Man key to scandal terminated from job

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This article was published 09/09/2010 (5869 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE man who came forward with claims he’d been pressured to have sex with his lawyer’s wife, a Manitoba judge, has been fired from his job.

Just one week after news broke that Winnipeg lawyer Jack King had attempted to entice a client to have sex with his wife, judge Lori Douglas, in 2003, that client — Alex Chapman — learned he’d been fired from his job of 13 years as a computer programmer at Great-West Lifeco Inc.

A Great-West Life spokeswoman declined to comment, citing privacy concerns, but Chapman said he was told he was fired over a file folder on his office computer that contained evidence for his civil case against King and Douglas, including nude images of Douglas that had been posted to a website.

On Aug. 16, Chapman said, he was called into a "high-level" meeting with GWL officials where he said he was interrogated about his background, including 1993 convictions for arson and theft for which he was later pardoned, and accusations he’d funnelled "millions of dollars" into a bank account in his birth country of Trinidad and Tobago.

The meeting came only hours after CBC had interviewed Jack King, Chapman said.

After the Aug. 16 meeting, Chapman was escorted out of the GWL office and told he was suspended with pay. He said he sought documentation from the company about his job status for nearly three weeks before a GWL lawyer informed him on Tuesday that he’d been terminated.

The firing leaves Chapman without the job that is "what kept me going in all this mess," he said. "I didn’t want to pull Great-West Life into this mess, but they’re somehow politically connected. I do an excellent job. I go over and beyond each day," Chapman said, citing positive performance reviews. "They just walk people out the door because somebody phoned them up and said some crap?"

Chapman plans to file a complaint about his firing to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission this week. He is also demanding the company allow him to retrieve the file. The images contained in the file were evidence for his civil case, he said, and thus not equivalent to downloading pornography.

Chapman vowed on Wednesday to continue to fight his case in the courts and the public eye. He has filed a $67-million civil lawsuit against King, Douglas and their former law firm of Thompson Dorfman Sweatman, and has also filed a complaint against King through the Law Society of Manitoba.

"Jack King wanted to pay for my silence. I’ve always wanted to come forward, but I was living in fear," Chapman said, referencing a 2003 settlement that saw King pay $25,000 for Chapman to sign a confidentiality agreement — a deal Chapman broke last week when he went to the media. "What they did to me was absolutely wrong."

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca