Priest guilty of assault and sex assault at Nordik Spa - Ottawa Citizen

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Le Nordik spa in Old Chelsea, Que. FILE PHOTO JULIE OLIVER / OTTAWA CITIZEN


When Jean El-Dahdouh introduced himself to women at the upscale Nordik Spa-Nature in Chelsea, he sometimes claimed to be French, and other times Italian. Both were lies.

He told the women that he was a massage therapist, or a doctor, or a reflexologist. More lies.

He claimed to be at the spa to treat an injured athlete.

He never breathed a whisper about his true identity: the superior of the Lebanese Maronite Order in Canada.

After chatting up the women in the spa’s pool and bath areas, he offered to massage away the tension in their necks and shoulders, but went much farther. And, when he was charged with assault and sexual assault, the judge had a hard time believing that, for once, El-Dahdouh was telling the truth.

El-Dahdouh, 46, of Montreal, testified that he had to conceal his identity because his church would punish him if it learned he was at a spa. He said he felt ashamed after lying to the women.

Then why, asked Judge Richard Laflamme of the Court of Quebec, did he go back to the same spa over and over again?

He called parts of El-Dahdouh’s testimony “preposterous.”

El-Dahdouh has now been convicted of one count of sexual assault and two of simple assault, against three different women, one of them just 17 years old. He was acquitted of sexually assaulting a fourth woman, also 17.

The assaults all happened in early 2016.

In one case, he approached two 17-year-olds who were friends. In the pool, he massaged the first one’s shoulders, then started moving down her back until she felt uncomfortable and moved away.

He then offered her friend a massage. This time he moved his hands down gradually until he was rubbing her buttocks and vulva at the same time. She testified that she froze. At first she was trapped against the side wall of the pool, but after about a minute she was able to manoeuvre away from El-Dahdouh.

El-Dahdouh was convicted of sexually assaulting the second young woman, but acquitted of assaulting her friend.

He also assaulted two other women. The first woman, 37, was enjoying a spa day as a gift from her father. She was in the Kalla saltwater flotation pool, where guests are asked to keep silent, and wasn’t interested in this stranger who kept talking to her and offering to massage her. El-Dahdouh grabbed her foot anyway, started rubbing it, then moved his hands up her calf. She pulled away.

He also used the Kalla pool to assault another woman, 40. She told him she was waiting for her husband to show up. When he tried to take her hand, she pulled it away and told him firmly: “No.”

Moments later, she was startled when he approached her from behind as she relaxed in a floating chair, pushed his chest against her back and tried to massage her shoulders.

He whispered in her ear that she should tell him if her husband came in because he didn’t want trouble.

She got out of the chair quickly and snapped “Good-bye” at him, and went to join her husband in the lounge. The next morning she fired off an email to the spa.

The judge said El-Dahdouh’s evidence, which was that he only wanted to offer the women massages for tension, made no sense. He convicted El-Dahdouh of simple assault against both the women in the Kalla pool.

El-Dahdouh does have some massage training: a single summer course based on a 34-page illustrated booklet.

He has not yet been sentenced.

Management at the spa says they went directly to police when they received a complaint from one of the victims.

“When this happened in 2016, one of the reasons we caught this guy was because Nordik really collaborated with the police,” spokeswoman Marianne Trotier said. “As soon as she came to see us we started to look at the cameras” and gave police the video.

Staff receive annual training that includes how to handle situations where a guest makes other customers uncomfortable, Trotier said, and the spa has been adding cameras. She said didn’t know of any similar incidents since 2016.

tspears@postmedia.com

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