'I'm not going to stop': Trauma from Fraser Valley music teacher's criminal harassment of teen girls persists with frivolous Charter claims, lawsuits
Eleven months after Bevin van Liempt's criminal convictions he refuses to admit guilt, continues to torment victims and others
Former Chilliwack Symphony Orchestra board president Bevin van Liempt’s criminal harassment of teenage girls has been so persistent and relentless that he has wasted hundred of hours of court time and continues to make his victims suffer in new ways.
Van Liempt was back in court on Wednesday (Jan. 28, 2026) to address his half-dozen frivolous Charter applications meant to prolong his legal entanglements to the detriment of his young victims.
Crown counsel Jim Barbour discussed the “ongoing torment” from van Liempt because of his “vexatious litigations with respect to all these matters” in court Wednesday morning.
“The ongoing harassment is something that has affected their life. It’s Mr. van Liempt saying ‘I’m going to make you pay in another way for what you’ve done to me.’”
Van Liempt, then age 33, was on trial in fall 2024 for his criminal harassment of a music student following thousands of email exchanges with the teenage girl. She reported him to police and Crown approved the charge.
Mid-trial during the break over Christmas in early 2025, he started harassing another girl with romantic requests to go on a date. His exchanges with her could or should have ended with the teenage girl’s final unequivocal email calling him a “repulsive, pathetic freak.”
The victim, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, ordered van Liempt to stop contacting her, to not reply to her final message, pointing out that he ruined her Christmas and her experience with music education.
Men in their 30s in positions of authority obviously should not be romantically pursuing teenage girls, but it’s hard to fathom any man continuing in the delusion that a disinterested girl still might go on a date after the following message she sent him.
“Your advances make me feel dirty,” she wrote, in part. “Unclean. I want to use a pair of salad tongs to peel my skin off from the eyelids down. I have no kind feelings towards you.
“I hope you feel every bit the disgusting pervert you are. I hope the truth about you gets out and mothers know to keep their daughters far away from scum like you. You aren't worth the shit on the bottom of my work boots.
“Go to hell where you belong.”
She also threatened to contact police if he continued to harass her and, surprise, he did. Several more emails followed and he was charged with a second count of criminal harassment in January 2025.
Mid-trial on the first case, van Liempt pleaded guilty to both counts, which should have ended the cases with some self-reflection, an admission of guilt, an apology, and likely a sentence of time served with probation.
Self-represented and seeming to relish legal research, the courtroom, and attempting to speak like a lawyer, van Liempt was far from done.
“The complainants are essentially tormented and their life is turned upside down by the actions of Mr. van Liempt,” Barbour said in court on Wednesday. “As you see in the victim impact statements…. The ongoing nature of the harassment has affected their [lives].”
Here’s a brief timeline of how 2025 went regarding van Liempt’s releases from custody and his alleged breaches of release conditions.
Jan. 6 - Arrested for repeatedly sending messages to a second girl, the Chilliwack victim, despite orders to stop, charged again.
Feb. 26 - Released on bail to live with his mother Paula DeWit.
March 1 - Re-arrested for posting a 40-minute selfie video discussing elements of the case protected by publication ban.
March 13 - Released on bail to live with his mother Paula DeWit.
June 5 - Re-arrested for contacting a third female via social media and for sharing names of the first two with a reporter, both violations of his release conditions.
Oct. 20 - Released on bail to live with his mother Paula DeWit.
Oct. 31 - Re-arrested for contacting the Chilliwack victim via social media on Oct. 29 in violation of release conditions.
Dec. 17 - Released on bail to live with his mother Paula DeWit.
And on they go, fighting against a criminal case that was resolved nearly a year ago, now filing lawsuits against the victims’ mothers among others.
Vengeance writ large
"I told the police in no uncertain terms that they should go eat shit," Bevin van Liempt told me on March 12, 2025 outside the Abbotsford Law Courts where he had already pleaded guilty to the criminal harassment of the two girls.
Asked why so many people from the families to the school to police and the Crown would engage in a conspiracy to bring him down, he compared himself to Leonardo DiCaprio who is known for having girlfriends much younger than he is.
“There is a huge stigma with big age gaps,” he said. “Right now they are, you know, not popular. There is an element of prejudice. That's a real thing, right? Like if you look at Leonardo DiCaprio, he's got his young girlfriends, lots of people have opinions, that's totally inappropriate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a worry that people have in society.”
Van Liempt's objectively inappropriate, unethical and relentless romantic pursuit of teenage music students was well-known in the classical music community in the Fraser Valley for some time before he escalated it to criminal. Despite that and his guilty pleas, he maintains his actions were perfectly normal and reasonable.
Van Liempt blames everyone but himself, including even experienced criminal lawyer Martin Finch who briefly represented him as well as another lawyer appointed by the court to assist him because he is self-represented.
Convicted of two counts of criminal harassment 11 months ago, van Liempt and his mother Paula DeWit are using what must be seemingly unlimited resources to come up with every legal tactic they and their lawyers can imagine to further torment their victims.
“Mr. Van Liempt’s mother didn’t see it as a problem that her 33-year-old wanted to ask a 17-year-old out,” Crown counsel Dorothy Tsui pointed out at a bail hearing in June 2025. “She blames the 17-year-old. She saw him in lessons and thought she was flirting with him.”
An email to that effect was submitted to the court BY VAN LIEMPT himself, from DeWit to a victim’s mother, an email she also sent to van Liempt and retired Chilliwack Crown counsel Henry Waldock who is van Liempt’s godfather and has been advising him.
“I have witnessed ‘W’ flirting with Bevin,” DeWit wrote. “I have not seen anything inappropriate. My eyes have been wide open.”
DeWit decided that the romantic pursuit by a 33-year-old music teacher, who was in a position of authority over a vulnerable teenage girl, is appropriate.
To step up the torment to victims van Liempt went nuclear and filed lawsuits against the mothers of his victims, the music school who fired him for his illegal behaviour, two neutral party court watchers, and to this reporter.
Those lawsuits have not been resolved or heard by the court, but both are clear examples of what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). British Columbia enacted anti-SLAPP legislation in 2019, the Protection of Public Participation Act (PPPA) precisely to stop lawsuits meant to harass victims and stifle legal public reporting on open court proceedings.
Applications have been filed to dismiss van Liempt’s frivolous, vexatious, malicious lawsuit against myself, two court watchers, and a victim’s mother, but following his long-term script to spend as much time in court as possible, to torment as many people as possible, van Liempt applied to have the first hearing adjourned so he could cross-examine the affidavit of one of the defendants.
Meanwhile, van Liempt has still not been sentenced and his two civil lawsuits have future dates in court.
As of this writing, Judge Paul Sandhu deemed the first of six of his Charter applications “manifestly frivolous” and did not hear the details, and the court was starting to address five more of his applications one by one.
When sentencing finally is done, van Liempt will certainly appeal the conviction and/or sentence when handed down. He has already admitted he will appeal a future court decision to dismiss his civil suits, so all these matters will continue for several more months.
Previous stories on the case
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Paul J. Henderson
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