THE
PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE
In April of 2001, the National Post carried
a prominent article telling and insinuating numerous extreme and
harmful falsehoods against me and a volunteer group with whom I
was working to help individuals in need. (The Equitable Child Maintenance and Access Society--"ECMAS".) Various appeals to them
to retract the falsehoods fell on deaf ears. So in July I filed a
lawsuit against The Post, the reporter Donna Laframboise, and their parent company
Canwest Global. Given their refusal even to let our side be heard, it was my only hope of restoring our good names.
Having thus displayed my determination to fight, I let them know
repeatedly through counsel that I would settle the suit without
money damages, if they would just publicly tell the truth.
Instead, for eight years they used their money and powerful law
firms in what I see as an uncaring and unprincipled effort to
grind us down.
When that failed to work and a trial date
was finally set, they tried to get me to settle out of court by
offering me a large amount of money. I refused it, seeing
restoring our names and the work that my associates and I had
been doing as all that really matters. Then, the trial judge
decided to delay the trial until Canada's Supreme Court would
hand down its latest defamation-law decision--something that
would not happen for six months and possibly much longer. And at
that point in time (February 2009), there had begun to be
frequent warnings in the news that Canwest Global might soon be
going into bankruptcy protection. So ECMAS and I were faced with the
frightening prospect of my court-process being ended--and hence
of never being able to clear our names. I then told their
lawyers I would accept the money if they would also give me a
retraction--and would agree to release all of the lawsuit
documents for me to publicize, something that is not normally
possible unless the documents are allowed to be entered in
evidence at trial.
Despite knowing that I intended to post the
documents on the Web together with the damning account of their
behavior here, they decided to do that rather than proceeding to
trial. However, assuming that they had enough professional
integrity to present at least the settlement of the suit as the
news that it was, I did not push hard in negotitions for
Canwest to do any such publicizing. That company and its
newspapers have since made clear that they do not intend to do
so. I can only hope that other Canadians, especially
journalists, care enough about truth and journalistic ethics
to tell others of the shocking facts presented here.
Introduction
to these lawsuit materials
This website contains all important unfiled
documents, and central filed ones, of my defamation suit against
the National Post, its parent company Canwest Global and the
reporter who defamed me. Those items are accompanied by a
comprehensive essay ("My Case"), which is hyperlinked
below and alphabetically listed in the site's document-index
(also linked below). That main essay is linked to most of the
other files, in order to document the numerous claims of fact it
makes. (Note well: they themselves, not ECMAS or I, were the source of nearly all the lawsuit documents proving their gross wrongdoing.) Also included, so readers can see everything that the
other side claimed against me in their counter-suit, are their
examination-for-discovery of me (with undertakings) and their
filed pleadings.
My original reason for writing the
(unimaginatively titled) "My Case" was to guide my
lawyers through the complex history of events. There are many
scores of important issues and sub-issues in the case. Then it
became clear that the great number and length of the documents in
this suit made locating the proof for that complex history's details very hard to do. In addition to the usual legal filings and
transcripts from the examinations for discovery, there are dozens
of e-mails, a dozen transcripts of tape-recorded conversations,
numerous published articles and a variety of other items. And the
evidence regarding a majority of the issues in the case is
scattered across multiple documents.Thus, it became clear that
only a lengthy and carefully organized account could make the
story fully clear--and that only the miracle of electronically
linked documents (some 200+ hyperlinks, many with sub-links)
could tie the scattered evidence to the appropriate parts of the
account without much getting lost in the welter.
In the course of this lengthy lawsuit, I put
the result of that labor to another use: presenting it in various
versions (on a CD) to the other side, hoping that it might help
them see more clearly the extent of their wrongdoing and convince
them to correct it. As indicated above, they ignored all my pleas
for honesty until trial was fast approaching. Our little group
cannot recover those eight years, or the hopes and plans ECMAS had had
for that period of our lives. What I can do is to use
those computer materials to prove my entire innocence, and that
of my associates, of the wrongdoing that we were accused of in
the libeling newspaper article. And, of much greater importance
to others, to demonstrate the massive misbehavior of which
near-unaccountable power is capable, in hopes of deterring people
in the news media from committing such abuses in the future.
