Bishoop Raymond Lahey arrives at a police station Oct.1, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS, Adrian Wyld
OTTAWA - A judge has put off the case of a Roman Catholic bishop facing child-pornography charges.
A lawyer for Raymond Lahey has asked for more disclosure of evidence on the charges of possessing and importing child pornography.
The Nova Scotia bishop was charged Sept. 25 - 10 days after he was detained and questioned by Canada Border Services Agency officers at Ottawa airport.
Lahey, 69, stepped down as bishop of the diocese in Antigonish, N.S., and has been staying with other priests in Ottawa since he was granted bail Oct. 1.
Police say they found hundreds of files and dozens of videos on Lahey’s laptop after he arrived in Ottawa on a flight from the United Kingdom, many of them showing young males engaged in sex acts.
Police warrants say some images show boys as young as eight, though none of the allegations made in the search warrants have been proven in court.
Court documents say border officials flagged Lahey because he was a man travelling alone and his passport showed several trips to Southeast Asia, Germany, Spain and other areas known for child pornography.
The documents also say Lahey’s evasive answers and shifty eyes piqued their interest.
One warrant said Lahey told Ottawa police he "had no time for child exploitation, no time for child pornography."
He is alleged to have told one officer he is attracted to young men, aged 20 or 21, and that he had never done anything abusive to a child and would "never have any sexual interest in a person under 18."
Two search warrants were used to seize more devices from Lahey’s apartment in Sydney, N.S., and his office and home in Antigonish, where he served as bishop for the past six years.
The warrant for his home in Antigonish states that officers seized two cellphones, cassette tapes, cameras, CDs and DVDs, and two computers, while they recovered one computer from his Sydney apartment.
One document also says the RCMP officer seeking the search warrant interviewed Shane Earle, a Newfoundland man who alleges he saw a catalogue of child pornographic images in Lahey’s bedroom when he was a priest in St. John’s in the mid-1980s.
