Steven Galloway was accused of rape. Then her text messages surfaced

For the past two weeks of this trial, I’ve been telling reporters to be in court for the examination in chief of A.B.’s ex-husband, a witness for Steven Galloway. His evidence would be a bombshell, if, and I stress if, you knew the facts of the case.

He testified on Monday. That evening, the Globe and Mail, which has covered this trial more closely than any other outlet, published Mike Hager’s story on his testimony. It reported what A.B. told him about Galloway’s sailboat, her vow to “destroy him,” and the top-shelf scotch he bought Galloway in Banff. It didn’t mention the text messages he put into evidence.

That’s understandable. Their significance only becomes clear if you know exactly what A.B. alleged about that night, and the details are spread across eleven years of investigations, hearings, and filings.

In 2015, Galloway was condemned in a vacuum of information. A.B.’s allegations circulated, and almost nothing was known that could test them. On Monday, a piece of that missing information finally entered the court record.

The allegation

Let me walk you through what happened.

Go back to the allegations. Over and above any finding of harassment, or any other allegation against Galloway, there is one specific allegation of an actual crime: that he drugged and raped A.B. in his office on May 5, 2011.

It was one of three allegations of sexual assault A.B. made against Galloway. Retired Justice Mary Ellen Boyd, who investigated them for UBC, found all three unsubstantiated. She did find that Galloway had sexually harassed A.B., a finding Galloway disputes.

May 5, 2011, was the night of a reading at UBC by Miriam Toews and Elizabeth Hay that began at 7:30 p.m. It was also the night of Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinal between the Vancouver Canucks and the Nashville Predators.

A.B. told Boyd that before the reading, she found herself on the floor of Galloway’s office, naked, with no memory of what had happened. She concluded from physical evidence that they’d had sex, and said she felt “dissociated.” When she looked up, Galloway was sitting on his couch watching the hockey game on his computer. Neither of them spoke. Later, she said, they left together for the reading, where Galloway sat with other writers and ignored her. She told Boyd she was in shock.

In the version she gave CBC producer Ronna Syed, she had been drinking with Galloway before she lost consciousness. Asked whether A.B. was suggesting he had spiked her drink, Syed testified Monday: “I think she responded in the affirmative.”

This is the allegation that destroyed Galloway’s life.

Earlier in the trial, Galloway produced text messages between himself and the writer Lee Henderson. At 6:41 p.m., Galloway tells Henderson he’s going to the Toews reading but is at Koerner’s Pub, across the road from the theatre, watching the game. Henderson asks him to order him a hamburger.

On Monday, A.B.’s ex-husband testified that he had downloaded the text messages he and A.B. exchanged that night. The night of the Toews reading. The night of the hockey game. The night A.B. says she woke on Galloway’s office floor, with what she described as physical evidence of sex, and Galloway sitting on his couch watching the game.

Burnett walked him through the text messages, minute by minute.

The texts

The Canucks’ playoff game in Nashville that night began at 5:41 p.m. Vancouver time.

The hockey game is her detail, from her allegation of rape as told to Boyd. She says it was on when she regained consciousness. From the moment it started, the texts show her messaging her husband.

The times below are the phone’s own, recorded to the second. The game events they describe line up with the NHL’s official play-by-play.

5:41:46 p.m. — A.B.: Good! Score?
5:42:21 — Husband: Hasn’t started yet.
5:42:34 — Husband: Game on!
5:55:59 — Husband: 0-0

The Canucks scored first.

6:11:01 — Husband: 1-0 Vancouver!
6:11:42 — A.B.: Excellent!

Nashville tied it, and the period ended in a fight.

6:17:46 — Husband: 1-1 booooiooooomszxxxx!
6:21:08 — Husband: Big fight at the end of the period.
6:21:27 — Husband: Fuck Nashville!
6:24:15 — A.B.: Crap.

During the first intermission:

6:29:07 — Husband: Don Cherry is wearing what color? I bet you can’t guess. You get 3.
6:47:44 — A.B.: White?
6:48:30 — A.B.: Purple?
6:50:03 — A.B.: Gold. Third guess.
6:50:18 — Husband: Brown.
6:54:44 — A.B.: What colour?!
6:55:08 — A.B.: Orange.

The Canucks scored again.

6:55:13 — Husband: 2-1 goal!
6:56:19 — A.B.: Oh brown. Whoopie. Were winning yea!
6:58:19 — Husband: Brown. Yes brown.

Nashville went on a two-man advantage.

7:08:33 — Husband: 5 on 3 power play for nashvile
7:12:04 — Husband: Nashville is getting rattled!
7:17:50 — A.B.: Good! Will we win?
7:19:36 — Husband: Who the fuck knows? Is the video violator there or at the game?
7:20:23 — A.B.: Whose the video violator?
7:22:16 — Husband: Galloway.
7:22:39 — A.B.: Reading starts in 9 minutes. Will be a good girl and turn off phone than.

She doesn’t respond to the name. Asked in court what “video violator” meant, her ex-husband said he and A.B. had nicknames for everyone. “I’ve dug, but I don’t remember.”

Galloway later told me the vaguely salacious-sounding nickname came from a dinner at a sushi restaurant, where everyone agreed not to film a prank wager and he filmed it anyway.

The reading, at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre, was a big event, her ex-husband said, and A.B. was part of the team setting it up.

Between “Game on!” and the start of the reading, A.B. sent twenty-one texts, not all of them reproduced here. Seven of them came in the seven minutes after she said she was turning her phone off, as the exchange turned flirtatious. “No you are super cute,” she wrote at 7:24. At 7:26: “Wow Nice dirty boy.”

