A man whose Nova Scotian connections include an honorary degree from Dalhousie University for his children’s rights advocacy has been jailed nine years for raping two boys in Nepal.
The New York Times reported Monday that Peter Dalglish, 62, raped the boys aged 12 and 14 last year in Kartike, a village in central Nepal. A Nepali court convicted him in June.
“Last April, nearly a dozen police officers swarmed Mr. Dalglish’s home, placed a gun to his head and arrested him under suspicion of repeatedly raping two of the village’s boys, including the son of the home’s caretaker. Investigators eventually found a box containing photographs of naked children, some of them playing in pools,” the Times article said.
The Ontario lawyer graduated from Dalhousie University in 1983 and received an honorary degree from the university in 2008. He’s also a member of the Order of Canada.
“Inspired by images of famine in Africa in the mid-1980s and compelled to help, Mr. Dalglish organized an airlift of supplies to Ethiopia,” a Dec. 9, 2008, article in the Dalhousie News on his honorary degree said. "On the day he was called to the bar in Nova Scotia, he booked a one-way ticket to the Sudan. There was no turning back. Since then, his resumé is dwarfed only by the good his works have done. He’s organized humanitarian assistance for children displaced by drought in Darfur. He’s set up training schools for street children, transforming pickpockets and petty thieves into mechanics and electricians.”
That article was recently removed from the Dalhousie University site.
Dalglish helped homeless youth around the world find jobs through an organization he co-founded, Street Kids International, which was absorbed by Save the Children.
Dalhousie senate chair Kevin Hewitt said in a statement that the case is "deeply disturbing," and that the university' senate is "nearing completion of a process that would be used to revoke" Dalglish's honorary degree.
