Steven Galloway's literary career ended when allegations of sexual assault were made in 2015.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Bestselling author Steven Galloway’s career was abruptly destroyed, his finances ruined and his mental health damaged so badly he would often convulse in the fetal position after he was accused of sexual assault and was dismissed as head of UBC’s creative writing program, B.C. Supreme Court heard Monday during the first day of a defamation trial against four people.
The start of the high-profile trial more than a decade in the making focused on the profound impact the November, 2015, allegations – and wider online debate of the incident – had on the mental health of two people at the centre of it: Mr. Galloway and a former UBC student A.B., who is also one of the defendants. The other three defendants are people who repeated her claims online.
“It’s hard to imagine the nightmare one lives through of being accused of being a rapist,” Mr. Galloway’s lawyer Daniel Burnett said on the first day of the judge-only trial scheduled to run 20 days.
His opening statement explained how his client’s “star” literary career ended immediately at the age of 40 when allegations of sexual assault were made in 2015 by A.B. Her identity is being protected by a pre-trial publication ban that Justice Neena Sharma will either extend or end on Tuesday. A.B. will not testify at the trial.
Mr. Burnett told the court in Vancouver his client is seeking aggravated and special damages and will be calling a publishing expert to testify to the earnings Mr. Galloway could have expected if the author of the 2008 international bestseller The Cellist of Sarajevo continued his writing career.
After Mr. Burnett’s statement, he called his first witness to testify: Mr. Galloway’s wife Katie Wagner. She said that in the immediate aftermath of the accusation Mr. Galloway was briefly hospitalized due to concerns about his mental health while on a work trip in Ohio. In the months that followed, she told the court, he would frequently throw up in the mornings, rarely eat and have severe panic attacks related to the public’s perception he was a rapist.
Ex-defendant apologizes to Steven Galloway as defamation trial set to begin
“He’d turn over into the fetal position, he’s shaking, full body shaking,” she testified.
At one point, Ms. Wagner testified, the couple were staying at her parents’ house on Vancouver Island when she woke up to find her husband gone and rushed to the boathouse to find Mr. Galloway standing next to a knotted rope he had tied and looped over a beam.
A.B.’s lawyer, Arden Beddoes, told the justice that his client will not be offering the defences of truth or fair comment to refute Mr. Galloway’s allegations.
Instead, he told the court, A.B. will contest the evidence provided by lawyers for Mr. Galloway, who is scheduled to testify this week.
Mr. Beddoes said his client has been in a prolonged mental health crisis herself and that when she was told at the beginning of June she would need to appear soon for a discovery hearing, she attempted to kill herself the following day. Her medical records also noted a previous suicide attempt earlier this year, he said.
He urged Justice Sharma to extend the ban on identifying A.B. through the trial, reading out an example of the hate mail she received to her e-mail inbox stating and explaining how the lawsuit has created extreme stress.
Between 2011 and 2013, the pair had an affair Mr. Galloway has described as consensual and A.B. has characterized as abusive.
UBC fired Mr. Galloway in 2016, even after a retired judge hired by the university to investigate A.B.’s complaint found that, on a balance of probabilities, it could not be established he committed sexual assault or assault. He was not charged by police.
In 2018, Mr. Galloway’s original defamation suit was filed against two dozen defendants, but only A.B. and three others remain: Mandi Gray, Dana Kagis and Glynnis Kirchmeier.
The case has wound its way through various courts over the years as judges have had to weigh whether those accused of sexual assault have a right to sue their accusers for defamation. In 2024, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court decision that said someone accused of being a rapist must be allowed to defend their reputations in court.
When the accusations against Mr. Galloway first surfaced, sexual misconduct by powerful men was rising in the public consciousness. Once-admired celebrities were facing allegations that would eventually lead to the #MeToo movement.
Margaret Atwood, the popular Canadian author who has written publicly about what she says was a lack of due process afforded to Mr. Galloway, told The Globe recently she hopes the trial finally reveals the truth of what happened a decade ago.
Ahead of this trial, one former defendant, Chelsea Rooney, who was a student of Mr. Galloway’s when he taught at UBC, released a public apology for what she characterized as her “harmful” conduct in spreading accusations against Mr. Galloway.
“Everyone deserves fairness, including Mr. Galloway, who was the subject of very serious allegations,” Ms. Rooney said in a statement, posted online alongside the apologies of eight others. She said she regrets playing a role in collecting and soliciting complaints about Mr. Galloway, and building a case against him.
Ms. Wagner, a screenwriter and teacher, testified that she met Mr. Galloway while studying in UBC’s creative writing program in the summer of 2013, began dating him a year later then moved her two kids in with his two children in the summer of 2015 before getting married early the following year.
She ended Monday’s court session testifying how she has tried to maintain a normal family life whilst Mr. Galloway often retreated to their bedroom as he grappled with intense sadness and anxiety.
She said it has been very hard on his two daughters, who share his surname and would often read online “their dad’s a rapist.”
With a report from Chris Hannay