A controversial former school administrator from British Columbia’s Fraser Valley who described a political rival as a “striptease artist” during an election campaign has been ordered to pay him $45,000 for defamation.
Barry Neufeld’s comment about Dr. Carin Bondar was an “effort to discredit her” that “crossed the line,” according to British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Michael Stephens.
“These defamatory words were objectively insulting and degrading to Dr. Bondar, who was an elected member of the school board and an adjunct instructor at the university,” Stephens wrote in his April 11 decisionwhich was posted online on Friday.
Neufeld made the comment during an online interview in September 2022, while he and Bondar were running for reelection to the Chilliwack School Board, referencing a science-themed music video he had made parodying the Miley Cyrus song “Wrecking.” “Ball.” which featured a brief shot of Bondar naked, from behind, wearing only a pair of boots.
Bondar regained his seat the following month, while Neufeld was removed from office.
The defense
Part of Neufeld’s defense was that his comment was substantially true.
Their response to Bondar’s lawsuit includes a definition of “strip-tease performer” from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which reads: “An act or dance in which a person gradually removes his or her clothing piece by piece in a seductive or provocative, especially for accompanying music.”
But Stephens disagreed that the term was an accurate characterization of the brief segment of Bondar’s video in which she appeared nude, particularly because Neufeld had not provided any additional context about the parody during her online interview.
“In fact, they took off his clothes,” the judge wrote. “(But) she was clothed for most of the time; the spoken word theme was science-themed; and she did not take her clothes off. In short, she was not, nor acted like, a striptease. Artist.”
Stephens noted that Neufeld’s line of argument – known as the justification defense – can be successful even if a statement contains “minor inaccuracies,” but not if the overall impression is misleading and potentially damaging to someone’s reputation, which he found to be the case with the former administrator’s comment about Bondar.
Stephens also rejected an argument by Neufeld that his comment was protected opinion under the legal principle of “fair comment,” which can apply to “honest opinions based on proven facts,” but only if listeners understand the factual basis.
While Bondar’s parody video, titled “Organisms Evolve,” had been referenced in newspaper articles (and in a poster attacking her during a previous by-election), Stephens found that Neufeld had failed to demonstrate “on balance of probabilities that the factual basis for his comment…was so noticeable that the audience already understood it easily or easily understood it.”
defamation
To prove Neufeld’s comment was defamatory, Stephens said Bondar had to show that it “would tend to diminish (his) reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person.”
In her lawsuit, Bondar said she personally sees “nothing wrong with the art of striptease” – and told the court that decreasing the stigma around healthy sexuality has been a major focus of her career as a science educator – but argued that there remains a “widespread social opinion that the art of striptease is dishonorable or shameful, and particularly that it is inappropriate for a candidate for public office and a school administrator.”
Stephens agreed that the comment had a defamatory meaning, based on “popular innuendo” or the way the average person would likely interpret the words, and that it “really threatened” Bondar’s reputation.
He awarded Bondar $35,000 in general damages for “anxiety, discomfort and reputational damage” caused by the comment, plus $10,000 in punitive damages as an additional deterrent against Neufeld’s behavior.
But the court refused to award aggravated damages, which would have required proving that Neufeld was motivated by “actual malice” during his 2022 interview.
Neufeld testified that he honestly believed his comment about Bondar was truthful at the time, and Stephens accepted that it was, even if it reflected what the judge described as “reckless indifference to the truth.”
“A subjective and honest belief negates the possibility of finding actual malice on the part of Mr. Neufeld,” Stephens wrote.
It is unclear whether Neufeld will appeal the decision. The former trustee did not respond to a request for comment from CTV News.