Patience of Job: Abbotsford judge calmly navigates several personality disorders of a music teacher convicted of criminal harassment of girls

Bevin van Liempt’s court theatrics continue to illustrate a lack of remorse for his actions along with zero insight into harm caused

To say Fraser Valley music instructor Bevin van Liempt’s behaviour in court since pleading guilty to criminal harassment more than seven months ago has been histrionic is like saying Mozart was an “OK” songwriter.

After repeatedly stalking two different 17-year-old female music students who he knew did not want his romantic advances, and after going to trial in the case then suddenly pleading guilty, van Liempt then tried in vain to withdraw his guilty pleas, he fired his lawyer, and in his last two court appearances came full circle, trying to re-litigate the case at his sentencing hearing, obsessed with the contents of one of his victim’s social media direct messages.

“[Miss A] is my friend,” he said in court on Wednesday (Oct. 1, 2025) during a lengthy exchange with Abbotsford provincial court Judge Paul Sandhu. This is now 10 months after the crimes, more than seven months after pleading guilty, on what was supposed to be the first day of a sentencing hearing. 

“She has no reason to fear me.”

For nearly an hour, of Judge Sandhu explained to van Liempt that the cases are closed. He pleaded guilty. He can’t re-litigate. It’s time for sentencing. 

“What about according to Miss X?” Judge Sandhu asked in response to van Liempt’s claim that the traumatized victim shouldn’t be afraid of him.

It was a question that intentionally or otherwise pointed to the fact that throughout the proceedings, from being fired from his teaching job for inappropriate romantic advances towards a girl half his age, to the charge approval, to court, to his refusal to adhere to bail violations, van Liempt repeatedly expressed what has to be said to be a narcissistic and misogynistic view that he knows what these girls want, even when the girls themselves have essentially told him to “fuck off.” 

One literally did more than that in an email included as part of evidence.

Attempting to defend himself to this reporter earlier this year, van Liempt forwarded almost all the email threads in an effort to show how his actions shouldn’t constitute criminal harassment. In an email that he sent to me from Dec. 28, 2024, his 17-year-old victim’s message to this 34-year-old music instructor couldn’t have been more unambiguous.

“Bevin, I am not interested in you,” she wrote.
“You have created a drunken, insane delusion in your mind.
“I find you a repulsive, pathetic freak. I have no desire to be with you or ever see you again. Your advances make me feel dirty. 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. 
“Do not contact me. Do not reply to this message. 
“Know that you have ruined a happy experience for me, and made this a miserable Christmas. 
“If you make further advances, I will consider it harassment and personally contact the police. 
“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, ”

No means no? Despite being told not to respond for the umpteenth time, van Liempt did respond one minute later.

“Well that's not unclear. Good job.”

And on and on it went.

Psychologically fascinating

To a neutral observer not emotionally tied to van Liempt or his victims, nor part of the legal process mired down with time-sucking behaviour wasting countless hours of valuable court time, it has been a fascinating if frustrating, melodramatic, rollicking performative display of sociopathy to a rare degree. 

In a psychological evaluation as part of a pre-sentence report, an interviewer described van Liempt as someone with “cluster B traits,” pointing out also that he has no remorse for his actions and zero insight into the harm he caused, all of which was on display in courtroom 306 at the Abbotsford Courthouse Oct. 1.

Cluster B is psychiatric shorthand for four personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Sociopathy is the non-clinical term usually reserved to describe a third of those four, antisocial personality disorder. While those three conditions are relatively well-known, the fourth less so: histrionic personality disorder (HPD). 

HPD is described as “a chronic, enduring psychiatric condition characterized by a consistent pattern of pervasive attention-seeking behaviours and exaggerated emotional displays. Individuals with HPD are often described as narcissistic, self-indulgent, flirtatious, dramatic, and extroverted.”

Reading those definitions, what court attendees have witnessed over the last several months seems like a case study.

Judge’s patience tested

To get to be appointed a judge in B.C. provincial court, a lawyer has to have had a long and professionally admirable career working inside courtrooms subject to all manner of behaviour. They’ve seen a heck of a lot and need to have intelligence, memory, knowledge of the law, and extensive patience. 

It’s with that preface that one has to say that Judge Paul Sandhu has shown the proverbial patience of Job in dealing with this case.

On Wednesday, he made every effort not to waste court time while showing van Liempt every consideration as a self-represented accused after he fired his lawyer at the last court date.

