The Mountie pictured in the S&M photos that caused a media firestorm in July is suing a convicted fraudster and a prominent Vancouver lawyer, claiming both are part of a smear campaign against him.
Cpl James Brown admits to having posted bondage photos of himself on a fetish website. He claims that the fraudster improperly gained access to those photos, mixed them in with photos of a different man committing violent sexual acts, and presented them all to local media along with allegations that Cpl Brown had connections to serial killer Robert Pickton’s family.
The culprit, according to the lawsuit: a New Westminster man named Grant Wakefield who CTV News has learned was been convicted of fraud and acting under false pretenses in the early 1990s.
“Grant Wakefield is a coward and a fraudster and he surreptitiously gained private information from our client and tied him to Pickton, the biggest serial killer in Canada.” said Bryan G. Baynham, Brown’s lawyer. “It’s story after story out there about him that isn’t true.”
Baynham said the lawsuit could be the largest privacy breach case in Canada, with possible damages ranging into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Also sued is Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward, who represented the families of murdered women at the Missing Women Inquiry, as well as two unnamed John and Jane Does.
So far no media outlets have been sued in the case, though Baynham said that may change. No statement of defense has been filed, and the lawsuits contain allegations that are unproven in court. The defendants did not return calls by press time.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, accuses Wakefield of creating fake profiles on S&M website Fetlife, and then befriending Cpl. Brown via his online profile of “the Kilted Knight.” Then Wakefield copied photos of Cpl Brown from his Fetlife profile, using names like “Mariah_De_Sin,” the lawsuit says.
Brown also alleges that Wakefield was behind a number of tweets and online comments and complaints to police that suggested Brown had sent threatening messages to him, and that he was connected to the Picktons.
The lawsuit also claims that Wakefield and the two others gave those photos, as well as photos of another man putting a knife to a woman’s throat, to the media.
Brown also claims that Cameron Ward received those photos from Wakefield and others and wrote a blog post that also linked Brown to the Picktons and a bar the Pickton family ran on their property called “Piggy’s Palace.”
Ward has told CTV News that Brown played “a small but important role” in the investigation. After news of the photos broke, Ward called to reopen the Pickton inquiry.
In the lawsuit Brown claims he was only staffing the Coquitlam detachment when a man claiming to have knowledge of Pickton’s crimes arrived to offer information. Brown then referred the man to investigators. Brown was also part of a team of officers who watched Pickton for between six and ten shifts, the lawsuit claims.
Brown claims he has never been to Piggy’s Palace, and the “close and criminal association with Pickton” that was implied in the blog post was one of several “false, malicious and defamatory” statements.
Grant Wakefield is himself being investigated by the RCMP for an alleged offense of defamatory libel. Wakefield’s house has been searched and RCMP officers seized computers and telephones.
Police say in a warrant application that while some information Wakefield provided about Brown was true, there is no evidence for many of Wakefield’s other claims.
Wakefield paid two fines for fraud and false pretenses charges in the early 1990s.
Deanne Giroux says she knew Wakefield about 24 years ago. She says back then Wakefield claimed he was a spy.
“He would take a small amount of truth and blow up all kinds of false information around that in order to gain attention,” she told CTV News.
Her opinion is that Wakefield can’t be trusted.
“People need to investigate the source before reacting to the information he has provided,” she said.
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