01/04/2021
The following post is from Lucan Wai the co-owner of Smiling Buddha.
In 2018, I was accused of sexual assault. The complainant made the false allegation for the purpose of extorting money. I am completely innocent. I did nothing wrong or improper and I was found not guilty. I would like to address some of the questions that people may have.
The complainant is a serial accuser. I am the fourth person, that I know of, she has accused of sexual assault. None of these cases have resulted in a guilty verdict, but she has caused a tremendous amount of harm to myself and many other people.
In her judgement, Justice L. Favret concluded it would be unsafe to rely on the evidence of the complainant as there were very significant gaps in the complainant’s evidence as well as material inconsistencies. Justice Favret considered the complainant’s conduct following the incident as troubling and found the complainant's actions undermined the reliability of her evidence. Justice Favret considered the multiple texts sent by the complainant showing that she knew the viability of the defendant’s bar would be impacted by an allegation of sexual assault. The texts exchanged by the complainant showed that she was interested in obtaining a financial gain and the complainant contacted a newspaper for that purpose.
When I refused to pay her, she contacted a reporter from The Globe and Mail and tried to sell her story to them. Following her failed extortion attempt and after The Globe and Mail declined to pay for her story, she began conducting research at the library and online. When she was asked “why haven’t you gone and done the police report?” her reply was “you know what, because first I am going to go to the library so I can fix up my evidence, and I am going to fix it first before I go to 14 Division”.
While planning the extortion attempt she created a Google Document. One of her notes was “you’ll get the s**t beat out of you, Buddha will be fu**ed, there will be press coverage, people will lose their jobs”. While on the stand she admitted to lying under oath. She admitted under oath that she was prepared to do things that were dishonest, even criminal. She admitted under oath that prior to the extortion attempt she was already stealing from me. When questioned in court about her attempts to get paid her reply was “I knew that Lucan’s family has money, and I had none”.
This has been a trying time for me and my family. The Smiling Buddha was a place I loved and worked hard to make successful. We took pride in supporting local artists. Her lies did irreparable damage; we went from being open every day and hosting 10 shows a week to hosting several shows a month. There has been tremendous financial loss and damage to my reputation.
The complainant was quick to reach out to multiple media outlets, promoters, musicians, and staff to spread the false allegation. It was disheartening to read these lies on social media. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight and thanks again to all those who supported me through this ordeal.
