VANCOUVER — A lawyer for a freelance journalist says former Olympics CEO John Furlong portrayed her as a heartless, cruel and callous activist who was motivated by contempt for male authority figures.
Bryan Baynham has begun his closing arguments in a civil trial where Laura Robinson is alleging Furlong defamed her in public comments after she wrote an article that alleged he physically and verbally abused First Nations children decades ago.
Furlong held a news conference the day the article was published in the Georgia Straight newspaper in September 2012 and accused Robinson of a shocking lack of diligence, inaccurate reporting and a personal vendetta.
Baynham says Robinson sought Furlong's comment four times through his lawyer, but he refused to explain why he had omitted from his memoir "Patriot Hearts" his past work as a teacher at a Catholic school in northern B.C. in 1969 and 1970.
He says the most serious of Furlong's defamatory statements was when he implied — intentionally or not — that Robinson was linked to an alleged attempt to extort money.
Furlong's lawyer, John Hunter, has said that his client never implied that Robinson tried to extort money from him and that he had a right to respond to the journalist's "attacks."
