• Traveling to France since the beginning of the week to demand the extradition of Father Joannes Rivoire, a delegation of Inuits announced Thursday that it was going to file a complaint.

  • A complaint for "criminal concealment" will be filed against the OMI congregation, to which the former missionary belongs, accused of sexual assault in Canada.

  • Nadia Debbache, a lawyer advising them, believes the priest has been protected since his hasty return to France in 1993.

" Why ?

Why?….It's not fair.

In front of the media, Jesse struggled to hide his "frustration" and anger.

His father Marius, who died in 2012 on the other side of the Atlantic, is one of the alleged victims of Father Joannes Rivoire whom France refuses to extradite to Canada.

Suspected of having sexually assaulted Inuit children when he was working on the lands of Nunavut, the former missionary left his flock hastily, thirty years ago.

Despite an arrest warrant issued against him, he never set foot in Canada.

And was never worried.

“There are people in Canada and France who have let it happen”, plague the thirty-year-old decided to “continue” the fight.

Traveling to France since the beginning of the week, a delegation of Inuits came "to seek help", to demand his extradition and to demand accountability from those "who protected him during all these years".

In particular, his congregation: the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), they accuse.

“We are going to file a complaint for concealment of criminal”, indicates Nadia Debbache, the lawyer who advises them.

"His congregation provided aid and assistance to a person prosecuted for criminal acts"

The interested party is not new to the subject.

It was she who defended François Devaux, one of Father Preynat's victims.

The complaint will be filed "in the coming days" in Lyon, where Joannes Rivoire has lived for two years.

"His congregation brought help and assistance to a person who was being prosecuted for criminal acts", she justifies, recalling that the missionary spent twenty years in the south of France, staying in one Oblate shrines, without ever having to render an account to justice.

Without ever having been forced to return there to answer questions from the police.

If the congregation claims to have been aware in 2013 of the accusations against Joannes Rivoire, the lawyer does not believe a word of it.

“We are going to ask the Lyon prosecutor to open an investigation to see what may have happened in this case, to see the help he received, she continues.

In 2013, the OMI did not report to the French authorities.

She was satisfied with a report to the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

The latter would have "given instructions to keep Joannes Rivoire under house arrest" without warning the judicial authorities.

The reason given: "The age" of the priest.

It took until 2018 for Father Vincent Gruber, Provincial of the Oblates of France, to report this to the Strasbourg prosecutor's office, again raising Nadia Debache.

On Wednesday, the OMI announced that it was going to initiate canonical dismissal proceedings against Father Rivoire.

"He disobeyed the order to appear in court", justified Vincent Gruber.


Miscellaneous facts

Canada: A French priest accused of sexual assaults on children, targeted by an extradition request

World

Canada: A French priest again targeted by an arrest warrant for sexual assaults on children

  • Justice

  • Company

  • child crime

  • Church

  • Priest

  • Canada

  • Lyons

  • Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes