Leonard Cohen's ex-manager gets jail sentence
CBC News | Posted: April 19, 2012 5:00 PM | Last Updated: April 19, 2012
Leonard Cohen's former manager has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for harassing the 77-year-old poet and musical icon.
Kelley Lynch, 55, received the sentence in Los Angeles on Tuesday, with the presiding judge saying Cohen's longtime staffer and one-time lover had shown no remorse for a "long, unrelenting barrage of harassing behaviour."
"No person should be subject to that kind of targeting by anyone," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert C. Vanderet said.
Along with the prison sentence and five years of probation, she will also be required to undergo anger management classes, psychological training and alcohol education sessions.
Last Thursday, a Los Angeles County court found Lynch guilty of two counts of sending harassing messages and five counts of violating a restraining order.
Lynch worked for Cohen for about 17 years, but he fired her in 2004 when he discovered millions missing from his accounts, investments and retirement savings. He subsequently filed a civil lawsuit against her and, in 2006, a court ruled she must pay Cohen $9.5 million US.
Lynch then sent the Hallelujah and Suzanne singer hundreds of e-mails and voice messages, including some that made threats against him and his family.
"It gives me no pleasure...to see my one-time friend shackled to a chair in a court of law," Cohen said, reading from a prepared statement.
He added that he hoped "a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform."