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

[redflutterby]

I guess some have missed the uproar that's been going on on here for the past two weeks or so. But im glad KLGoode has reviewed this and you both are trying to get the word out on this creep. Ive had him blocked for almost a year because of an incident I had with him. At one time I witnessed a very nasty review he left on one of Keely Janes poems here and I pointed out his condescending attitude in a comment on it, he responded by using the f-word with me. And trust me he caught my wrath full force...then I blocked him. How ironic that a plagiarist would have the balls to criticize the writing of someone who actually writes their own poetry!!! Makes me sick!!

Now I have to say this and it may tick off a few people here but im not one to mince words. Ive seen writers on here say they don't really care if someone shares their work elsewhere. Well I don't get that at all. And that nonchalant attitude contributes to the problem. We have to be vigilant and proactive to protect each others work. It doesn't surprise me that you got the response you did from wc...because the administration doesn't care!! They are not enforcing the very "rules" of this site...oh they go around slapping mature banners on poems and profile pages likes there no tomorrow. Because they don't want to lose advertisers but if theres an issue regarding harassment or protection of members work on this site they don't give a crap. Pathetic really....and they call this a writers site. The worst thing you can do to a writer is steal their words...

[Christopher Withers]

In my search through his other poems I came across comments from him which painted him in a particularly negative light - if you can get more negative than plagiarizing that is! It was the sheer number of copied poems that I discovered which made me determined to at least bring this to others attention. Thank you for taking the time to comment.

[wordman]

well I have commented on a few he sent me and I noticed in the last few days I haven't seen him
I posted on starlite for a few years and several other people on here we all left it went to the dogs
hate it about your poetry hate it that people would actually do such a thing

[Christopher Withers]

Thank you wordman, it's been a tough couple of days, but I've received a lot of support from people on this site once they discovered what had happened.

[wordman]

I have heard of this stuff but never seen it tate morgan sent the rr

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you for posting this. It is important that people not dismiss this as nothing. IT IS A BIG SOMETHING. The offender closed his account, but all over the web and in this very cafe', he likely lurks under other identities, trying to figure out how he can return. We must be vigilant, and for goodness sakes, if he crops up on another site, get him ousted from there too. Many people take a blase' attitude against this man. I can say that long before I realized he was a plagiarist, I realized he was lying and hurting people in the process. He deceived us with multiple ids and false platitudes in pursuit of his own idea of greatness, and didn't care who he stepped on to get there. He also has made us skeptical and untrusting of new writers, and we were all new once, hell, I haven't even been here a year. He stole a lot more than poems from all of us.

[Christopher Withers]

I just can't fathom why someone would spend so much time garnering attention, utilising multiple accounts to do so. I just wantto write poetry, share it and read the poems of others.

[Lyn Anderson]

Yes, well, difficult to fathom indeed, so much so that most people thought it wasn't happening. It was so preposterous many thought it couldn't be true.