Inuit Teen Raped in Police Vehicle Sues Department for Negligence

In 2011, a 17-year-old teenager from an Inuit village in Quebec was arrested, handcuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle. She was put there alongside Joe Kritik, a man who’d also just been arrested, and who was a repeat sex offender. Kritik sexually assaulted the teen in the car. She’s now suing the police department for “gross negligence.”

CBC reports that the woman, who lives in remote village in northern Quebec, was drinking with relatives and was removed from their house by a constable from the Kativik Regional Police Force at the homeowner’s request. After she was cuffed, she was placed in the back of a police cruiser, where she encountered Kritik. CBC reports that Kritik “had already been convicted of four sexual assaults at the time and was listed on the sexual offender registry.” The woman’s lawsuit says that Kritik, then 24, who’d been arrested for causing a disturbance at another house, was not in cuffs, a detail that’s been backed up by other media reports.

The officer left the two alone together to take a report from the homeowner who’d called police. She returned to find Kritik with his pants down on top of the girl. The girl later testified that he’d sexually assaulted her; Kritik wound up pleading guilty to one count of sexual assault and was sentenced to 39 months in jail.

The woman’s lawsuit also alleges that while in custody, she broke a tooth after an officer slammed a cell door in her face, and that no rape kit was ever performed on her, nor were her parents contacted. CBC says that the officer who left her alone with Kritik was suspended and later resigned, but that an internal investigation by the Kativik police department cleared her of any misconduct. (The same police force, by the way, faced controversy after a female officer was raped by a colleague and then said she was suspended after she reported the attack.) The Inuit woman’s suit says she has suffered from PTSD since the assault.