She went quiet until just after nine.

9:05:06 — A.B.: Yeah! Sorry I missed it. Awesome reading!
9:58:11 — A.B.: You’re waxing poetic! I’m at waterbuffalo club for some after reading chit chat. Then home. Xoxo miss you luv.

The “waterbuffalo club,” her ex-husband explained, was A.B.’s name for the Legion on Main Street (a creative writing department watering hole), which A.B. compared to the lodge in The Flintstones.

The woman who told Boyd she was in shock that night at the Toews reading texted her husband at 9:05 that it had been an “Awesome reading!”

So by A.B.’s account, Galloway was in his office watching the game while she lay on the floor. By the messages, she was texting her husband about that game from the minute it began, and by 6:41 Galloway was telling a friend he was watching it at a pub. And A.B. says that afterward, the two of them left his office together for the reading.

Her account of that night does not match the evidence now before the court.

Earlier in the trial, Galloway told the court this was not a case of he said, she said. It was a case of she said, “and I wasn’t there.”

The ex-husband’s evidence

A.B.’s ex-husband was called as a witness by Galloway’s lawyer, Dan Burnett. He told the court that he and A.B. had been together for years, through school in Toronto and several cities after. They married in 2011, separated in 2014, and later divorced. Yet in her 2016 response to Boyd, A.B. wrote that her marriage “isn’t over – my husband and I are together.”

He didn’t know about the affair, he said. People told him things were going on, but when he asked A.B., she told him he was being paranoid and crazy. It was confirmed when he read about it in the newspaper.

A.B. and Galloway were friends “from day one,” he said. Galloway was the first person he met through her program. The couples went for sushi, he had a couple of drinks with them at the Legion (“It wasn’t my thing”), and Galloway gave them tickets to a hockey game or two. Over time, he said, A.B. took to belittling Galloway as nerdy and geeky.

She did tell him about an incident on Galloway’s sailboat. Galloway, she told him, had put his hands around her neck. He got angry. His first question was what she was doing on Galloway’s boat, and he wanted to confront Galloway about what he called “a pass at my wife.” A.B. talked him out of it. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I don’t want you to get hurt,” he remembered her saying, and at one point: “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to destroy him.” He couldn’t swear it was that conversation or another one, he said. He encouraged her to file a police report. She refused.

Boyd, who investigated A.B.’s account of an assault on the sailboat, was unable to find that it occurred “in March of 2011 or at all.”

Years later, after they had divorced, A.B. told him Galloway should consider himself lucky that guns are illegal in Canada, he testified. He told her she shouldn’t say things like that.

In May 2013, he drove A.B. to a writers’ workshop in Banff. Galloway was supposed to drive her back. About two weeks later, she called and told him to come get her. There was no way, she said, she was getting a ride back with Galloway. He drove to Banff in one shot, arriving around 8 p.m. A.B. was angry. Galloway was an asshole, she said; he wasn’t paying attention to her. She introduced her husband to the writers there. It was the last time he saw Galloway, whom he already suspected of having an affair with his wife.

“I bought Steven a drink,” he said. “A top-shelf scotch. I gave him a scowl and walked away.”

Never disclosed

A.B. has withdrawn her defence that her allegations were true, though she has not admitted they were false.

She did not produce these messages. She also refused to attend examination for discovery, despite a court order in June that offered her substantial accommodations, so she was never questioned about them. Burnett has told the court he will ask Justice Neena Sharma to draw an adverse inference from her absence, and Sharma will hear his contempt application at the end of the trial.

Cross-examination

Beddoes’s cross-examination was brief. He established that A.B.’s ex-husband had no evidence of how A.B. felt about Galloway in November 2015, when she made her allegations. He did not ask about the texts. Counsel for Mandi Gray and Glynnis Kirchmeier had no questions.

The classmate in the lobby

Right after A.B.’s ex-husband, the court heard from David Mount, a former classmate in UBC’s creative writing program and, at the time, a close friend of A.B.’s. The two couples socialized together. On cross-examination, Mount acknowledged that he no longer thinks highly of A.B., “considering what she’s done.”

Mount attended the Toews reading at the Frederic Wood Theatre, arriving before its 7:30 start. A.B. was already there. He spoke with her in the lobby before the event, while introducing his then-wife to classmates. He saw her have two glasses of white wine.

She was, Mount testified, “happy, lucid, well put together.”

In the hallway

When court adjourned, I stepped into the hallway. Katie Wagner, Galloway’s wife, awkwardly approached A.B.’s ex-husband to thank him for his testimony. He put his hand on her shoulder. “If there was even an ounce of me that thought Steve raped [A.B.], I wouldn’t be here,” he told her.

Ms. Wagner broke down in tears.

He didn’t have to say it. He was there, he told her, because he knows right from wrong, and because if he were ever in a position that terrible, he would hope someone would help him.

A few minutes later, the man who once scowled at Galloway over a top-shelf scotch stood with his arm wrapped around Galloway’s shoulders. Before Monday, the two men hadn’t seen each other since that night in Banff, thirteen years earlier.

Before the trial, I was the one who told Steven Galloway about these text messages.

When I first began to describe them, he didn’t understand what I was saying. I said there were text messages between A.B. and her ex-husband the night of the hockey game. I was so sure he would understand what I meant that I said it twice, word for word. He told me he still didn’t understand what I was trying to tell him. And then the penny dropped. He asked me: there are text messages between A.B. and her ex-husband the night of the Toews reading? I told him there were, and that they vindicated him.

Despite everything he’d been through up to that point, and the absurdity of the allegations that had destroyed his life, the first words out of his mouth were, “I told you, I didn’t do it.”