Leonard Cohen read an impassioned and sometimes funny statement in court Tuesday, during the sentencing of his former manager and onetime lover, Kelley Lynch.
Lynch was found guilty last week of breaching restraining orders and making scores of harassing emails and phone calls to the "I'm Your Man" singer.
She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, including an alcohol and anger management programs and mental evaluations, with reports every three months on her progress.
At end of 18 months, she is to undergo a mental evaluation to determine what the next step will be for the remainder of her overall five-year sentence.
In his statement, Cohen thanked his tormentor … for exposing her thievery through the trial.
Also read: Leonard Cohen's Ex-Manager Found Guilty of Harassing "Hallelujah" Singer
"I want to thank the Defendant Ms. Kelley Lynch for insisting on a Jury Trial, thus exposing to the light of day her massive depletion of my retirement savings and yearly earnings, and allowing the Court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing," the statement reads.
"The eight-year ordeal of harassment of my family, my friends, my associates, and myself was designed specifically to avoid or postpone the inevitable day of reckoning with the IRS, the day when she will be bound to account for the taxes she has neglected to pay on the stolen monies that she received and failed to report."
The 77-year-old singer testified at the trial that Lynch's hounding of him is "not a pleasant sensation … Ms. Lynch routinely accused me of being a drug addict and many other things. Of course I didn’t like it, and I felt my reputation was being assailed and the reputation of my family.”
"It gives me no pleasure to see my one-time friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the service of darkness, deceit and revenge," Cohen continued. "I fear that her obsessive commitment to these activities as soon as Ms. Lynch is released, therefore I will be grateful for whatever respite the court will allow my children, my grandchildren, my friends and associates, and myself."
In addition to the harassment trial, Cohen had sued Lynch in 2005, accusing her of stealing millions of dollars from him. Lynch was ordered by a judge to pay $9.5 million to Cohen.
Lynch was fired in 2004 after working for Cohen for approximately 17 years. They also had a past sexual relationship.
Despite his harsh words for Lynch in his statement, Cohen expressed some small degree of sympathy for his former business associate and companion.
"It is my prayer that Ms. Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion, that 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," Cohen said.