Tryst with a plagiarist

I felt obliged to create this article detailing a recent confrontation with plagiarism and actions I felt compelled to take to protect my writing and myself.

During the 2006-2010 period I was fairly active on a couple of poetry sites - the starlightcafe and poemhunter. Since then, I've posted very little poetry and my interests have pushed me in other directions. 

Just over a week ago, I received an email from poemhunter stating a user had sent me a message. I tend to ignore these, as they are usually spam, but something piqued my interest so I logged in to read it.

The message was from a user who kindly informed me that someone had started to post my poetry to hellopoetry and writerscafe, claiming the work as their own. I immediately followed the links and was met with a mixture of shock, anxiety and anger . Someone called Chris G. Vaillancourt had indeed stolen two pieces of my work. Someone had commented on one of the poems that it was stolen with a link to my original. I have no idea how they discovered this, but I presume they had suspicions about him, and so were checking any new work he posted. I am eternally grateful for the people who took their time to do this and track me down.

What made this betrayal worse, was that he had received extremely positive, glowing, excellent feedback on my poems. It's hard to describe how such theft hits you, I was surprised by the depth of my feelings. Here was a published poet with seemingly established circles of friends and reviewers, and I was someone who hadn't posted much since 2010 and my work was fairly obscure. 

I could barely focus at work that day, and spent a large part of my time trying to find ways of informing the admins of the sites in question about the plagiarised poems. I freelance, so my actions only effected my own pocket. 

I first created accounts on hellopoetry and writerscafe and immediately left comments on the poems in question, asking Chris to take down my poems and informing him that I'd reported him.

An admin at hellopoetry replied almost instantly and took the poems in question down. I'm unsure if Chris himself deleted the poems, or it they were removed by an admin at writerscafe, but I never received a response. Chris pretty much instantly deleted my comments and blocked me from viewing his writing. I was then messaged by a user (I think they might have been a moderator) who accused me of causing trouble.

Proof of the two poems he stole from me can be seen here:

Chris posted this in August

and here is my original from 2009:

http://www.thestarlitecafe.com/poems/105/poem_91104317.html

The second poem of mine he plagiarized was called 'Death is cold', which he renamed to 'Death Is Just Cold' and posted in July:

My original, which I posted in 2009 can be seen here:

http://www.thestarlitecafe.com/poems/105/poem_91119292.html

What made this one worse is that I wrote this poem after the death of a beloved family pet, and here I find someone stealing it and claiming ownership of it.

I was stumped as what to do now, from viewing Chris's profile whilst logged out, he seemed popular and had an extensive network of friends. Also, being contacted by one user already accusing me of trouble making, I was worried about getting banned from writerscafe before spreading knowledge of his deeds.

I'm fairly web savvy, so I decided to start a blog listing examples of Chris's plagiarism with irrefutable proof, in the hope that if people wouldn't believe my word, they could at least look at the evidence for themselves.

I started to look through Chris's earlier work, utilising a number of search engines to see if it had ever appeared elsewhere. What I discovered was pretty shocking. In the first 5 pages of his poetry collection, I found over 10 other plagiarised poems. I got a friend to post evidence of plagiarisation on two of these poems, but he instantly deleted the comments, then shortly deleted the poems, before blocking my friends account.

He seemed to discover my blog and started to delete all the poems I flagged up, I guess the weight of deleted poems became too much, as today he has closed his account. I presume this is an attempt to stop my looking into other poems in his collection, of which I'd barely scratched the surface.

The poems he plagiarized seemed to exist on obscure sites, and their authors had been inactive for many years - so I presume which is why he felt confident in getting away with his actions.

I'll next list other poems which I found had been copied:

Cold wall of real

Chris posted this poem in 2014, claiming he’d first published it in 2005:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1386388/

But the exact same poem can be found here, published a year earlier:

http://sinatrainred.blogspot.de/2004/08/cold-wall-of-real.html

Parasite

Chris posted this poem in 2014, claiming he published it in a book in 2010:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1389888/

cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZGytV2-Da3EJ:www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1389888/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Here is the original poem, posted by JadedxEvil in 2008

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4214425-Parasite-by-JadedxEvil

If this plagiarised work was indeed printed, this makes his actions even worse.