When Crown counsel Jim Barbour gave a brief description of the crimes as part of the standard sentencing submissions, van Liempt then declared Barbour was “categorically” wrong. A non-lawyer living at the Surrey Pretrial Centre all summer because of his latest in a long line of breaches, van Liempt then proceeded to explain section 264(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada to the court.

“Mr. Barbour is categorically, utterly incorrect,” van Liempt retorted with confidence after Barbour’s brief wrap-up of the elements of the crimes. 

“I have reviewed the case law for criminal harassment. Mr. Barbour has put the standard for criminal harassment under the floor. The case law is absolutely clear that you require a reasonable fear for safety.”

That’s when Judge Sandhu, calm as always, interrupted. He explained that he could not re-litigate the case nor would the judge review the law.

“It strikes me that you are the one that, for whatever reason, perhaps disagrees what the law of criminal harassment is in this country,” Sandhu said. “And that’s fine. You are entitled to do that. What you are not entitled to is then commit the offence and expect the court to look the other way.” 

Van Liempt’s continual proclamation of his innocence of crimes he has already pleaded guilty to could be digging a hole for himself, indirectly showing aggravating sentencing factors to the judge.

When people who commit criminal behaviour are being sentenced, it’s best to express contrition rather than recalcitrance.

Sentencing process

During a sentencing hearing, Crown counsel goes over the circumstances of the case illustrating the elements of the crime, whether it was proved by the prosecutor during trial or whether there was a guilty plea. Then, Crown lays out what they think the sentence should be, presenting aggravating and mitigating factors, and providing case law to back up the submission.

Then it’s defence’s turn to submit a sentence, aggravating and mitigating factors, and their own case law.

When they finally got around to it, Barbour said that while a period of incarceration is warranted, he wasn’t asking the court to order more time because van Liempt has already served 175 days in pre-trial custody. At 1.5-to-one, that amounts to credit for at least 262 days in custody. Barbour asked for credit for time served followed by two years probation.

What’s also remarkable in this case is that if van Liempt hadn’t violated conditions of his bail release in between pleading guilty and sentencing, and if he hadn’t applied to withdraw his pleas, this would have all been over months ago and he wouldn’t have spent from July to October behind bars.

The 60-plus minutes of exchange between Judge Sandhu and van Liempt in the morning on Wednesday didn’t scratch the surface of a normal sentencing hearing as van Liempt told the court he was making an application for a leave to cross-examine the victims or their victim-impact statements, a ridiculous proposition that no court would possibly allow for after guilty pleas have been entered.

“You don’t have the right to do that,” Judge Sandhu said when van Liempt first brought this up a month ago after his bail was denied again. 

Van Liempt also said he was making three Charter applications over violation of his rights, one regarding disclosure of evidence and two regarding his arrests.

Van Liempt’s argument for why any of this should be allowed at this late date in the proceedings is because his lawyer, Martin Finch, gave him instructions to “trust” him with his defence, declined to let him testify even though he wanted to, and that “his ideas did not always align with mine.”

Judge Sandhu declined to get into Finch’s capabilities as a defence lawyer, pointing out that Finch is King’s Counsel and highly experienced. The judge then politely explained that at this sentencing hearing, he could bring up aggravating and mitigating factors for sentencing, but that pleading guilty is an admission of the essential elements of the case and a sentencing hearing is no place to discuss a defence to the charges.

That ship has sailed.

Van Liempt seemed to claim that hundreds or thousands of pages of disclosure had not been provided to him in which he believes might be a nugget of evidence showing that one of his victims might have expressed some conflict about reporting him to police because at one time she liked him. 

This, he suggested, goes to the essential elements of the offence, a claim Judge Sandhu pointed out made no sense since the girl reported to police, Crown pressed charges, and the victim literally testified on the stand at the start of the trial in the middle of which he pleaded guilty. 

Everyone else is wrong

I spoke at length with van Liempt outside the Abbotsford Law Courts six months ago on March 13 where he expressed an intelligent, articulate, impassioned account of the two criminal cases involving two different girls.

He wanted to speak to me, to explain his side of things. I listened carefully and asked several clarifying questions. Most importantly, I said that if we assume everything he said is perfectly true, this case amounts to a conspiracy or a massive misunderstanding. 

“Why would so many people from the police to the courts be pursuing this if there's nothing to it, really? “ I asked him.

“So number one, 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.

