Sexualized online bullying why an equality analysis matters

“Sexualized online bullying”: why an equality analysis matters Jane Bailey Clicks & Stones: Cyberbullying, Digital Citizenship & the Challenges of Legal Response University of Toronto 3 May 2013 jbailey@uottawa. ca

AB v. Bragg Communications 2012 SCC 46

“sexualized online bullying”

limited

slow expensive publicity

cyberbullying

anonymity/pseudonymity

meaningful collective

misogyny homophobia racism

typecast gender conformity

policing

15 year old AB

fake Facebook profile

photo

allegedly preferred sexual activities appearance weight

Bragg Communications Inc.

pseudonym

ban on republication

Halifax Herald Limited Global Television

Nova Scotia Supreme Court

denied

evidence

“danger to [her] emotional health” “physical, emotional or mental”

“embarrassment without additional evidence of harm was insufficient to displace the need to have open courts”

“how social networking programs work and how they can be destructive to the public and particularly to young persons”

$1500 to the Halifax Herald $750 to Global Television

Nova Scotia Court of Appeal

$2000 to the Halifax Herald $1000 to Global Television + disbursements

Supreme Court of Canada

use a pseudonym

partial publication ban

cost awards

Abella J

AB’s privacy interest and the open court principle

age

protection

open court principle

“relentlessly intrusive humiliation of online sexualized bullying”

evidence

“reason and logic”

“inherent vulnerability of children”

“objectively discernable harm”

Nova Scotia Task Force on Bullying and Cyberbullying

loss of self-esteem anxiety fear greater risk of suicide

“spread widely, quickly and anonymously”

anonymity

“complicate recovery, discourage future disclosures and inhibit cooperation with authorities”

“If we value the right of children to protect themselves from bullying, cyber or otherwise, if common sense and the evidence persuade us that young victims of sexualized bullying are particularly vulnerable to the harms of revictimization upon publication, and if we accept that the right to protection will disappear for most children without the further protection of anonymity, we are compellingly drawn in this case to allowing A. B. ’s anonymous legal pursuit of the identity of her cyberbully. ”

identity

“relatively unimportant”

identity

non-identifying

win

sexualized bullying

30 months untold # of sleepless nights

proceed pseudonymously

subscriber information

bully

applaud

Cyber-Safety Act

band aids

react

bad things

one individual vs. another

penalty or remedy

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important. ” Martin Luther King Jr.