Chapman, King almost two peas in pod
I’ve got something here that’s going to make us both rich
One man pin-balled between greed and fear, the other from subdued defeat to worldweary sophistication and back again.
But in the final analysis, it may be that Alex Chapman and Jack King were, if not quite two peas in a pod, more alike than they knew.
It was early June of 2003, and Mr. Chapman had just called his lawyer, Ian Histed.
“You gotta come and see something,” Mr. Chapman told him, remembering it all with a fond chuckle as he testified here Friday at a judicial inquiry into the conduct of Manitoba Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas, Mr. King’s wife and back then just a family law lawyer herself. “You’re not gonna believe it.” Mr. Histed was then representing Mr. Chapman in two lawsuits against the Winnipeg Police; he’d never been to his client’s workplace before, but it was a slow day so he walked over.
When he got there, Mr. Chapman gave him a little tour and then took him into his office.
“‘I’ve got something here that’s going to make us both rich,’ ” Mr. Histed said Mr. Chapman told him. “‘ These two lawyers at TDS [Thompson, Dorfman, Sweatman, the prominent Winnipeg firm where both Mr. King and Ms. Douglas then worked] are trying to have sex with me, they’re trying to get me into bed.’ ”
Mr. Chapman told him that as his divorce was wrapping up — Mr. King was his matrimonial lawyer — he had grown more friendly, invited him for drinks and their conversation had become more sexual.
“Apparently,” Mr. Histed testified, with another jarring round of hehheh-hehs, “Mr. King thought it would be thrilling to watch Mr. Chapman rape his wife.”
Mr. Chapman then played some voicemail messages Mr. King had left, showed him some emails and intimate pictures of his wife Mr. King had sent him and posted on a hard-core sex site, printed off some copies for him and gave Mr. Histed a disc for himself.
(Judge Douglas has always adamantly denied knowing anything of her husband’s misdeeds, and so has he.)
Mr. Chapman mentioned a figure of $1-million or millions, and at one point, Mr. Histed said, pointed to a “beautiful model sailboat” he had on his desk and said “that was the kind he was going to buy” with his windfall.
Later, Mr. Histed said, he broke the tragic news to Mr. Chapman that in Canada, the upper limit for settlements in such sexual harassment cases was no more than $100,000, not millions. “It would be nice,” Mr. Histed said, “but this isn’t New York.”
Despite Mr. Chapman’s “usual bravado,” Mr. Histed thought he was also “actually quite frightened … he thought they were quite powerful people.” He told Mr. Histed he thought he was expected at the couple’s house on the weekend, and was sufficiently nervous that he asked him if he should go: Absolutely not, the lawyer said.
A few days later — by now it was June 9 — Mr. Histed faxed a letter to TDS, with Mr. Chapman’s allegations against Mr. King.
By then, Mr. Histed said, having mulled it over, he realized that while there was evidence a-plenty of Mr. King’s misconduct, “There was a possibility that Ms. Douglas was not aware of Mr. King’s activities,” no evidence against her other than his client’s belief she knew, and even the possibility that Mr. King meant to harm his wife.
As Mr. Histed put it in his jolly way once, “Why go after both when one of them was just lying there [ripe for the plucking]?”
In the result, Ms. Douglas wasn’t named or accused in the faxed letter.
It ended up with Michael Sinclair, then the firm’s managing partner, who promptly found Mr. King and took him aside for a private chat.
“He told me the allegations made were not true,” Mr. Sinclair told the inquiry, “and he would talk to Mr. Chapman and get him to withdraw them.”
Later that day, Mr. Sinclair and another of the partners went over to Mr. Histed’s office to look at the material he said he had, including, as Mr. Sinclair put it quietly, “pictures of Lori Douglas, naked.”
In the days that followed, and in the restrained way of the prosperous law firm, all hell broke loose: Mr. Sinclair confronted Mr. King, who appeared shaken, and told him he would “have to find another place to practise” (he was being fired); the other partners were told Mr. King was leaving; and Mr. Sinclair met Ms. Douglas, who was emotional and upset, “pretty shattered,” he said.
Mr. Sinclair knew she had an application for the bench in the works at the time — the firm required its partners to tell them if they were applying for judicial appointment — but how this might impact her application didn’t form any part of their discussion, he said.
Though he recalled that Mr. King had told him, in a vague way, that she might know something about the hardcore site where he’d posted the pictures, Mr. Sinclair believed her when she said she knew absolutely nothing.
There was no consideration that she should leave the firm, Mr. Sinclair said in his quiet way.
“The only thing she did was allow Jack to take pictures of her, naked. That was part of their sex life; that’s none of my business.”
Three days after Mr. Histed’s original “demand letter” for $100,000 went out, Mr. King came to his office.
With a junior there, taking notes, Mr. King “was taking the position this was a lot of fuss over nothing,” Mr. Histed said. “What Mr. Chapman was upset about was just a lifestyle choice of his. He presented himself as a libertine and that he’d had no idea Alex could be offended by this.”
He came across as “a bit of a playboy,” Mr. Histed remembered. “He had broad sexual tastes, and why was I so narrow-minded?” He chuckled again. As for Mr. Sinclair, he told Lori Douglas at their meeting that “she should leave Jack.”
When she protested that she couldn’t, she was worried about him, Mr. Sinclair “immediately withdrew my suggestion. I shouldn’t have made it in the first place,” he said. “It was none of my business.”
Imagine that: There was an actual gentleman in the building. What a lonely character he must have felt.