An unnamed woman — identified as “F.” — accused Ouellet of multiple incidents of unwanted touching, including sliding his hand up her back and touching her buttocks at a 2010 event in Quebec City. “On that day, more than in previous meetings, F. knew she had to leave Cardinal Marc Ouellet … the anxiety she felt was more present than ever,” the lawsuit said. The allegations against Ouellet are part of a series of claims against clergy members included in two class-action lawsuits against the church that have been authorized by a judge. Montreal-based law firm Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats said in a statement Tuesday that in the first lawsuit, against the archdiocese of Quebec, some 101 alleged victims accused some 88 priests or other members of the clergy of sexual assault. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of the allegations, but declined to comment. In the second lawsuit, against the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Francophone Canada, 193 alleged victims accused 116 members of that organization of sexual assault. Documents filed in court detailed the allegations against clergy members — including Well — after the class-action lawsuits were approved. According to the lawsuit involving Ouellet, F. met the cardinal in 2008 when she was 23 years old and working as a pastoral intern in the archdiocese of Quebec. After a dinner at the Sisters of Charity in Beauport, Que., in August of that year, the cardinal allegedly massaged her shoulders and patted her back in a conference room, the suit said. “F. remained frozen in the face of this intrusion and did not know how to react,” the lawsuit said. In November of that year, the cardinal reportedly kissed her cheek and embraced her “with familiarity, although they had only seen each other once or twice before, and held her tightly to him, caressing her with his hands on the his back.” And in 2010, during an ordination ceremony for a colleague, Ouellet allegedly kissed her cheek, hugged her and “slid his hand along F.’s back to her buttocks.” When she tried to talk about the cardinal’s alleged actions, F. was told that Well was “very friendly” and that she wasn’t the only woman who had this kind of “problem” with him, according to court documents. In 2020, after F. participated in sexual assault training, she began to have “flashbacks to what she experienced with Cardinal Marc Ouellet” and understood that the cleric’s actions “constituted non-consensual touching of a sexual nature and therefore, sexual assault,” the lawsuit said. The woman wrote a letter to Pope Francis in January 2021 about the cardinal, and a month later, she was informed that the Pope had appointed Father Jacques Servet to investigate her allegations. Court documents said that as of the summer of 2022, “no findings regarding the allegations against Cardinal Marc Ouellet have been forwarded to F.” — This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 16, 2022.
