MD needs more time to finish report on repeat sex offender
Author: SHERRI BORDEN COLLEY Staff Reporter
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A doctor assessing the risk a child sex offender poses to reoffend needs more time to complete his report.

In January, Roger Edouard Mercier, 39, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a young boy between Sept. 1, 2006, and Jan. 23, 2007, and failing to comply with a police undertaking to stay away from anyone under 16.

Because Mr. Mercier already has seven prior convictions for molesting children, the Crown requested that he undergo a 60-day assessment.

The result of the assessment will determine whether the Crown applies to have the pedophile declared a dangerous offender and imprisoned indefinitely.

The outcome of that report was to be discussed Monday in Halifax provincial court. But Crown attorney Alonzo Wright told Judge Castor Williams that the assessment was not yet complete.

The matter was set over to April 24.

Mr. Mercier was convicted last summer of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old Dartmouth girl in 2005.

At sentencing in October, he was given double credit for the eight months and two days he had spent on remand and was sentenced to time already served. His name was also added to a provincial registry for sex offenders, where it will remain for life, unless a successful application to have it removed is made after 20 years.

Mr. Mercier has five previous convictions for sexually assaulting young children in British Columbia. He was acquitted on a charge of trying to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor in the B.C. case.

He moved to B.C. in the mid-1990s after being accused of touching students while teaching in the Annapolis Valley.

Mr. Mercier has been in custody since February 2007.

( sborden@herald.ca)

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