Cardinal Marc Ouellet has won a defamation against a woman who had accused him of sexual misconduct, with the judge ordering her to pay the cardinal $100,000 in damages.
In a decision handed down on August 31, Canada’s Superior Court Justice Martin Castonguay ruled firmly in favour of Quebec’s Cardinal Ouellet. The cardinal had been named by Pamela Groleau in a class action lawsuit, in which he was accused of having made inappropriate advances towards her. Groleau was a former pastoral assistant for the diocese of Quebec City.
Castonguay wrote that the court had deemed Groleau’s allegations against Ouellet to be “false”, and her testimony was “neither credible nor reliable”.
The claims dated back to 1992. Ouellet was also accused of kissing her at a cocktail reception in 2008 while “sliding his hand down her back and touching her buttocks.”
Another two women joined the suit, allegation indecent conduct from Ouellet towards them. One woman said the cardinal “hastened to slip a $50 into my vest,” on the “the top of my chest”.
Groleau’s allegations came when Ouellet was still serving as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops at the Vatican, and he eventually resigned from the post amid the encircling lawsuit.
Ouellet has always denied the allegations, describing them as “false accusations,” and stating that he considered “defamatory the interpretation and dissemination of these allegations as sexual assault.”
The Vatican examined the case into Ouellet and declared in August 2022 that there were “insufficient elements to open a canonical investigation for sexual assault”.
Following this, Ouellet announced in December 2022 that he would seek $100,000 CAD damages from Groleau, as he continued to firmly deny the veracity of the allegations made against him. “I have never been guilty of these reprehensible behaviours, much less of those alleged against other members of the clergy cited in the class action,” he said. “This inappropriate association, intentionally constructed and widely spread for improper purposes, must be denounced.”
Issuing his ruling on Monday, Castonguay stated that Groleau’s allegations demonstrated “a great temerity equivalent to malice”. Her testimony contained “falsehoods” sought to distort events, the judge ruled.
He also stated that – since the class action suit was primarily against child paedophiles – Groleau, “in the eyes of the ‘ordinary citizen,’” sought to “equate” Ouellet with them.
“This is the infamy of which Cardinal Ouellet complains: namely, that he was associated with paedophiles in the proceedings relating to the class action,” wrote the judge.
Ouellet has stated that he will donate the money “to organisations combating the sexual abuse suffered by Indigenous peoples in Canada.”
Another Quebec cardinal was also named in the class-action lawsuit, with Cardinal Gerald Lacroix’s name coming to light in January 2024. The Vatican placed a hiatus on some of his activities while it conducted an investigation, but soon determined that there were no grounds to pursue a canonical investigation either.
Michael Haynes is an English journalist in the Holy See Press Corps. He serves as Vatican Correspondent for the Catholic Herald, while readers can follow him at Per Mariam and on X @MLJHaynes.
