NTI has confirmed a delegation of Inuit will travel to France next week to demand the extradition of Father Johannes Rivoire. Pictured is Rivoire in an early, undated photo taken in Chesterfield Inlet. (Photo courtesy of Lieve Halsberghe)
NTI headed to France Monday to seek Rivoire’s extradition
Inuit delegation to pressure French officials to send priest back to Canada to face criminal charge
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Aluki Kotierk and a delegation of Inuit will travel to France on Monday to seek the extradition of Father Johannes Rivoire, NTI said in a news release Tuesday.
Rivoire, 91, spent more than 30 years as a parish priest in Nunavut, mostly in Arviat and Naujaat, between 1960 and 1992. He was accused of sexually assaulting boys and girls during that time, some as young as six years old.
The delegation will go to Paris and Lyon from Sept. 12 to 15.
In the NTI release, Kotierk calls on French President Emmanuel Macron and other French officials to extradite Rivoire.
“The church and its priests are not above the law,” Kotierk said.
In 1998, the RCMP laid three charges against Rivoire for one count of indecent assault against three boys and one count of sexual assault against a girl in Naujaat, between 1968 and 1970.
However, Rivoire left Canada for France in 1993 and those charges were never tried in court.
The charges were stayed in 2017 when prosecutors concluded there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction.
In February of this year, police charged him again, this time with a sole count of committing indecent assault against a girl in Arviat and Whale Cove between 1974 and 1979.
In July, officials with Canada’s Department of Justice asked France to extradite Rivoire so he could face justice here.
Extradition is the process of making someone return for trial to the country or state where the alleged criminal offences occurred.
Inuit in Nunavut have long called for Rivoire to face justice in Canada, but he has evaded extradition for decades because although Canada has an extradition treaty with France, France’s penal code protects its citizens from it.
Rivoire, being a French national, is protected under that law.
“Although France is reluctant to extradite French nationals to other countries for prosecution, the Canada-France Extradition Treaty does not prohibit Rivoire’s extradition. The extradition is possible and can be swift,” NTI said in the release.
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