“And also, I don't bend, right? Like when people come at me with a lot of force, I usually just take the hit.

“You’re allowed to come [out for dinner] if you want. That's what they say is harassment? I am staggered. I really am.”

I suggested maybe they came to criminal harassment because she repeatedly told him to stop and he didn’t stop.

“I knew that girl, right?” he said, referring to the second victim. “And then suddenly they want me dead? This is weird. Like what the fuck, now you're a completely different person? So similar to with Miss A, that last email from her didn't seem like her.”

He expressed a bewildering lack of self-awareness, an exuberant self-confidence such that he knows more than the prosecutor, more than the police who investigated him, more than his own highly experienced lawyer, and more even about what is in the heads of the two girls who complained to the police about his stalking and his refusal to stop contacting them. 

When Judge Sandhu on Wednesday told van Liempt that his victim gave a statement to police about the criminal harassment, van Liempt continued his narrative that emails from them he didn’t like were written by someone else, and when the victims themselves said things against him, they either didn’t mean it or they were coerced.

“[She] is in a position that the Supreme Court has recognized in R v. Grant,” van Liempt began, “that most Canadians when placed in those conditions will just aqcuiesce,” a suggestion that while being interviewed by police, feeling pressured to make a complaint, his victim told investigators something that wasn’t true.

“We can’t get at what was in Miss X’s mind and I’m certainly not going to hear from you on that,” Judge Sandhu said.

Is he in his right mind?

In denying him bail after his application to withdraw his guilty pleas failed, Judge Sandhu made it clear from a psychological report that van Liempt was a “high risk for stalking” and a “danger to public safety.”

He already violated bail conditions repeatedly, all while he was released to live with his mother Paula DeWit, who is well-known in the classical music community as a symphony conductor, and who has been an apologist for van Liempt all along. She has also blamed the victims, said she saw one flirting with her son, and refuses “to recognize his concerning behaviour,” according to prosecutors and Judge Sandhu.

As far back as January, DeWit even attempted to intimidate me in the courtroom, demanding that information legally and honestly reported from the hearing be taken offline. A month after that, in response to an email I sent asking her half a dozen questions about the case, I received a legal letter threatening a lawsuit if I tried to ask her questions again. 

“As a journalist, you will be acquainted with the law of defamation,” the letter stated.

“Further contact with her will be considered harassment.”

The letter suggested that posting of references to DeWit would prompt legal action, an odd statement to make from a lawyer who should know about the open court principle, and the freedom of the press in Canada guaranteed under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which establishes everyone's fundamental right to freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press and other media.

DeWit’s lawyer who sent the legal letter on Feb. 11, 2025? None other than Martin Finch from Baker Newby. Van Liempt’s criminal lawyer is also sending out civil litigation threat letters on behalf of van Liempt's mother.

I asked Vancouver criminal lawyer Kyla Lee to comment generally on the subject of what a court can do if an accused is making patently bad decisions in his own best interests but is not mentally ill.

“As long as an accused person is competent to stand trial, meaning they understand the proceedings and the potential consequences, there’s not much a court can do,” Lee explained, adding that a judge might be able to order a fitness assessment if there’s a clear mental health issue.

“But that would only prevent him from standing trial if he wasn’t mentally fit to participate in the process. Participating badly wouldn’t meet that standard.”

Van Liempt’s turn for sentencing submissions is scheduled for a full day on Oct. 20.

Never in the course of covering criminal court have I heard from so many people curious about, and happy to see, an offender’s behaviour being publicly written about and shared. So many people in the classic music community in the Fraser Valley and beyond have worked, sang, played with van Liempt and/or his mother and told me how long they have endured behaviour ranging from mere arrogance to pathological.

At last count I’ve had 24 people independently contact me about either this case or about these two individuals, all thanking me for bringing it to light, many with anecdotes, some concerning, some shocking.

A handful of those comments, anonymized:
• “Thanks again for covering this. There are a lot of people who have been waiting for this for a long time.”
• “Paul, thank you so much for your reporting on Bevin van Liempt. It has been because of this that I have been able to warn others.”
• “Thank you for reporting on this issue with Bevin and especially Paula so thoroughly.”
• “I can’t even begin to tell you the stress and chaos that man and his mother have created in my life. But all this to say that I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that this has come to light and that he is being held to account for his actions and words.“
• “It’s nice to see their hideous actions have repercussions.”

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Paul J. Henderson
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