Defamation trial: Woman summarizes her allegations against Cardinal Ouellet
The woman who is being sued by retired Cardinal Marc Ouellet for alleged defamation took to the witness stand at the Montreal courthouse on Thursday.
Ouellet is suing Paméla Groleau, a former pastoral agent with the Quebec City diocese, for $100,000 for allegations she made in class-action lawsuits brought against priests and for comments she made to the media.
The retired cardinal testified
on Monday and Tuesday, and then the court heard from several people who worked with Ouellet and still support him.
Thursday represented Groleau’s chance to tell her side of the story. When her lawyer, Alain Arsenault, asked her to give the court a brief background, she listed a series of bad experiences she had while working as a pastoral agent. While at one parish, she said, she worked with a priest who drank often and performed funerals while drunk. She said that when she reported her concerns about the priest’s drinking to her superiors, she was told she was “too sensitive.”
In another case, she alleged, she worked with a clergyman who sexually assaulted her.
She then summarized the “three events” involving Ouellet that are at the heart of her allegations.
The first event, Groleau said, occurred following a mass where she had held up the Bible for long periods of time during the event.
She said that after the mass, Ouellet walked up behind her and massaged her shoulders.
“I felt two hands on my shoulders. The force was so strong I couldn’t stand up,” Groleau said. “It seemed to be for a long time.”
Following the unwanted massage, Groleau said, whenever she walked into a room where Ouellet was, “I felt like there was a spotlight on me. He would always walk towards me.”
During an event in 2008, Groleau said, Ouellet greeted her and held her hand for what seemed to be a very long time.
The last event, Groleau said, occurred during February 2010 following the ordination of a priest at Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral in Quebec City, the oldest church in Canada. Groleau alleged she was sexually assaulted after the cathedral had emptied.
“His right hand caressed my back,” she said. “The hand went down to the top of my buttocks. He pressed down at the top of my buttocks. And I left.”
As she left the cathedral, “I looked to the horizon and I was in shock,” Groleau said.
She also said that as she drove home, she tried to sort out what happened to her.
“But I could not understand. I was really in shock.”
Groleau told Quebec Court Justice Martin Castonguay she felt there was a gradual change in the nature of the way Ouellet touched her and she tried to avoid having to work with him after what happened following the priest’s ordination in 2010.
When she was asked by her lawyer if she told anyone about the touching, she said she told fellow church employees, aunts, uncles, people she studied theology with and two of her teachers.
“I was told it was something you should not bring up, especially if it was about the cardinal,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t bring up these facts.”
One of the fellow employees she confided in, Groleau said, was a woman named Amélie Martineau-Lavallée, also a pastoral agent.
Martineau-Lavallée testified on Wednesday
in support of Ouellet and told the court she heard no rumours about Ouellet while she knew him.
Groleau said she eventually left the church and found a job with the Canadian Army as a civilian in 2019. It was there, while undergoing training involving how to spot possible pedophiles and sexual offences, that she decided to make a statement before a committee related to the diocese in Quebec City about what she alleges happened to her.