VANCOUVER — The lawyer for author and former University of British Columbia professor Steven Galloway says his life and career were “destroyed” by sexual assault allegations, while his defamation lawsuit has been delayed for years as he tried to clear his name.

Daniel Burnett told a B.C. Supreme Court judge that Galloway’s case is mostly about how to calculate damages against the defendants, who spread unproven allegations of rape and sexual assault against Galloway.

Burnett says Galloway was once “a star in the literary world” with a bright future that was “cut very short” when the allegations were made public by a former student, and spread around by others in the academic and literary world.

Burnett says Galloway’s reputation was “tarnished to a degree that is incomparable.”

The sexual assault accusations were made against Galloway in late 2015, and since then, his accusers have fought the defamation case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, claiming their accusations were protected speech.

The high court refused to hear the case, after a lower court said that if the defendants’ arguments held, “there would be no legal consequences of any kind” to publicly calling someone a rapist.

Galloway was a tenured professor and the chair of the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia when rumours swirled and spread, and while he was never charged, he was fired from the university.

A report that was later produced for the university by former judge Mary Ellen Boyd concluded the accusations against Galloway were unsubstantiated.

In the months after the information came out, dozens of high-profile representatives in Canada’s literary community, including Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel, signed a letter that raised concerns about the university’s process to investigate Galloway’s actions, calling them secretive and unfair.

The defamation trial was originally scheduled for 60 days, but B.C. Supreme Court Justice Neena Sharma says it will likely take 20 days.

Nine of the people who accused Galloway or repeated accusations against him online have apologized, all of which have been posted on the website gallowayapologies.com.

Chelsea Rooney, one of the defendants in the case, issued a lengthy apology to Galloway over the weekend, saying she was genuinely sorry for the part she played in causing harm to him.

Rooney said in her statement that because she didn’t know if the allegations were true, she should not have communicated them, and she has come to better understand his position and commitment to clear his reputation.

“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,” her statement said, much of which was published in the National Post newspaper on Saturday.

Glynnis Kirchmeier, a defendant in the case who is representing herself, told the judge that the court will hear evidence about “how UBC utterly failed to have any reporting mechanisms available” for the proper reporting of sexual assault and that A.B. did “as best she could in a context where it was impossible to do so in the right way.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 5, 2026.