The Supreme Court of Canada Combats Cyber-Bullying

In September of 2012, Canada’s top court, the Supreme Court of Canada, struck a blow to cyber-bullies in a case called AB v Bragg Communications Inc, 2012 SCC 46.

Background

The rise of social media platforms has had a drastic impact on the way people communicate. Facebook, the social media market leader, now has roughly 1 billion users. That’s right; almost 1 in 7 people around the world are on Facebook. When used properly, websites like Facebook can have a positive impact on a user’s life. However, these websites can also be a very dangerous tool.

Cyber-bullying (the use of the internet to degrade another person) is becoming increasingly common. Bullies can now hide behind the veil of the Internet to harm their victims in a way that was previously not possible without the help of technology. Social science evidence has shown that cyber-bullying is linked to significant psychological harm in underage victims. As a result of this harm, victims of cyber-bullying are at an increased risk of dropping out of school and, in extreme cases, committing suicide.

The evidence also indicates that these unfortunate outcomes can be avoided if victims are allowed to anonymously report cyber-bullying incidents.

The Supreme Court Decision

In the case of AB v Bragg Communications Inc., the Supreme Court of Canada decided that victims of cyber-bullying have the right to pursue their attackers without disclosing their identity. In other words, victims of cyber-bullying can take legal action against bullies without having to reveal who they are. This was a difficult decision for the Supreme Court to make because it had to balance the interests of the victim against the freedom of the press and society’s interest in having an open, transparent court process.

In AB v Bragg Communications Inc., a fake Facebook profile was set up containing hurtful commentary and sexualized images of a 15-year-old girl. With the help of her father, the girl commenced a defamation lawsuit against her attackers. Defamation actions are intended to protect the reputation of individuals from unwarranted attack. The girl also applied to the court for an order protecting her identity throughout the legal proceedings.

The Supreme Court found that society’s interest in finding out the identity of cyber-bullying victims is not very important, especially when compared to the extremely important desire to encourage victims of cyber-bullying to report their attackers. The court therefore decided to ban the publication of any information that would uncover the victim’s identity.

The Supreme Court’s decision is an important step toward combatting cyber-bullying. 

If you or someone you know is being bullied, tell someone you trust right away, even though this can be very difficult to do. You can also call Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 for more help in dealing with bullying.

Remember that legal action against bullies is an extreme step to take. Working together with school officials, parents and your peers to solve the problem is probably the best approach. Legal action should only be used as a last resort.

There are people out there – including Canada’s top court – that are on your side and here to help.

To read the case, click here.

This post was written by Brendan Stevens, a law student at the University of Toronto. Brendan is a volunteer on JFCY's PLE Team. Content reviewed by a JFCY lawyer. 

Cyber-bullying

My name is Labiba and I am a JFCY volunteer on the PLE Team and the Cyberbullying Subcommittee.  My blog post is about the use of phones, internet and other technologies by bullies to mock, intimidate or terrorise their victims.

Bullies have always been around.  Sometimes people are bullies because it makes them feel good to have power over others and win in all situations. Sometimes they just do it because they can, without stopping to think whether it is morally wrong or how harmful it is for the victims. Sometimes they are victims of violence themselves either at home or in school or somewhere else.

With newer and more creative methods of communicating on the internet, bullying has become more sophisticated.  Since a bully can’t see the person on the other side of their messages, videos, or texts, it is easier to ignore the effects that bullying has on victims.  A bully can also hide behind an online identity, so that nobody knows who is doing the bullying.  This can make bullying even more harmful.  People have fewer opportunities to think about the consequences of their actions when they are sitting in front of a screen or staring at a smartphone.

SOCIAL ISSUES - What are the consequences of cyber-bullying for the victim?

We all know the destructive effects of bullying. It can have a permanent or long-term impact on how a bully’s victim feels about himself or herself and how well the victim is able to build relationships with other people. Bullying also has mental health and physical health consequences that can be very serious. While some children are able to leave all these behind when they grow up and live healthy and happy lives, others find dealing with bullying exceptionally difficult and sometimes impossible. There have even been recent reports of bullied teens taking their lives in extreme cases of cyber-bullying.

Cyber-bullying may be more invasive than real life bullying for a number of reasons. It follows the victim everywhere, unlike school yard bullying. Some organizations are trying to prevent and reduce bullying.  For example, there are privacy settings and a new “trusted friend” feature on Facebook which you can use to prevent bullying and tell a friend about bullying attempts.

Once a bully posts a photograph, video or comment online, there is no calling it back. It can reach anyone anywhere and be downloaded onto hard disks almost instantaneously. It can be used years later. It can affect a person’s image even if they move away and years later when they apply to school, look for a job, or meet a potential partner in life.