Coffee shop

Chris posted this poem in 2014:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1396343/

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Zl1ye77qN0gJ:www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1396343/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

but it was originally posted by Frederic Kolman in 2009 Titled “Marvelous at the Coffee Shop” here:

http://www.writingroom.com/viewwriting/frederic/Marvelous-at-the-Coffee-Shop

Thinking In Nostalgic Fashion

Chris posted this poem in 2014:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1373144/

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uoizTQmM6hgJ:www.writerscafe.org/writing/sanctus/1373144/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

A lot of the prose was taken from this poem posted in 2007:

http://forums.plentyoffish.com/3898337datingPostpage25.aspx by LyricalMuse (near the bottom of the page)

Many more examples can be found here:

http://timdanes.tumblr.com/

I'm hoping the weight of evidence presented will allow other people to see exactly what Chris did, and will hopefully save other poets from the same fate.

Reviews

[Tate Morgan]

I can tell you this is a sad tale. However it is also a cautionary one as we all know what it is to work so hard and get so little other than our fellows praise. But to take that from someone and claim it as your own is not in line with decent conduct. It is rude at best and theft at worst'.I cannot approve of this behavior but I can chose my friends and for who and what I will bleed.I am sorry this happened to you. We are all failed characters as are all men and women but we are supposed to be friends here.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you for the kind words Tate. I have discovered a great community here, but I guess every site has a few bad apples. Hopefully people will wake up to their actions.

[Tate Morgan]

You are welcome you will find many here to be sympathetic to you. I am a firm believer that the world is full of good souls you just dont hear from them often as they go about their lives. But there are more good ones than the bad You just hear from the bad ones more often

[Arrinae]

Mr. Morgan, thank you for the R&R

[LL]

I agree with you Tate.

[Tate Morgan]

thank you levi

[R Smith]

I thank you for your work on this matter, its a terrible thing to think something we wrote may be doing the rounds God knows where under his name, this is a crime, there is a law against it and probably it will just slip away and be forgotten eventually but right now it needs to be brought out into the open and whoever runs these sites have to deal with it, it is terrible you were accused of trouble making, anything bearing his name must be deleted from every record of poetry, the multiple IDs tracked down and removed, a tough job and one for someone who knows their way round computing better than my meager knowledge, I applaud you again for your work on this and hope we all see an end to him soon.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you Richard. Him being an established poet, legal action did cross my mind, but where to even start? I can't even be sure his name *is* Chris G V. I presume it is due the books he's authored, but it's not a given. I figure if we flag up instances of such behaviour, hopefully they will get the message and go away.

[R Smith]

I think that's all we can do, I have wondered about his name and its true we don't really know who he is, so its a case of flag it up wherever we are online ( I am on 4 poetry sites ) and hope for the best, I know on one site a poet ( Elizabeth Squires ) did a good job of outing him so we are not alone in the Cafe' that site was Hello Poetry by the way.

[Christopher Withers]

Elizabeth was one of the people who first informed me of his deeds :)

[R Smith]

just checking around and he appears to be on poemhunter, hope someone hunts him !

[Benita-Staebell M - Kin..]

oh yes we have gotten to see many
sides of him I have him block I didn't see any words
that were the same in my work I did a poem called You're a liar to yourself trying to be others words
and it was reflecting on him taking others work.

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/GiggleBuG79/1411265/


Thank you for sharing it is horrible when someone
dose this I don't even think he knows who he is from
all the different accounts and Identities he has it will catch
up to him and he will lose who he is and forget.


thank you for sharing.


Blessings. Benita

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you for being so supportive Benita, it means a lot :)

[Benita-Staebell M - KindredPoet]

you're welcome. I hope that things get better I've been praying about this situation. don't stop writing when it helps and inspires others that is the best part if it helps someone when they're down.

[MoriartyMesa]

WARNING! I am very baked out and a little bit stoned by Miss Mary Jane. That being said this review will dismiss any modern theories of a 'higher ground' or enforce a fake moral majority.

This review will not contain any sort of basis but a fair judgement that can only be brought by someone who has smoked 9 bowls in one sitting.

Second WARNING! This is gonna sound long winded like when your a kid and your granpa tells you smoking is bad for you.


