‘Serious allegations must be based on accurate and relevant facts’
A Quebec Superior Court judge's decision to order a woman to pay Cardinal Marc Ouellet $100,000 for defaming him is a reminder to HR and OHS professionals that unproven or recklessly advanced misconduct allegations can carry serious legal liability for the person who makes them.
Justice Martin Castonguay ruled Monday in favour of Ouellet in a defamation suit against Paméla Groleau, according to news publications. Ouellet sued after Groleau named him in a 2022 class action alleging sexual misconduct by members of the Archdiocese of Quebec, arguing the allegations damaged his reputation, honour and dignity.
Castonguay dismissed Groleau's account, writing she acted "recklessly or even maliciously" toward Ouellet, CBC News reported.
The allegations
Groleau alleged she met the cardinal on several occasions between 2008 and 2010, while training or working as a lay pastoral agent for the Catholic Church, according to CBC News. She accused Ouellet of touching her without consent on three of those occasions and said she felt "hunted" during a fourth encounter, when he moved across a room to sit beside her, The Canadian Press reported.
The most serious alleged incident occurred in 2010 at an event celebrating a priest's ordination, when Groleau said Ouellet slid his hand down her back to the top of her buttocks and left it there for "several seconds," CP reported.
Groleau first reported her allegations anonymously in 2008 to a church advisory committee and later, in 2021, in a complaint to Pope Francis, which was rejected in 2022 — the same year she joined the class action, CBC News reported.
Castonguay found Groleau ultimately treated only one of the four incidents as an alleged sexual assault, downgrading the others, and concluded she had altered her account of that incident in a way that misrepresented what she had originally described, according to the publication.
The court also heard from two other women describing separate encounters with Ouellet, but ruled their testimony was not relevant to whether Groleau had defamed him; in one case, Castonguay found Ouellet "was not the author of the gestures" alleged, since evidence showed he was not officiating masses at the time in question, according to CP.
Just days before International Women's Day (IWD) 2026, a report detailed how the culture at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) suggests many women are far from being free of sexual harassment.
‘Neither credible nor reliable’
CP reported Castonguay's written decision found "the allegations describing the four events cited by Ms. Groleau ... are false." The judge also concluded her testimony "was neither credible nor reliable."
Castonguay noted Groleau's account shifted over time, a pattern the court treated as evidence against her credibility rather than a good-faith recollection, according to the report.
The judge set out four conditions required to establish defamation — falsity, irrelevance to the underlying dispute, malice or reckless disregard, and absence of reasonable cause — and found all four met in Ouellet's favour, according to CBC News.
‘A very great temerity equivalent to malice’
Dominique Ménard, managing partner at LCM Attorneys, the firm representing Ouellet, said in a statement that the ruling recognized allegations that were "false" and marked by "a very great temerity equivalent to malice."
"This judgment reaffirms a fundamental principle: ... serious allegations must be based on accurate and relevant facts," Ménard said, adding that Ouellet would issue a public statement and that the firm would not comment further "out of respect for the judicial process."
Lawyers for Groleau told Radio-Canada they would not comment and did not say whether they plan to appeal.
Earlier this year, former Woodstock mayor Trevor Birtch was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for sexually assaulting a woman he was in an on‑again, off‑again relationship with, in what a judge described as a “catastrophic fall from grace,” according to CBC.