As the virtual world becomes increasingly important and “real” for us, our virtual image matters as much as our real-life image, but it is unfortunately much less in our control.

Sometimes, telling others that you are being bullied is difficult because you may think they will think you are weak or are over-thinking it. But ignoring the situation when you are bullied can also make it worse. We suggest that you should try and speak out and get help early to stop bullying. We suggest that you share any bullying attempts with a person you trust. If you ask for help early on you may be able to prevent some of the more severe effects of bullying.

Everyone should always take a minute to consider what affect an online activity can have on others and on themselves later down the road.

LEGAL ISSUES - What are the consequences for the bully?

School Suspensions and Expulsions

Ontario’s Education Act requires a principal to consider suspending a student who is involved in bullying while at school, at a school-related activity, or in “other circumstances” where the activity will have an impact on the school climate. There have been decided cases in which cyber-bullying has been accepted to be such “other circumstances”. If suspended for 20 days the Principal can recommend an expulsion and then the case will be heard by a committee of the school board, who will make the final decision whether or not to expel the student.

Criminal Charges

Repeated communications that are carried out over a period of time and cause victims to reasonably fear for their safety, even if they do not result in physical injury, may fall within the definition of criminal harassment. Examples of activities covered by the definition include sending inappropriate or threatening messages or e-greeting cards; creating websites that contain threatening or harassing messages or provocative or pornographic photographs, which are usually altered; tracking victims’ electronic footprints; and sending messages to victims’ friends, family, co-workers and other associates pretending to be them.

Civil Liability

Harassing, intimidating or bullying online, asking someone for their log-in information, creating multiple personal profiles, and providing false information when creating a profile are all activities that breach the terms and conditions of most social networking websites. When you sign up for an account, you agree to follow these terms, and any breach allows the website to ban you from future use of their website. Sometimes cyber-bullying may give rise to civil action to be brought against you and/or your parents.  A civil action is when one person sues another for the damage caused by the second person’s actions, even if those actions weren’t breaking the criminal law.

Whether or not any disciplinary, criminal or civil action is taken to deal with bullying will depend on complaints received by the authorities, the seriousness of the conduct, the severity of the effect on victims, and the willingness of victims’ parents and friends to take a stand against bullying. If you are participating in cyber-bullying, you should know that it is possible to trace you even when you are using a fake ID online. If you are about to do/say something online that you would not do offline, stop and ask yourself if you would like it if the people you respect found out what you did, even if you think it is not something big enough to get you in trouble.

Cyber-bullying Resources

If you have specific legal questions relating to bullying, please contact JFCY at 416.920.1633

If you are a victim of bullying and need support, check out some of these organizations:

Kids Help Phone at 1 800 668 6868 or on www.kidshelpphone.ca

LGBT Youth line at 1.800.268.9688 or on www.youtline.ca

If you want to find out more about cyber-bullying and how you can help raise awareness and prevent cyber-bullying, you can look at some of these websites:

Web Aware on www.bewebaware.ca

Canadian Safe Schools Network on www.canadiansafeschools.com

http://www.definetheline.ca/


www.bullying.org

www.wiredsafety.org

www.stopcyberbullying.org

There is a list of books and other resources on blocking and dealing with cyber-bullying as well as other forms of bullying on this website: http://www.cheo.on.ca/En/bullying

Here at JFCY, the cyber-bullying sub-committee wants to know all about your thoughts on this post. Please let us know if this post is helpful and/or informative and what you would like to see in future posts. Post your comments, questions, requests and ideas as they are extremely valuable to us and will help us better understand what to write about in our next post.  Our comments are moderated, so if you do not want your comment published to the blog, just say so when you submit it. Or you could email us at jfcyontario@gmail.com.

Thanks to JFCY PLE Team member AND volunteer Labiba Rukhsana for this post.  Labiba is on JFCY's cyber-bullying subcommittee. 

Bullying- Words of wisdom and request for feedback

Jasmine Attfield is JFCY's newest Board member, a PLE team member and also a member of JFCY's new PLE subcommittee on cyberbullying. She wrote this post about her experiences being bullied and JFCY's new project:


For 8 years, I was bullied. To be honest, I don't think about it much anymore. It's hard now to think back and remember that I once allowed other people to make me feel that, maybe, life wasn't worth living or that there was something wrong with me that made me unworthy of love and friendship.


Since then, I went to university, I found a job that I love, I’ve made lifelong friendships, and I've even found a partner to share my life with. Other things have happened since I left school too: I got a Facebook account, a twitter account, and a smartphone. In the past 4 years, I have seen how technology has also made bullying easier as well as how it has revealed to the world the realities of school and bullying for young people. However, technology hasn't changed what is hurtful about bullying: social isolation, brutal criticisms, public humiliation, and out-of-control rumors.


