FURLONG TRIES TO MOVE ON FROM ORDEAL
Public face of Vancouver Games was trapped in no-win situation
Once the first salvo was fired, once the word “abuse” appeared in front-page stories alongside John Furlong’s name, the public face of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics couldn’t win.
That is how the game works. The idea of a heroic figure with feet of clay always makes a sensational story.
It’s only when the story turns out to be untrue that it gets awkward.
“Oops, sorry!” doesn’t quite cover it. Or the accounts of the story’s unravelling run “on Page 6,” as Furlong said Monday, in a 90-minute conversation with the Vancouver Sun, his first extended sit-down interview in three years. The public moves on to the next victim, but the asterisk, Furlong well knows, may always linger.
“When this happened … I have a huge Rolodex, and a lot of people in my corner. And the corner just emptied out,” Furlong said.
“A lot of people stayed, but a lot of people just went away, and I think it’s partially because they don’t know what to do, what to say. ‘How are you feeling?’ They know how you’re feeling. And so it became quite lonely.
“I used to exercise, fanatically, every day, and the desire to do that just evaporated. I didn’t want to be around people. It was embarrassing, humiliating. So I would get up at 4 in the morning and go walk the seawall, and then do it again at 10 at night, when it was dark.”
The 65-year-old, Irish-born chief executive of the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee said he has begun to emerge from “the darkness” of allegations, brought forth in 2012 by a journalist/activist, Laura Robinson, that he physically and mentally abused students at an aboriginal school in Burns Lake, B.C., while teaching there as a member of an Irish Catholic mission in 1969.
One by one, the allegations, which had first appeared in the Georgia Straight newspaper, fell apart when tested by the courts, and the final act in Robinson’s obsessive three-year campaign against Furlong ended Sept. 18 when Madam Justice C.A. Wedge of the Supreme Court of B.C. dismissed a defamation suit she brought against the man she had sought to bring down.
“Ms. Robinson’s publications concerning Mr. Furlong cannot be fairly characterized as the reporting of other persons’ allegations against him,” the judge wrote. “Rather, the publications constitute an attack by Ms. Robinson on Mr. Furlong’s character, conduct and credibility.”
Robinson had proceeded with the defamation suit even after Furlong withdrew his own, against her.
That he decided not to pursue the reporter for damages, given the enormous financial and emotional cost of defending himself against potentially ruinous allegations, is among the more surprising aspects of his ordeal.
“I honestly thought about it, and just decided I don’t have it in me,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend another minute on it.
“I would have hoped with all three cases gone that everybody would have seen this is not going anywhere, and just let it go and hope everybody learned something. And my family can recover and she can go away and think about something else.
“And of course, her reaction was, ‘I’m going to press on.’ ”
Furlong said that in the beginning, he had thought Robinson’s story was so obviously untrue, no newspaper would publish it.
“I thought this would end in three days. And I was so wrong, and it got worse and worse. And the other thing I realized was that the more you respond to it, the worse it gets,” he said.
“You want to respond, and you see your children struggling, and so you do and then what was contained is suddenly five times bigger.”
Three years’ worth of legal fees, lost income from speaking engagements cancelled by nervous organizations, the cost to Furlong was considerable. Would he put a number on it?
“I won’t, but it was too much. An outrageous amount,” he said.
“When the Games ended, I can’t imagine there were too many people busier than me. Speaking engagements … and then it just died. And that was retirement planning for me.
“So all of that fell apart, and then my confidence went. It was always sitting there on my shoulder, waiting to jump out.
“Well, it was a lot of money, and some people helped (with the costs) but you know, financially is one thing but the human cost … I’d rather be penniless and respected than rich and reviled.”
The human cost included the harassment of his children and, indirectly, the death of his wife Deborah in an auto accident in Ireland, where the couple had retreated to escape constant reminders of how opinion had turned against a man who had been hailed as a hero after the success of the Olympics.
The court case, especially the judge’s ruling on Robinson’s defamation bid, has brought some measure of closure, Furlong said.
He is returning to his role as a speaker, at the Vancouver Board of Trade on Wednesday — the topic is adversity — and admits he is quite nervous about it.
“I’m not sure I’m fully out of it yet, but I’m certainly feeling better. I mean it’s different than it used to be,” he said.
“I’m not wearing my dark glasses as much as I used to, there’s some good things happening around me.
“Well, anyway, its done and hopefully this time next year I’ll be able to look back and say this was all for the best.” He laughed. “But I don’t think so.”