CANADA
The Tyee
By BOB MACKIN
Published March 2, 2014
In new B.C. Supreme Court documents, the CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics admits he has no proof that a journalist made an abuse complaint about him to the RCMP.
John Furlong filed his statement of defence Feb. 27 in the defamation lawsuit launched a month earlier by Laura Robinson, who wrote a 2012 expose about the Irish-born Furlong’s initial years in Canada as a Catholic school physical education teacher.
In his court filing, Furlong “believes,” based on information he claims was available to him and provided by the RCMP, that Robinson brought Beverly Abraham’s allegations to the RCMP. But it said he “has no direct or actual knowledge of whether the plaintiff initiated a complaint with or otherwise reported Ms. Abraham’s allegations to the RCMP.”
The court filing is different from what Furlong said in an Oct. 28, 2013 interview with Global BC’s Chris Gailus (“she went to the RCMP and made the complaint”) and in an Oct. 29, 2013 statement on his website (“the RCMP have cleared me of the allegations that Ms. Robinson brought to the RCMP on behalf of Beverly Abraham in the summer of 2012”).
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