Of course, when I was being bullied, I never believed that my parents could understand or help me, but they could and they did. I want to list for you here some of the things that people told me, which proved to be true and helped me get through the hardest years of my life:


- People get nicer. I lived this for myself when, after graduating high school, a boy who had bullied me for years ran into me and apologized for how he had treated me. Most people eventually develop a conscience, and they will come to regret how they treated others in the past and try to avoid being mean in the future.


- Find something that makes you feel good about yourself. You can't control who's mean to you, but you can stop letting them define how you feel about yourself. Keep busy; try new things or work on some goals, like running a marathon or raising money for charity. You will feel better about yourself when you are filling your time productively.


- School is really nothing like real life... at all. When you look back on it, school will be such a small and weird part of your life story, and the people who were mean to you in school will represent a tiny fraction of all the people you will meet. Being “cool” or “nerdy” or “fat” or “awkward” in school will have NO bearing on the rest of your life. I can honestly tell you that I have completely forgotten the last names of most of the people who used to bully me, because in the grand scheme of things, they never mattered to me at all except for the short amount of time when I gave them the power to influence how I felt about myself. 


- You will become more like yourself. One of the things that I found hard in school is that I knew what was "cool", but I was never any good at it. I tried SO HARD to do exactly what was expected of me, but I always came off as SO AWKWARD. Then I realized: I was trying to be someone else, not myself... so then the question became: who am I? I had to work to figure that answer out, and I still have to work every day to not fall into the trap of doing what's "cool" so that someone will like me instead of thinking about whether or not it is actually something that I want to do. Also, by the way, you WILL find people who love you for who you are and those people will make you happier than you ever thought possible, they will make your life so much easier, and you will feel great knowing that you make those people happy in return.


It's amazing to think how much being young has changed in such a short period of time, after so little had changed for so long. Hopefully though, some of that same advice that I got can be helpful to you. The problem is that I don't know whether or not that advice is still useful, so now I have to ask for your help. I need you to tell me: what has changed? do you have any advice to offer other victims of bullying? what kinds of different advice or help would be useful to you?


The world has gotten more complicated since I was your age, and people my age need your help to better understand it. But I am confident that if young and older people work together, we can find solutions to the problem of bullying."

Jasmine, being herself and having a blast!

JFCY's cyberbullying subcommittee would like your feedback on Jasmine's post, on today's forms of bullying, and on what kinds of resources and information you'd like to see about bullying.  Send us an email at jfcyontario@gmail.com, post to our Facebook wall, or leave a note in the blog comments!  If you don't want your comment published on the blog, just say so in your post, since we moderate comments before posting.

Sexting and the law

- By Arif Hussain, PLE Team Member (with legal info by UofT law student Leora Jackson)

“Sexting” – combining text + sex – has become a new cultural product in modern society.  Sexting can involve sending sexually related text messages or images between cell phones.

Even though sexting can seem fun and exciting, and can come out of genuine good feelings and intentions, there can be negative consequences to sexting.  Sometimes, teens will share a picture with another person because they trust them.  However, sometimes those pictures get shared with third parties without the owner’s permission.  That can be embarrassing for the person who sent the picture, and it might be hard to take action or to tell someone else what has happened.  This is why one of the most important things to remember about using digital media is that once something has been emailed, messaged, or posted to someone else, it is almost impossible to maintain control over it, even if you later remove the posting or ask the recipient to delete their copy.

This Toronto Star article talks about some cases related to sexting and provides the comments of legal academics in Canada. 

In Canada, there  are important legal issues involved around sexting, including child pornography and privacy.  This information sheet has information about sexting in Canada, things to consider when you are thinking about sending sexual texts and images, and statistics about the frequency of sexting among Canadian teens and how likely they are to forward or share sexually explict messages that they have received from friends.

JFCY is in the process of creating a series of legal info publications around sexting and other issues related to cyberbullying and ‘tech-bullying’.  Stay tuned to this blog in the coming months for more legal info on these issues.

Arif Hussain is a student at U of T Scarborough.  He's also an active member of the PLE Team, and wrote the script for our Civil Recovery Demands YouTube video

Definetheline.ca - Cyberbullying Info

What is cyberbullying? Where can you get more information? 

Definetheline.ca is a website dedicated to understanding cyberbullying and socially responsible digital citizenship. JFCY volunteer and McGill law student Jesse Gutman currently helps run the website with Dr. Shaheen Shariff, the Project Director for definetheline.ca. The website is constantly updated and has a lot of interesting content like youtube videos and quizzes. 

Take a look and educate yourself on this important issue!