John Furlong drops Georgia Straight lawsuit, still targeting writer

CANADA
The Globe and Mail

SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 29 2013

On the same day former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong announced he was dropping one lawsuit, his lawyer threatened to file another, sending a letter to a Danish sports institute in which he requested a freelance journalist not be permitted to speak at a conference.

Mr. Furlong, who had avoided the spotlight for months following claims he assaulted several former students when he was a physical education teacher in Burns Lake, B.C., four decades ago, spoke at length with The Globe and Mail on Monday.

It was then he announced he was dropping his lawsuit against the Georgia Straight, the weekly newspaper that last year published a story in which eight former students signed affidavits alleging physical abuse. Mr. Furlong said he would continue and escalate his lawsuit against the story’s author, freelance journalist Laura Robinson.

Ms. Robinson, who is in Denmark to give a talk about Mr. Furlong at the Play the Game conference, released a letter Tuesday that was sent to the organization by Mr. Furlong’s lawyer one day earlier. It asked that she not be given “an opportunity at your conference to make further defamatory statements about Mr. Furlong.”

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