release, and included reports of sexual touching, assault, and other forms of abuse against vulnerable children in his care.

The jury found Meeko guilty on 14 charges, including sexual assault and inappropriate touching. He was sentenced to 58 years in prison, reduced to 29 years.

Meeko appealed the conviction.

In their decision, appeal court justices Suzanne Duncan, Alice Woolley and Kevin Feth ruled Bychok admitted evidence that should have been excluded.

The court also found Bychok inadequately instructed the jury and failed to properly address the risks of allowing testimony about misconduct for which Meeko had not been charged.

The appeal court said that while some of this evidence was relevant because Meeko’s defence relied on portraying his conduct as “non-sexual” and culturally normalized at the time, Bychok did not conduct the required legal analysis before allowing it.

More seriously, it said, Bychok did not instruct the jury on how to use that evidence.

Without those directions, there was substantial risk jurors could use it to conclude Meeko was “the type of person likely to commit the offences.”

The court also found Bychok erred concerning testimony of a protected witness’s mother, who told the court Meeko acknowledged having harmed “five people” but who also said she became “deaf” or too distressed to hear the names of the alleged victims.

Bychok further failed to guide jurors on how that statement could be used, the court said, or whether parts should be disregarded because they were incomplete.

Although Bychok told the jury each count was a “mini-trial,” the appeal court found that oversimplified a complex case involving multiple complainants and overlapping evidence.

“Cumulatively, these errors lead inexorably to the conclusion that the appellant did not receive a fair trial,” the appeals court judges said.

The case will return to the Nunavut Court of Justice on Jan. 5 to schedule a new trial date.