Bail revoked for religious music teacher charged with criminal harassment of teenage girls

Years of complaints from young women about Bevin van Liempt's predatory harassment revealed in court, behaviour condoned by his mother who is prominent Chilliwack-based symphony conductor Paula DeWit

(*Edited on Jan. 16, 2025 with new information on some church leaders who have banned Bevin from attending after the harassment came to light, although the Archdiocese has remained silent.
**Edited again on Jan. 17 with information from the cathedral.
***Edited again on Jan. 27 with one important letter changed: in the sixth paragraph I reported the word the accused said as "timelessly," but I was informed the word was "tirelessly." Important difference - PJH)

Bevin van Liempt's articulate and impassioned arguments in his own defence against accusations of repeated criminal harassment of young women wasn't enough for a judge to release him from custody at the Surrey Pretrial Centre where he has been detained since Jan. 6, 2025.

With attentive wide eyes and tousled hair, in an institutional triple-extra large orange jumpsuit, van Liempt often interrupted Crown counsel Amy Carter and even Judge Kristin Mundstock during the hearing as he defended himself from the prisoner's box in courtroom 205 at the Chilliwack Law Courts on Tuesday (Jan. 14, 2025).

On Jan. 3, 2025, while Van Liempt was in the middle of a trial adjourned in November and set to resume in February for a charge of criminal harassment of 17-year-old girl in Abbotsford, he allegedly continued his predatory behaviour with a Chilliwack girl.

Thousands of emails are included in the evidence, lines from a few of which were read in court at the application to revoke bail hearing. In many, van Liempt praised the beauty and other good qualities of the girls. In others, he threatens that nothing can stop him from contacting them.

"I'm going to do this anyway and no one can stop me," he wrote to one victim after he had been told to stop by her, by her family and by police.

"I will seek you timelessly."

Carter explained to the court how in one email he referenced the girl's upcoming 18th birthday when she would legally become an adult, presumably as a way of pointing to how he could ignore her parents' demands to stop.

"I will continue when you are 18 even if you tell me to 'fuck off,'" he wrote.

Both the victims expressed their fears to police that van Liempt would escalate from the relentless harassment to some form of violence, fear that was ruining their lives. A blunt response from one of the girls to van Liempt was read in court as an example of a clear response that he was ignoring.

"I find you a repulsive pathetic freak," she wrote to him.

His response: "I asked you to dinner, not to sit on my face."

After being forbidden to contact the Abbotsford victim before the trial while out on bail, on May 3, 2024, van Liempt sent her 13 emails in one day. He was arrested and released again on $750 cash bail and ordered to adhere to a number of conditions, according to Crown counsel Amy Carter, including no alcohol.

Van Liempt stood up in the prisoner's box to correct Carter that the order was "no alcohol outside of the home." This was made relevant at the end of the hearing when he revealed that he is a "severe alcoholic" who drinks approximately 20 ounces of hard liquor every night, which is when many of the harassing emails were sent.

It was some of his own words coupled with his complicit mother, who sat in the courtroom, that was at least part of why Judge Kristin Mundstock refused to release him.

The fact that he broke the conditions of his release on the Abbotsford charge in an "egregious fashion" means his detention is necessary, Judge Mundstock concluded. When he allegedly committed the Chilliwack offence in January, he was living with his mother, someone who defended his behaviour as not inappropriate to an alleged victim's mother. It was also in the family where his heavy alcohol consumption takes place and is where he intended to return if his bail was granted.

"There is a substantial likelihood if released that he will commit an offence," Judge Mundstock said.

Crown counsel argued overtly and Judge Mundstock implicitly seemed to agree that van Liempt has no insight into the damage of his actions. Defending himself without a lawyer, van Liempt suggested to the court, despite all the evidence against him – two victims complaining to police, an investigation, Crown counsel approving charges – that there was nothing wrong with his flooding these girls with unwanted emails. He gave an example of how after he interacted with one victim for a period of time, then she "vanished," then finally responded again to tell him to stop. When told yet again she did not want him to contact her, van Liempt told the court that he simply wanted proof it was her sending the email and not her mother.

"I wanted a 15-second voice clip to ensure she wasn't forced into it," he told the court. Proof that her "no" really meant "no" never arrived.

"I am decidedly on her side and awaiting her pleasure."

At the end of his arguments he relied on his faith as some measure of proof that he is a good man, stating that he is a "very religious person" and that any mention of love in his email did not refer to anything sexual.

"I don't mean eros," he said. "I don't mean romantic love.... It is the love we are bound to have for everyone. Mercy and forgiveness and kindness."

In detaining van Liempt, Judge Mundstock pointed out that he refused to take "no" for an answer from teenaged girls to whom he was sending thousands of unsolicited emails. He refused to take direction from the family, from his employer, from police or from the courts, and if released he would reside in the same residence where the Chilliwack offence occurred, criminal actions his mother condones.

Van Liempt and his mother, Paula DeWit, are heavily involved in the classical music community, specifically with the Catholic church. DeWit is the conductor of the Chilliwack Symphony Orchestra where van Liempt is president of the board of directors. The two are also involved with an a capella vocal ensemble called Belle Voci where DeWit is the artistic director and van Liempt is a singer.

But it is their involvement with the Chilliwack Children and Youth Choirs (now called Voces Gioventu) where the 34-year-old connects with young people for vocal lessons. On the choir group's website on the top bar as of Jan. 13 were links to brief musical bios for DeWit and "Mr VL." As of this writing (Jan. 15) the link to van Liempt is no longer there.

Two days ago at the bottom of that deleted page stated: "Bevin is currently accepting students for voice and the organ."

DeWit and van Liempt also sing at the traditional Latin mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral in Vancouver every Sunday. This despite the fact that many individuals have urged the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver to discontinue their musical roles at the church, calls that have been ignored, according to a reliable source who will remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

Some church leaders have banned van Liempt from attending, including St. James Catholic Church in Abbotsford where two sources have told me the priest banned van Liempt from singing liturgically when the harassment came to light, and one source said that priest asked the priest at the cathedral to do the same, but nothing happened. He was also banned from Holy Family Parish in Vancouver and some other churches after the harassment came to light.

Once source tells me that a third priest contacted their family in early 2024 to tell them to keep van Liempt out of their house and away from their daughter, and that he was trying to get him banned from the Holy Rosary Cathedral.

I have asked the Archdiocese and the office of the cathedral to comment on why the complaints about van Liempt and DeWit have been mostly ignored. The screenshot above is from Jan. 15, 2025, but by Jan. 17, Bevin's name was removed from the web page DeWit's name remained. No one from the cathedral or the Archdiocese responded to a request for comment.

As van Liempt was taken out of the courtroom by a sheriff on Tuesday, he looked to his mother, smiled, did a two-handed heart gesture over his chest and mouthed something that appeared to be: “Don’t worry.”

He had been remanded at the Surrey Pretrial Centre since Jan. 6, 2025, which is where he was returned until his next court appearance for arraignment on the Chilliwack charge on Jan. 21. The trial on the Abbotsford charge is scheduled to resume in that city on Feb. 3.

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