Author and former UBC professor Steven Galloway says he was “shocked” to learn he was being accused of sexual assault, and believed he had split amicably after an affair with the former student making the allegation.
Galloway told a B.C. Supreme Court judge in his lawsuit alleging defamation that the relationship was “inappropriate, ill-advised and stupid,” but they’d maintained a friendship and regular contact after they split in 2013.
His legal action alleges the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, and others repeated the allegations online and defamed him, setting off the loss of his job at the university as a professor and chair of the creative writing department.
Galloway testified he’d had a two-year consensual relationship with A.B., a former student who was older than him, whom he’d met sometime in 2011 when she took a writing course from a colleague of his.
Former UBC professor Steven Galloway’s defamation trial begins
He told the court that he’d learned of the sexual assault allegation while he was in Ohio for an event in November 2015, and spoke with Annabel Lyon, who was acting chair of the creative writing department in his absence.
He says Lyon kept asking if he was suicidal, then police showed up to his hotel room on a report that he was a danger to himself and others, and he was handcuffed and committed to a psychiatric hospital for 72 hours.
“I kept saying to her, ‘no, I’m fine.’ At one point, I said, ‘Annabel, don’t worry. I’m way too much of a coward to kill myself,’ and that’s the kind of sense of humour I have.”
“The next thing I know, there’s a knock on my door, and it’s the police.”
Steven Galloway defamation trial begins in B.C. Supreme Court
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Galloway said he didn’t know where he was or what was happening, and “then I got put in the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in my life.”
Earlier in the hearing on Tuesday, Galloway’s wife testified that her husband was “gutted” after being accused of rape, and became extremely distraught as he repeatedly denied the allegations.
Katie Wagner told the court that before Galloway was accused of sexual assault, suspended, then fired from his teaching position, he was extroverted and socially active in the literary community.
She said he stopped playing piano and reading and writing after his career was derailed by the allegations, that would resurface repeatedly online after he was suspended in November 2015.
“He lost his writing career when he was accused of sexual assault, when every single time we tried to put out a different sort of thing, somebody came back and said that it was a sexual assault,” she said.
“His whole world was about the Canadian literary community.”
Galloway is pictured in his former office at UBC in Vancouver on March 31, 2014. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Justice Neena Sharma began the second day of the trial in Vancouver by granting continued anonymity to the defendant in the long-running defamation case, first filed in 2018.
The judge said A.B. has shown that identifying her would carry objective harms and specific risks, and allowing anonymity is in line with protecting the privacy and dignity of sexual assault complainants.
Sharma said the woman has withdrawn her defence of her statements against Galloway as justified, but has not admitted that her accusations are false and the court can’t make assumptions until it hears all evidence.
The court heard on Monday that the woman received hateful and vitriolic messages after she was identified in news articles related to the author’s lawsuit.
A.B. had sought an indefinite order to keep her identity under a publication ban, but Sharma’s order will expire within six weeks of a ruling in the case, although she can apply to extend it.
Sharma said A.B. is not participating in the trial due to her fragile mental state, which has included suicide attempts, though she’s shown “resilience” dealing with past proceedings before the trial.
The court has heard from both Galloway’s and A.B.’s lawyers about their clients’ mental health struggles, including suicide attempts, in the years since the accusations became public.
Galloway’s lawsuit was originally filed against numerous defendants who allegedly defamed him online and in other forums by repeating unproven allegations of rape.
The court has heard that four defendants remain.
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