They came from the Canadian Far North to seek justice. Inuit, who arrived in Paris on Monday, demand the extradition of Johannes Rivoire, a 92-year-old French-Canadian priest, suspected of sexual assault on several children in the 1960s and 70s.
The delegation was able to speak with the priest this Thursday, in Lyon where he lives, and hoped to leave with him this Friday for Canada, but this would probably not be the case.
Just before the meeting, Tania Tungilik had the first anxiety attack of her life. But in the end, seeing the one who assaulted his father when he was 13, relieved him. ” I looked the devil in the face and he showed no remorse. I told him he had ruined my father’s life; that through his fault he became an alcoholic and died. I also told him he was going to hell. As I walked out, I cried so hard with relief. I did it ! I faced Rivoire. I did what my father always wanted to do “, she welcomes.
But without a trial, there is no cure, insist the members of the delegation. Last August, Ottawa asked Paris to hand over Father Rivoire, but the Department of Justice told them France would not extradite Johannes Rivoire.
A dismissal procedure initiated
Aluki Kokiert, representative of the Inuit, does not however give up. ” We implore the French government and the French people. We ask you to have the same courage as the victims, the Inuit survivors. Inuit deserve truth and justice “.
The congregation of the priest – aware of the facts since 2013 – has just announced that it has initiated a procedure for the dismissal of Johannes Rivoire. Too late, say the Inuit. Through the voice of their lawyer Me Nadia Debbache, a specialist in pedocrime in the Church, they announced the filing of a complaint ” in the next few days before the Lyon public prosecutor’s office for “criminal concealment” against the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) to which Father Joannes Rivoire belongs.
These missionaries have provided aid and assistance to a person who was being prosecuted for criminal acts “, said Mr. Debbache, during a press conference. Therefore, ” all the light must be shed “on the protection that this Franco-Canadian priest would have benefited from” in his escape from Canada in 1993, after 33 years in the Far North.
Since that date, Joannes Rivoire, 92, has lived in France where he has never been worried and the Oblates say they were only informed in 2013 of the charges against him, despite a first Canadian arrest warrant between 1998 and 2017.