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A 52-year-old former bookkeeper won’t be headed to jail for defrauding two Roman Catholic parishes on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore of more than $225,000 through hundreds of individual transactions over the course of a decade.
Judge Amy Sakalauskas agreed on Tuesday in provincial court in Dartmouth, N.S., to a joint recommendation of the prosecution and defence and handed Patricia Anne Dixon two years of house arrest followed by three years of probation.
“The impact of what happened here is obviously still strongly felt,” Sakalauskas said.
“And that includes direct feelings of hurt, betrayal, disappointment among parishioners, but also the ripple effects that it caused among a close-knit community that many of those community members explained to me.”
Among those in court to hear the decision were five former parishioners of St. Anselm’s Parish, which was rolled into a new parish, Saint John of the Cross, after the local archdiocese in 2018 made the controversial decision to close St. Anselm’s Church in West Chezzetcook, N.S.
Details of the fraud
Dixon pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000 last May, three years after she was first charged. The date of the offence ranges from 2010 to 2020.
The crime was perpetrated while she was a bookkeeper at St. Anselm’s, and later Saint John of the Cross, and involved nearly 1,900 fraudulent transactions, most of them using parish credit cards. She spent money on everything from groceries to travel to home heating fuel.
Sakalauskas said in her remarks that Dixon’s degree of moral culpability was high and that there were ongoing efforts to conceal her fraud. There was no real reason given for the crime other than for personal gain.
As part of the sentencing process, a 20-page agreed statement of facts and a forensic accounting report were submitted to the court. The details suggest there were lax financial controls, and Sakalauskas said Dixon “took advantage of a system that was ripe for exploitation.”
In Dixon’s favour at sentencing, the judge said, was her positive pre-sentence report and her guilty plea, which spared the expense and resources of conducting what would have been a lengthy trial.
Valerie Oehmen, left, and Madeline Oldham, former parishioners of St. Anselm’s Church in West Chezzetcook, N.S., are shown in Dartmouth, N.S., on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Richard Cuthbertson/CBC)
This fall, Sakalauskas had raised questions about the recommendation for house arrest for this type of fraud, and Crown and defence lawyers returned to court last month to make additional submissions to justify the low sentence.
The sentence did not sit well with one former St. Anselm’s parishioner. Madeline Oldham, who first went to police with her concerns in 2019, said in an interview that she and others were “dumbfounded” by the plea agreement, which saw Dixon admit guilt to a single charge.
“It’s not justice for the victims, it’s justice for the offender,” she said in an interview.
Prosecutor Brian Cox had acknowledged in court the sentence recommendation was a lenient one. While the Crown felt it had a good case to show Dixon had committed frauds, he said, proving the entire amount was an issue.
There were hundreds of transactions. Between documents and witness testimony, a trial could have taken weeks, he said, and the Crown considered both the judicial and prosecutorial resources needed for that.
“This sentencing recommendation does justice for those victims,” he said in an interview. “It holds the accused to account and it represents a fair and proportionate outcome based on the sentencing case law in this province and across the country.”
Prohibited from handling money
Dixon declined to comment outside the courtroom, as did her lawyer, Aimee Walters.
As part of her sentence, Dixon is prohibited from seeking, obtaining or continuing employment or volunteering in a role that involves having authority over money, property or the “valuable security” of another person.
She has also been ordered to pay $225,258.83 in restitution to Saint John of the Cross Parish, but she only has to make payments once her gross monthly income reaches $5,000.
Her pre-sentence report, from June, said she was taking home about $2,200 a month working as a “virtual receptionist” for a communications company.
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