CANADA
The Globe and Mail
GARY MASON
VANCOUVER — Globe and Mail update (includes correction)
Published Tuesday, Mar. 31 2015
We may never understand the toll it took on John Furlong, but we can imagine. One minute you’re a hero, the toast of a country grateful and indebted for the role you played in orchestrating one of the greatest events ever to take place on Canadian soil. And then one day, you wake up to find yourself confronting the most odious allegation imaginable – that you sexually abused native children.
Mr. Furlong always denied the claims, but his protests of innocence played a bit part in the front-page stories and television reports that outlined the accusations of the plaintiffs. When three separate people file lawsuits against the same person, there has to be some truth to it, doesn’t there? Where there’s that much smoke, there’s always fire, no?
Except that, when the smoke cleared, all that was left was evidence that the damaging assertions made against the former CEO of the 2010 Winter Olympics were baseless.
On Monday, the third and final sexual-abuse case against Mr. Furlong was dismissed, as was a previous one. Another had already been dropped. By the end of the process, the lawyer who had been representing the three plaintiffs had withdrawn entirely. It was shown that one of the women was not even attending the school where Mr. Furlong was teaching in northern B.C. in 1969-70, when the incidents were said to have occurred. A second complainant simply abandoned her case. The last proceeding was dismissed after the accuser, a man with a criminal history of more than 50 convictions, failed to show up for the start of the trial.
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