Jamie Sarkonak: Steven Galloway’s accuser won’t even argue that she told the truth

Writer Steven Galloway is pictured in his office at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia on March 31, 2014. Photo by PNG Merlin Archive

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The rape allegations that destroyed professor Steven Galloway’s career a decade ago were never actually tested. Indeed, the woman who made them isn’t planning to defend their accuracy in a defamation trial scheduled to start next month.

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If it sounds like you’ve heard about this case before, you probably have. Galloway, an author and member of the University of British Columbia creative writing program, had an affair with a grad student older than he was, starting in 2011. Both of them were married at the time. It ended sometime in 2013 — and then, the student began telling people she’d been raped.

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Though the woman’s meetings with police and campus bureaucrats about her alleged rape never yielded charges, Galloway was fired in 2016. A judge hired to investigate what had transpired could not find evidence to support the sexual assault allegations (though she did find that sexual harassment, as defined by university policy, had occurred). The allegations made their way into public discourse where they brewed for two more years. In 2018, Galloway filed his lawsuit against his accuser and others. After years of process and delay, the trial is now imminent: Oct. 5. And with that, pieces are starting to fall into place.

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A pre-trial meeting last week in the Vancouver Supreme Court revealed that there are now eight defendants, including some of Galloway’s former colleagues at the university, who have agreed to settle out of court. Which means that already, the odds are tilted in his favour: if his defamation claims against them were weaker, you’d probably see fewer willing to settle.

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With that, only four defendants will be on trial come next month: the grad student who accused him, as well as academic-activist Mandi Gray, law student Glynnis Kirchmeier, and another individual named Dana Kagis.

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The accuser, we learned in that same pre-trial hearing last week, won’t be appearing before the court. Her lawyers told the court that she was struggling with mental health problems and had attempted suicide. One of the next things on the trial to-do list was to figure out how her absence will be handled: will it be considered a neutral occurrence, or will it count against her?

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This means that the dispute over what actually happened won’t be as big as it initially looked to be. The woman’s lawyers declared that she was no longer going to defend herself against the defamation claim by arguing that her statements were factually true. Nor will she be arguing that her statements were a fair comment based on her knowledge of the situation. The judge seemed to be taken aback by this announcement. Here’s her chance to tell it all, and she won’t be taking it.

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As for three other defendants, it’s not looking particularly good for them either. Two of them are slated to represent themselves — that is, they aren’t using lawyers. That’s quite the gamble.

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The whole case is reminiscent of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial last year. Though it was a criminal trial, it also involved an unnamed complainant, older than those whom she accused of rape, trudging through the courts for years. She said they raped her in a hotel room; they said she initiated sexual activity in the hotel room to a point of making many of them uncomfortable. The men facing the allegations — criminal charges that could have put them in jail for years — saw their careers suffer. In the end, the judge found that the complainant had consented to the sexual activity and acquitted the men at trial.