(CANADA)
Nunatsiaq News [Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada]
April 2, 2024
By Jorge Antunes
March 19 report finds priest Johannes Rivoire likely guilty of abuse
The CEO of Nunavut’s top Inuit organization is rejecting findings from a recent investigation by the Oblates into the Catholic church’s response to allegations of abuse by one of its own priests.
Rev. Johannes Rivoire worked in Nunavut for about 30 years between 1960 and the early 1990s. He left Canada for good in 1993 after police began investigating him for alleged abuse of Inuit children.
That investigation resulted in charges being laid in 1998, which were stayed in 2017 when the Crown determined there was no chance of conviction.
RCMP laid one more charge of historical sexual abuse in 2022. This charge remains active.
The Oblates hired André Denis, a retired Quebec judge, last year to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations, as well as the church and RCMP’s response to them.
That report was released on March 19. In it, Denis wrote that based on a “preponderance of evidence” he believed Rivoire was guilty of sexually assaulting five Inuit children.
The report’s findings are not legally binding. None of the charges against Rivoire have been tested in court.
“We denounce the report,” said Kilikvak Karen Kabloona, CEO of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., in an interview March 29 criticizing the church’s investigation process.
“NTI has been quite clear that we have been expecting an open and transparent process, which would generally be a court process. One that Inuit can participate in and is public,” she said.
Kabloona said an independent inquiry would ask more questions than the report concerned itself with.
“Why did it take so long for the police to charge him? Why were the victims and families not kept informed of the progress? Why did the prosecutor dismiss the charges without speaking with the families? How did 30 years pass with absolutely no justice?” she asked.
Kabloona called historical abuse by Oblate church leaders in Nunavut a “significant” root of trauma for Inuit in the territory.
“The absence of justice has made this trauma worse,” she said.
A group of Inuit travelled to France in September 2022 to meet with the Oblate order there — and Rivoire himself — in a bid to bring the 93-year-old priest back to Canada to face his charge.
Rivoire refused to return to Canada, but the Oblates in France did say they would expel him from the order. However, Catholic leaders in Rome voted in February to keep Rivoire in the order, citing his declining health.
In his report, Denis urged church leaders to reconsider this decision.