As also noted above, one of the conditions
of the agreement negotiated with the other side in this suit
(along with a monetary settlement of an amount substantially more
than my legal expenses of $100, 000, and a retraction) was
release from the "implied undertakings" that normally
forbid either side from making public any documents formally
received from the other, unless those documents are eventually
presented as evidence at a trial. So note that release of the
documents for the present use was allowed by The National Post
Company, NP Holdings Company, Global Communications Limited and
Donna Laframboise as part of the negotiated settlement, and not
by way of their admitting any liability in the lawsuit.
Furthermore, I must make it clear here that nothing which I
allege regarding this case, including my personal opinions or any
conclusions I draw from the documents, has been proven in court,
and that the Defendants do not admit any such allegations,
opinions or conclusions. I believe, however, that the evidence
speaks for itself.
Some of the computer files here presented
were created by scanning "hard copy" documents using
optical character recognition ("OCR") software, then
correcting recognition errors by eye. Some errors will have been
missed, but I believe they are all inconsequential. A few files,
as will be seen, were created by scanning original "hard
copy" to image files, hence are exact facsimiles. All other
files are in the electronic form originally given me by court
reporters or the other side. I have of course kept all of the
original printed and hand-written materials (as I presume the
other side has done) for the sake of verifying those presented
electronically here, should the need arise.
However, in some electronic documents here,
names of certain ipersons are replaced by phrases (e.g., 'the
aunt') describing them. Though guilty of wrongdoing, they were, I
believe, deceived by a certain person (Louise Malenfant, now
deceased) and I do not wish to distress them. In a few places,
the names of persons incidentally mentioned have also been
deleted for the sake of their privacy, as have various telephone
numbers; and identities of a few others about whose original
roles there is unclear or conflicting evidence are hidden by deletion of certain
words and phrases. And to avoid constant Internet exposure of the name of the
paralegal mentioned below, his first name has been changed in all of the
documents to 'Tim' in brackets. The
sole remaining content-difference between these documents and
originals is that at many places I've made explanatory comments,
in brackets and in red so as to be distinguished from original
text. In so doing, I've often adjusted letter- and line-sizing to
preserve the lines and pagination of original "hard
copy" documents--though subsequent conversion to html format
for web-posting created some visual awkwardness. (One problem
created by converting Microsoft Word documents to html is that
the page and paragraph numbers in the annotated contents and the
ethical-violations index no longer apply to MY CASE.html. For
that reason, a pdf version of My Case, one which does preserve
original pagination though its hyperlinks are disabled, has been
added to the documents-list page.)
Summary
abstract for "My Case"
This lawsuit was launched after lengthy
attempts by me to get the National Post to avoid it, first by
warning them repeatedly of the reporter's libelous publication
plans tied to her slander of me to my associates in ECMAS, then by
imploring them after publication to retract the article's libels
against me and those associates. The reporter herself has
testified that none of the editors ever investigated what she was
doing. And the massive evidence shows that she herself never
genuinely investigated any of the subjects about which she went
on make many false claims and insinuations in the article.
Instead she was evidently motivated by a pre-existing
relationship with a person (Ms. Malenfant) whose motives she had
reasons to know were malicious, and by her own prejudices.There
are even signs that the reporter suppressed some damning evidence
of her actions which she was obligated to turn over in the
lawsuit process. All of the claims made in this summary are
supported at length in this site through the many linked
documents.
