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

[Rita L. Sev]

I have just recently been made aware of this, and I can tell you that it makes me sick. Personally, I would rather have someone steal my watch than my poetry, which is a piece of the soul... Please know that thee are wonderful poets here, who are grateful to you for exposing this travesty.

[Created Unfinished]

That's really sad that they would do that.

[Woody]

I am shocked like everybody else and believe me, I am literally gagging at the praise I made about "his" poems. I hope the word spreads and he won't find anywhere to post his booty.
thanks for uncovering this fraud.

[Joyce S. Greene]

You are a real poet who can sleep at night, Christopher, so you are way ahead of Chris V. is anyone's book. A moderator at a site I once belonged to told me that every line written had been written before, huh? Does that apply to each line of an entire poem? People's thinking is often skewed and if people like Chris V. are not evicted from poetry sites, they will go on posing a long lasting danger to all the real poets on those sites. I don't understand the logic of those worrying about the evictors being the bullies. When a criminal is put in prison for stealing, is society a bully? I believe that society is acting as a protector of the safety of its honest citizens. You have provided real poets with a true service and I salute you for all the work you put into your posting. Best of luck and I hope your interest in writing poetry is revived again soon. Joyce

[Leslie Philibert]

I would be very shocked if this is all true. I have read Chris`s work for many years, and enjoyed it. I personally don`t worry about copyright. It`s only important ( for me) for work published in magazines ( on paper) and by serious literary institutions like the Poetry Foundation or universities.I have been lucky enough to have work placed in two magazines in the US and UK, but not being a poet of quality I accept that most of my work lands up on the free for all internet. To avoid this, just submit work to selective sources.

[ron]

I'm very glad you posted this. I don't know if he plagerized any of my writings but I had words with him about statements he made about how all military persons were all murderers and rapists and how U.S. Soldiers were the worst. I went point by point over his claims but he refused to back up his words with anything, all he would do was repeat what he said. I have heard more than a few writers on here say the same thing you are saying about Chris. I believe you 1000%.
Keep up the great work you are doing in exposing this dirty thief.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you Ron. A lot of people have come forward to share their run in's with him, so it definitely shows you are not alone. Some people seem bent on making trouble, and can't be argued with.

[ron]

You are most welcome Christopher. I just don't understand why people like him do what they do.

[Rene Salinas]

I was one of the ones trying to put perpective into this. I still am , I think. To me there has been a breach and Admin should bann. Secondly there should be a clear demonstration of disgust and probably that has happened too. Here is were I can bring a different element. I observed some of the unfoldings and the time some people took to talk to Chris. Anyone that has read some of his writings under all his id's known to date will not help to wonder that state of his sanity. I am refering to self mutilation, sodomy, a tinge of rascism and the nessecity to lead some into his female side when he obviously isn't. I am not here to judge anyone but that is to me a clear sign of somone who doesn't accept who he is. Hence the whole " let's have it out an open in front of anyone" I do not belive it to be constructive.

Thankyou

[Christopher Withers]

Hi Rene,

thank you for commenting, and I do agree with your thoughts. This wasn't a comfortable thing for me to do, and I don't feel good about bringing these things to such public attention. I was, and am, concerned for his mental well being. For the sake of not upsetting one, should his actions go unaddressed?

From my perspective, I had hit a brick wall. I've tried contact admins many times, I tried contacting Chris, I tried commenting on the poems in question. I flagged him and his writing using the correct tools. Each time I was ignored, and in Chris's case, blocked and my comments deleted.
You yourself took the time to message me, but as I was new, and Chris established, suspicion was cast on my actions.

In this situation I could either let him take ownership of my words forever more, or at least present the evidence in the hope something would be done.

I do not wan't this to turn into some bullying campaign, and would happily unpublish this piece if safeguards could be put in place to stop this happening again.

For me, this shows a deficiency in the communication channels to report such serious misbehaviour, and have such reports investigated and taken seriously.

[hardeep sabharwal]

Thanks for writing on this subject,
it is time to open eyes

[Alfred Kukitz]

Thanks for shedding light on this issue Christopher. I hope this gets him off the site.

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment Alfred :).

[Tree]

To think that you, a well intentioned writer, trusting and willing to share your work with others was victimized this way? gnaws at me. There is a great writing community here with some good writers who have the talent to publish elsewhere, yet they choose to do so here. And this tightness and willingness to come together over something like this, well, it gives me a peace.
Let us keep supporting, and looking out for each other.

Diego