Judge refuses Fraser Valley music instructor's request to withdraw guilty pleas for criminal harassment

Bevin van Liempt's application was meant to 'frustrate the criminal justice process,' further 'torment the victims,' according to prosecutor

Bevin van Liempt spent six weeks in custody at the Surrey Pretrial centre this summer after a judge revoked his bail on July 24 for allegedly breaching release conditions, not for the first time.

With the musician and music instructor's sentencing hearing set for Sept. 4, 2025, the end was in sight for his two victims, their families, and the dozens of people in the Fraser Valley classical music community closely watching the ongoing criminal harassment proceedings.

Van Liempt’s relentless romantic pursuit of two 17-year-old female music students led to two convictions of criminal harassment followed by two allegations of breaching release conditions.

In the middle of trial in February, he suddenly pleaded guilty on the same day he had refused to come to court. He was ordered by the judge to be "extracted" from his cell in Surrey. After pleading, van Liempt was released on bail and quickly took to social media to talk about the case.

"I [pleaded] for one reason only: I finally heard, in person, from the one person I needed to, in a way that I could be certain it was her, to justify that plea in my conscience," according to a post on his Facebook page on Feb. 27.

At the last minute this summer, however, the 34-year-old changed his mind and made an application to withdraw those guilty pleas. His case was heard in front of Judge Paul Sandhu in Abbotsford provincial court on Sept. 4. Martin Finch, the lawyer now working on his behalf, said van Liempt thought there was an agreement made with Crown counsel from before he had a lawyer that if he pleaded guilty, they would recommend a conditional discharge.

Crown counsel James Barbour called this “unrealistic and concocted.” He also said van Liempt's application was meant to frustrate the criminal justice system, and to torment and cause distress to his victims.

While he had no lawyer during trial, what is known as an "amicus curiae" ("friend of the court") was assigned to assist him. Lawyer Chris Terepocki was the amicus curiae and Finch started to address this, seemingly to imply that van Liempt received bad advice from Terepocki. Finch was quickly shut down by Judge Sandhu who said Terepocki went "above and beyond as 486 counsel" (amicus curiae) and that it was "highly unusual" for an accused in a criminal matter to talk about another lawyer in this way.

Finch said simply that van Liempt was "uninformed" about the outcome from a guilty plea, i.e., that a conditional discharge was not only guaranteed but not even agreed to by the prosecutor. Sandhu asked if Finch was suggesting van Liempt was induced to plead guilty by Terepocki, the obvious inference to draw.

"How does it not lie at the feet of Terepocki?" Judge Sandhu asked.

"It doesn't," he responded. "My client has said that a discharge was offered." Finch then floundered in the logical quicksand he had created, suggesting van Liempt was under "extraordinary stress" and that the accused was a victim of his own attempts to know the law. He even suggested the public pressure put on his mother and brother from public reporting of his case might have muddled his thinking such that it influenced his decision to plead guilty.

The attempt to now paint van Liempt as confused and incapable in his own defence was ironic given van Liempt's own extreme confidence throughout the proceedings prior to Finch. Judge Sandhu pointed out that van Liempt demonstrated himself to be quite capable in court up to and including pleading guilty.

"In some cases he brought up discrete legal concerns and in some cases was successful," Sandhu said.

In allowing an accused to withdraw a guilty plea, the court uses a precedent case to conduct a two-stage analysis, the first objective the second subjective: Firstly, was the accused misinformed about a collateral consequence that would have sufficiently influenced their decision to plead guilty; and secondly, if so, would the accused have chosen to go to trial rather than plead guilty. 

“There is no objective basis to the assertion that Mr. van Liempt was misinformed,” Judge Sandhu concluded in rejecting the application to withdraw the pleas.

The case was put over to this week for another bail hearing at which time van Liempt will have to come up with an acceptable plan to be released from custody before sentencing. While out of custody in July, he allegedly contacted a third female in violation of a ban on using social media. He also shared the names of his victims with an Abbotsford News reporter, which was determined to be a violation of the ban on sharing his victims’ identities.

That led to his bail being revoked onf July 24. Both previous times he was released on bail he lived with his mother where he allegedly violated release conditions.

“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 said at the last bail hearing. “She blames the 17-year-old. She saw him in lessons and thought she was flirting with him.”

The judge also made it clear from a psychological report that van Liempt was a “high risk for stalking” and a “danger to public safety.”

How the risk for stalking, danger to public safety has been addressed is unclear. In revoking bail in July, it was said that the plan to live with his mother “will not attenuate that risk.”

The psychological report interviewer also diagnosed van Liempt with "Cluster B Traits" in a pre-sentence report, and that he had no remorse and no insight into his actions. Cluster B is a psychiatric shorthand for antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders (ASPD, BPD, HPD, and NPD).

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Paul J. Henderson
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