The initial defamation involved an academic
book of mine, one noting the biological fact that it is natural
for children to have sexual feelings toward one another. But to a
volunteer organization I was a member of, who the reporter knew
had no knowledge of the book, she represented me as having
condoned child sex abuse. She urged them to expel me from the
group over that, under threat of publishing an exposé of my
association with them. I quickly convinced them that my book does
no such horrid thing. Yet in the article, she made claims about
the book and presented their initial panicked response--an ECMAS board
meeting to consider her demand to expel me--as if they saw the
claims as credible and had chosen on their own to consider
expelling me. To do this, she hid her accusation and threats to
them, and the fact that they had voted in my favor, from readers.
Her article did not (directly) make her
original accusation, but did distort other points in my book
--other established facts or clear conclusions from them--in a
way that made me appear uncaring over child sex abuse. She had
presented none of her published claims to me in advance for my
response. Yet the article alleged I'd been asked what I meant by
certain passages and refused to answer; it was false on both
counts. Indeed, I had asked to reply in print to certain false
claims--also different from those finally published in the
article--insinuated in an e-mail the reporter had sent me after
slandering me to the volunteer group's president. But the fact
that I had tried to defend myself, and all the responses I
submitted in so doing, were suppressed by the newspaper. The
reporter's other communications in this affair, and her answers
in examination for discovery, all reveal that what lay behind her
many distortions was not honest error but a very high level of
bad faith.
The article's "news hook" was the
group ECMAS's involvement with an individual who had, five
years earlier, been convicted and disbarred as a lawyer for
soliciting sex from a 16-year-old prostitute. Here again the
reporter suppressed and distorted much vital information that she
had: about the desperate need of many for the free and the paid
help that he alone was able to give us. Also about the
extenuating reasons behind his election as vice
president--reasons involving the malicious person described above
as acting in league with the reporter. The reporter's evident
motive for doing all this was to insinuate that the group, and I
in particular, condoned his crime.
The article went on to make false
insinuations about my behavior regarding this individual: that I
was covering up his past, pressuring vulnerable people to hire
him and pressuring the group to be sure no one coming to it for
help escaped his clutches. It went on to hint that I did all
these things from a financial motive or from outright corruption.
These insinuations, too, were based on large amounts of
suppressed information, including crucial facts from her own
informants. In fact, the false claims the latter made that were
negative toward me were trivial in nature, but in print they were
distorted into libelous falsehoods.
One key example: I had often urged two
sisters to ask the paralegal for information--free--that the son
of one of them needed, and at one point urged them to explore the
possibility of hiring him for extended help. Later, these two
went to the reporter's local ally noted above--a person with no
legal credentials who claimed she could give them the help they
felt a desperate need for--who then told them falsehoods
regarding the contents of my book. Between these emotional
influences on them and deceit by the reporter, the article made
it appear (partly by omitting the fact that they were
sisters describing the same set of events) that they were two
examples of my pressuring people to fire their lawyers and hire
the paralegal. But she suppressed her other two sources'
testimony on the subject: they told her they'd been with me at
nearly every meeting attended by new contacts, and never observed
me to do any such thing.
In the course of promoting such claims
originating with the malicious ally, the reporter refused to
contact any witnesses, no matter how crucial, to whom that person
hadn't sent her, and quoted in regard to me (anonymously, giving
an illegitimate and partially false reason) only persons whose
involvement with that ally clearly compromised their credibility.
In spite of this, some of my associates attempted to inform her
of the facts about me--but she evaded or suppressed all of their
information. As for those her ally sent her to, the reporter
manipulated them to get them to support her accusations, or else
manipulated their words in print. To repeat, she ultimately did
not deceive my associates. But she was able to pressure a group in
another city into dissolving its formal ties to ECMAS. Hiding her
manipulations of them likewise reinforced the false appearance of
odious behavior by me. But the documents presented here make the
actual facts of the story available to any who care to see.
FerrelChristensen, Professor Emeritus
[My
Case]
[Document
list]
fchriste@ualberta.ca
[See The Post's retraction below.]
Technical Contact mailto:wes@imgelectronics.com