CANADA
CBC News
By Jason Proctor, CBC News Posted: Jun 22, 2015
Former Olympics CEO John Furlong says he blames a damaging Georgia Straight article for the death of his wife.
Furlong testified in B.C. Supreme Court that Deborah Furlong died in a car accident in April 2013 while the two were in Ireland escaping stress from publication of allegations he abused children in Burns Lake more than 40 years earlier.
“It cost me my wife,” he said.
The two had been married 299 days.
Furlong says a doctor at a Dublin hospital told him she was dead: “It was the most broken I think I’ve ever felt.”
‘One of the worst mornings of my life’
At times emotional and at times testy, Furlong took the stand in his own defence at the start of the second week of a landmark civil defamation suit.
The reporter who wrote the September 2012 article, Laura Robinson, claims Furlong defamed her in his responses to the piece, implying she was unethical, unprofessional and motivated by a personal vendetta.
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