Jamie Sarkonak: She was a rape accuser’s greatest ally. Now, she regrets it

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In 2015, when the University of British Columbia began to reckon with sexual assault allegations by a mature student against Steven Galloway, the school’s most high-profile creative writing professor, it had the help of an inquisitor.

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Chelsea Rooney circulated the unproven allegations that Galloway had raped a student (which were later found to be unsubstantiated by a retired judge tasked with investigating the affair for UBC) and did her best to gather more, contributing to the obliteration of his reputation and career. Now, a decade later, she’s walking it all back with a profuse apology, printed in the Saturday Post.

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In her apology, which has also been posted online, Rooney admitted that her understanding of and approach to the “believe women” movement was “misguided.”

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“My position at the time was that an allegation was all that a person should require to come to the conclusion that an accused person was guilty, and I accused those who disagreed with this of doing harm to survivors,” she wrote.

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“I should have understood that supporting people who come forward about sexual violence does not require, and cannot justify, acting in ways that may lead others to conclude that unproven allegations are true or failing to give the person accused a fair opportunity to be heard and considered.”

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Rooney, an author, alumna of UBC’s creative writing program and one of Galloway’s former students, was one of the many defendants in a defamation lawsuit brought by the ex-professor in 2018 to clear his name. The trial is set to start on Oct. 5, but Rooney has officially settled (along with several others, whose apologies have also been published).

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In her apology, Rooney wrote that she “became involved without having heard Mr. Galloway’s side of the story.”

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“I should not have listened only to one side, or allowed that one-sided understanding to shape my communications, my tweets, or my participation in the process. I also should not have allowed my own past negative experiences with others, or my experience learning about and working on issues of sexual violence, to cloud my judgment or prevent me from giving Mr. Galloway fair consideration.”

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Her role in tying Galloway’s name to campus sexual violence is recounted in detail in a pre-trial court ruling on the lawsuit in 2021. It began when a friend in the UBC creative writing program, known only by the letters A.B. due to a publication ban, told her in 2015 that she’d been raped by Galloway a few years prior. A.B. is the primary defendant in Galloway’s defamation trial, but she will not be testifying in court or defending her account of being raped, as truth.

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A.B. had been corresponding with some professors and members of the media about her alleged sexual assault earlier in 2015, and in mid-November, she told Rooney. Per the 2021 ruling, “Ms. Rooney did not ask for any details (such as when or where), which she did not consider relevant.” By Rooney’s account at the time, she did not think highly of Galloway and believed A.B.’s story to be truthful; A.B. then told Rooney that she was going to make a formal complaint to the university.