Keith Fraser (Vancouver Province) – A Surrey RCMP officer denies a claim by his former girlfriend that he filed a defamation lawsuit against her to pressure her to lie to police and recant her harassment allegations.
Const. Jason Hong believes he’s the victim in a messy breakup with Cathy Shin, whom he dated for several months in 2010.
Shin initially filed a complaint with RCMP claiming that Hong had harassed her — with repeated phone calls, text messages and visits to her home — after they stopped seeing each other.
An investigation was launched but Hong gave a formal statement to RCMP denying the allegations and the harassment complaint was found to be unsubstantiated, according to court documents.
The RCMP decided not to lay criminal charges against Hong.
Sin claims in her lawsuit that Hong repeatedly threatened to file a defamation suit against her if she refused to recant her harassment allegations.
A defamation action was filed but following a contentious mediation, Hong withdrew the suit.
Shin says the fact that he filed the lawsuit amounted to an abuse of process and she is seeking damages against him.
But Hong says he was merely trying to get an apology from her that he’d been wronged.
With the legal bill at $30,000 and mounting, and about to be married to another woman, Hong says he abandoned the lawsuit.
“She wanted to continue with the lawsuit but my lawyers told me it would cost tens of thousands of dollars more. I felt, ‘Forget it, I’ll just end this.’”
The Surrey cop says he was surprised to see that Shin has turned around and filed a lawsuit against him.
“We’re like, ‘Wow, this is ridiculous, what’s with her?’ It seems like she needs to save face.”
Hong was reprimanded by the RCMP for using police databases to seek information about Shin.
But Hong says that Shin was in his police cruiser at the time, that she requested to have herself checked and that he was a “stupid guy” who was trying to impress her when he did the check.
Hong said he was fully vindicated by an internal RCMP investigation and intends to vigorously defend himself against Shin’s suit.
[Source]
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