Undisclosed settlement reached in abuse suit against priest

WINNIPEG — Lawyers for a man who alleged he was repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child by a now-dead Catholic priest in rural Manitoba and Winnipeg in a 2023 lawsuit recently reached a confidential settlement with the Archdiocese of St. Boniface.

Terms of the settlement, which was reached in the fall after a private judicially assisted dispute resolution in front of a Court of King’s Bench justice in September, are not included in public court records reviewed by the Free Press.

The lawsuit, which was filed in June 2023 and named the archdiocese and archbishop as defendants, was officially discontinued in November.

The plaintiff, now in his early 60s, claimed the alleged abuse began when he was eight-years-old in 1972 and lasted until 1982.

He claimed the repeated sexual violations occurred while he was a member of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité in Somerset, a small community about 150 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.

The man, who the Free Press is not naming due to the nature of the allegations, claimed the sexual abuse came at the hands of that church’s priest, Fr. Rene Touchette.

Touchette, who died in 2012 at 71, was charged with sexual assault and battery in Somerset in 1992, and convicted the next year. He was sentenced to 30 months, which was later reduced because of a medical issue. He was a priest at Somerset from 1972-90.

The man said, in his court papers, that he lived next to the rectory in Somerset, where Touchette lived.

Touchette began asking the alleged victim to assist him with duties at the church and at his home and, while he attended school in Winnipeg, Touchette would travel to the capital city and take the boy to hotels, the court claim alleged.

On those occasions, the lawsuit claimed, Touchette repeatedly sexually assaulted the victim in numerous ways.

The alleged victim suffered physical injuries, emotional and psychological pain and trauma, and mental distress, his court papers said.

The lawsuit claimed the archdiocese either knew or should have known Touchette was a “pedophile.”

It is alleged Touchette was transferred between churches during his career and various sexual assault complaints were made about him by others.

The lawsuit alleged the victim complained about the assaults directly to then-archbishop Antoine Hacault, who died in 2000, but the church official instead told the boy to pray about the abuse.

The court papers claimed the archdiocese had a pattern of employing sex offenders, including an administrator hired in 1990 who had been convicted of sexually abusing young boys at a residential school in the Northwest Territories in 1962.

The lawsuit came amid a decades-long scandal over the abuse of children at the hands of priests, nuns and other religious figures within the Catholic Church and subsequent cover-ups.

Several other lawsuits filed in recent years against the St. Boniface and Winnipeg archdioceses over alleged historical sex abuses by their priests remain before the court.

» Winnipeg Free Press