Nova ScotiaPatricia Ann Dixon, 52, faced a sentencing hearing this week in provincial court in Dartmouth, N.S., for defrauding St. Anselm’s Parish in West Chezzetcook, N.S., a crime that left the church community betrayed and torn apart.Patricia Ann Dixon, 52, faces sentencing for fraud at St. Anselm’s Parish in West Chezzetcook, N.S.Richard Cuthbertson · CBC News · Posted: Sep 26, 2025 12:29 PM EDT | Last Updated: 17 minutes agoPatricia Ann Dixon, 52, who defrauded the St. Anselm’s Parish in West Chezzetcook, N.S., is shown leaving a courtroom in Dartmouth, N.S., on Thursday. (Richard Cuthbertson/CBC)Patricia Ann Dixon was a friendly face at St. Anselm’s Church in West Chezzetcook, N.S., but behind her outward demeanour she harboured a secret that would eventually leave the local Roman Catholic community betrayed and torn apart.Over the course of a decade, the bookkeeper for the St. Anselm’s Parish, and later a second parish, stole more than $225,000 through hundreds of fraudulent transactions, spending the money on gas, groceries and vacations, and at restaurants and retail stores.This week in provincial court in Dartmouth, N.S., Dixon, 52, faced sentencing for a fraud perpetrated between 2010 and 2020, with nearly a dozen former parishioners sitting in the public gallery of the courtroom, some reading out victim impact statements to the judge in the case.”My trust in her friendship has been shattered,” former parishioner Madeline Oldham, who went to police in 2019 with her concerns, told the court Thursday. “This long, arduous and harrowing experience has been fraught with turmoil, accusations, distrust, betrayal, abandonment, separation and division.”The fraudulent malfeasance of the accused has caused extreme spiritual, emotional and financial harm to me and a large number of St. Anselm’s parishioners. The spiritual loss to myself and our faith community is irreplaceable.”Valerie Oehmen, left, and Madeline Oldham, former parishioners of St. Anselm’s Church in West Chezzetcook, N.S., attended Thursday’s court hearing. (Richard Cuthbertson/CBC)Dixon pleaded guilty to the fraud count in May, three years after she was first charged. The Crown and defence are jointly recommending a sentence of 18 months of house arrest, followed by a six-month curfew. She would also be ordered to pay restitution for the amount defrauded.Prosecutor Brian Cox acknowledged in court the sentence was “very low” when compared to similar cases where offenders are often jailed. He said while the Crown believed it had a strong case to show fraud, he suggested proving how much would have been trickier.The guilty plea, along with a 20-page agreed statement of facts and a forensic accounting report filed with the court, will offer parishioners clarity surrounding what happened, he said.”This plea allows an opportunity for closure, and it allows a fulsome accounting of the facts for all of the community members to hear and understand,” he said.He argued the fraud was driven by “greed and lifestyle,” and discounted suggestions the crime was due to financial and personal pressures in Dixon’s life, noting most Canadians face similar challenges at some time in their lives.St. Anselm’s Church in West Chezzetcook, N.S., was closed in 2018. (Paul Palmeter/CBC)However, whether Judge Amy Sakalauskas will accept the joint recommendation is not clear. She pointedly questioned whether Dixon was remorseful, noting certain comments she had made in a pre-sentence report. Sakalauskas will hand down sentence in November.In brief comments to the court, Dixon, who is reportedly undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, apologized to the parishioners of St. Anselm’s, and said she had considered them friends.In a victim impact statement, parishioner Jeannette Smith said the crime Dixon committed is worse than “just stealing money” because she was aware of the parish’s financial state as the bookkeeper.”She knew that the parish was having hard times and that her neighbours put on fundraisers,” Smith said. “We dug deep into our pockets to help sustain the church, and she still stole. If she and her family needed money, every one of us would have lined up to help her. “This crime took place over many, many years and Patricia Dixon forged signatures of volunteers and the priest. This was a conscientious, planned and deliberate act of theft and fraud over many years.”Church closure still stingsWhat has been particularly bitter for many former parishioners is that the archdiocese of Halifax and Yarmouth closed St. Anselm’s Church in 2018. The church was built in 1894, and there had been a Catholic church in the parish since 1740, according to parishioners.The archdiocese first cited mould issues and declining attendance for the closure, but later said there was a nearly $800,000 debt to the archdiocese, a financial hole parishioners knew nothing about, according to the statement of facts.The case involving Dixon involved nearly 1,900 fraudulent transactions, most of them related to parish credit cards. In one case, a parish priest paid more than $16,000 out of his own pocket to cover the debt accrued when Dixon misused his credit card.There were also parish cheques Dixon made out to herself using the forged signatures of a priest or of other parishioners.Oldham, one of the former parishioners, said in an interview outside the courtroom that she now distrusts church leadership and has found “more meaningful ways in which to practise my faith.””The tradition in the Catholic Church is you are silent when wrongdoing happens,” she said, alleging the archdiocese initially ignored concerns raised by parishioners over finances. “You make everything secret and you avoid a scandal.”Oldham went to police in 2019 over concerns about the church’s finances and its closing, and in early 2020 turned over financial statements to an officer, according to the statement of facts. In December 2020, the archdiocese fired Dixon following its own internal review that included the use of a private investigator.The archdiocese has said while the fraud was substantial, the debt of St. Anselm’s and the cost of needed repairs were much larger and ultimately contributed to the decision to close the church.ABOUT THE AUTHORRichard Cuthbertson is a journalist with CBC Nova Scotia. He can be reached at richard.cuthbertson@cbc.ca.
Bookkeeper who defrauded Catholic parish of more than $200K ‘shattered’ trust