Here is a bit of personal history, I used to do stand up comedy. Nothing heavy but places that you would find in between the back pages. Now I had a rare talent where I could speak in different accents, my Scottish accent was my best, and being Mexican people loved it, I had this joke about smoking cigarettes and people loved it. Week after week, the laughs were coming like fish into a net.

Than some one grab my bit, I would not have been sore if they changed it to something else. When asked to read this, I had a lot of feelings. I am not a great writer or critic. Just a dude. However, I felt something of anger. Now a lot of my more learned reviewers there is a lot of feeling of malice. But in my case, I remember the night my joke was stolen and when my arms and body want to break the thief.

Ain't my point to judge, but a confession if your an old school Catholic like me is always good.





Better than repenting.................

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you for your comments. I'm sorry to hear the same thing happened to you - I have to say, you're very articulate for a person who has smoked 9 bowls ;)

[Fran Marie]

I can't stand the fact that we were all duped by this lowdown snake ..I commemed on many of the above mentioned pieces...even the "parasite"poem....how ironic ...he should ne banned forever from poetry sites..thank Christopher for posting this...we are happy to ne informed about this joker..sorry you were one of his victims...glad to have you at wc..

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you Fran. It was awful for me, but I cannot imagine how awful it must be for others who actually looked up to him. I can't imagine all his work was plagiarized, so he definitely had talent as a poet, which makes his actions even more incomprehensible.

[BennyBooth]

What a pig! I hope he never finds happiness in anything he truly creates! The one thing I enjoy about writing is watching something come to life on paper, how can you enjoy it if you can't create it!

We all dare to be dreamers, but only the talented can breed life from their minds...

[Christopher Withers]

I agree Benny. All I can think is that once he was established, perhaps it's the praise rather than the accomplishment and feeling of satisfaction which drove him?

[Baby Ricochet]

I got into it with Vaillancourt several months ago over a poem he wrote talking s**t about the armed forces that was out and out hate speech. I wrote a short piece condemning him for it and supplied a link to his piece so other writers could tell them what they thought as well. As I suspected he got slammed and for a couple of days the heat was on his page. When the smoke cleared I took my piece down. After that we've stayed away from each other. No blocking, just stayed away, and now there's this plagiarism scandal. With all the sock puppet accounts and sneaking around he supposedly did on here I wonder where in the hell he found the time or why he would go through so much trouble just to rip off poems from the WC. There has to be better things to do in Canada than that. Take up yodeling or some s**t, I don't know. Anyway, his account's closed so we can all be cold war era paranoid as f**k of new site members because of Vallencourt. What a d****e.

[The Twin Arenas]

yodelling.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you for commenting. I can't comprehend what drives someone to become so obsessed with a site that they'll create many false accounts to bring attention to themselves. Since I accused him of copying my poems in the comments on this site, I've had a lot of new user friendship requests. I have to admit I've been pretty suspicious about accepting them - I hate carrying such suspicion.

[Mercy Fae]

He called one of my poems "angst piece seeking pity"
You're not alone in this.

When anyone would comment anything negative on his facebook page (even if it was true) he would delete it instantly and block anyone who spoke ill of him.

When someone tried defending me, he was rude and ignorant. He may seem kind, but his true colors aren't.

[Christopher Withers]

I can't understand the mentality of someone like that. Don't like a poem? Either keep quiet or at least offer positive appraisal. I'm sorry you had to deal with such rough treatment.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

as i have often said...if someone does something like this...how can he or she live with it, and call it "my art" when they know damn well it isn't.

[Christopher Withers]

This is one of the things which has been playing on my mind. Perhaps it's just the kind of person I am, but I could never feel comfortable claiming credit for something that wasn't mind.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

makes me really sad when something like this happens....really sad...it's so unfortunate.

[Penny]

That is horrifying! I thought the whole time that he was one of those poets who had been into writing for years and had perfected his art. Now I am concerned about my work, also because many of my friends have warned me for plagiarism. I think admins should be more careful and helpful about it. Dont let him go, my best wishes are with you Christopher and thanks for sharing this information with me Tate.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you Penny :)
I found searching on fragments of your work should bring up any plagiarised pieces. It's something I intend to do periodically from now on.
His accomplished demeanour is what made me start searching for evidence. Accusations aren't enough with such people.

[Penny]

You are doing a good job sir.