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

[LL]

Chris: We are sorry to hear that you have experienced this. A true writer will never approve of such conduct. If I can't write something that is original I would just as soon to keep silent. We are grateful for your time spent to investigate the issue and for letting us know. You are not viewed as a trouble-maker by the writers who are true writers here on the cafe. Thanks for becoming a part of us on here and we look forward to your fellowship with us---Levi

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

Thank you for sharing. It was a very brave move on your part. I do not think you are being a troubleaker. Standing up for yourself and refusing to keep silent with oppressed or mistreated in some way is not being a troublemaker. It is asserting yourself. Don't let the haters keep you from doing your thing, or whatever it was that kid in Mean Girls said.

[Bright Ocean Star]

Christopher, as writers who also post our work online, we understand your fury and sense of betrayal. It is reprehensible that your work would be stolen from you and used in this way. You have every right to defend yourself and be embraced by the other writers on this site. We all feel a sense of betrayal that he stole someone else's work and pawned it off as his own. We expect honesty and integrity from each other here. We offered him our own writings in open trust that he would offer his back for review. His actions speak to a much deeper problem in his own life and his own character. In the end, he's hurt himself far more than he's hurt you. He will pay for this dishonesty the rest of his professional career. He's committed professional suicide. Thank you for posting this. We appreciate your efforts to expose him; we really do.

[Arrinae]

Just a heads up, it looks like Chris G. Vaillancourt has been spotted online. he appears o be opening and closing his account back and forth.

[Brittany Zedalis]

I'll never understand people who steal the work of others. It's sad and pathetic. I'm glad you found out he was doing that, and I'm glad you're trying to get him stopped. I've been on various poetry sites since early high school, and poetry is very important to me. I've seen people steal others work many times and it just makes me sick. I've even seen people use entire stanzas of popular songs in their poetry and claim it as their own. For me, if a writer isn't good enough to come up with original work on their own, then they aren't much of a writer. I hope this mess gets sorted out.

[TL Boehm]

Yes, we are supposed to be friends here. I have been here since 2007 although in the past few years I've had long spans of absences due to life in general. I had seen Chris here at the cafe in postings - but had not had interaction with him until recently. This spate of plagiarism was a nasty nasty surprise.
Its awful that your work has been stolen but I applaud you on your sharp eyes and response to this. Back in the day - spammers, thieves, and excrement stirrers were promptly dismissed from the cafe. Things aren't like that anymore and I don't know if it is simply the size of the site or lack of empathy from admins. Whatever the case, if Chris has shut down his account this is good. Thank you for your diligence, and I know there are those here who are simply here to read, review, encourage other writers, and write. Peace.

[Parimal Pratyush]

Thank you so much, sir. I really liked his works. But now I know that they aren't his own. He deserves to be punished.

[Mayank]

the guy has no shame, plus this is the issue I have faced from a long time. Some of my work at previous blogger web was stolen too. I couldn't help it except making people aware like you did. Thank you blowing whistle.

[Mikayla_Stagg]

This is true and makes me sad. It sucks that this happens as much as it does.

[FOih;]

As the ToA and EUA state, no work posted shall be plagiarized. Further more, copyright infringement is a crime punishable in civil suits/manners.