When she checked Facebook that morning, there were messages waiting.
“Nice pictures.”
“How classy, you mutt.”
There were others, too, that she remembers but won’t repeat.
The 16-year-old spent the rest of the day at the computer, typing responses as tears blurred her vision.
But it was a battle lost before it began. Her keystrokes were insignificant against the “clicks” that were, one by one, ruining her life.
The first clicks happened the night before. A 17-year-old stranger took eight photos of the girl and a boy engaged in sexual activity at a party in Pitt Meadows.
A few hours later, the teen sent the photos to his buddies. He later told a judge he didn’t think the guys would believe what he’d seen at the wild party, so with a few clicks, he sent proof.
Another stranger, 19-year-old Dennis Warrington, was having breakfast at a restaurant that morning, saw the photos on a friend’s phone and posted them to his Facebook page.
By the time the girl woke up, the images were spreading rapidly.
“I went on my Facebook [and] read messages from my friends asking me if I was that girl last night,” she recalled in a victim-impact statement shared in court this year.
She said no, until she realized she’d accepted a drink at the party and remembered very little after that.
“With all the messages I’d been getting and the condition of my body, I put two and two together.”
An 18-year-old boy was charged with sexual assault, but the charges were later stayed for lack of evidence. Both the young man who took the photos and Warrington pleaded guilty to distributing obscene material. They received probation — one year, and 18 months, respectively.
The high-profile case was met with disbelief and outrage from police, parents and educators. For almost three years — from the first police press conference warning teens to stop distributing the photos to the final sentencing hearing this year — it has been in headlines.
But it’s hard to say what impact the outrage has had. The “Pitt Meadows rave rape” case, as it’s commonly called, was just the first in a series involving teens and social media.
Three weeks ago, Kamloops RCMP warned teens who could have filmed an alleged sexual assault of a teen at a bush party to keep pictures and video off the Internet because any distribution could lead to charges of child pornography. So far, no pictures have surfaced.
Ridge Meadows RCMP is currently dealing with several cases involving kids who took nude photos of themselves and sent them to others (both willingly and through coercion), a practice known as sexting.
That’s not to mention the most high-profile case, that of Amanda Todd, the Port Coquitlam teen who committed suicide last October after bullying at school and online.
In a YouTube video viewed millions of times around the world, Todd claimed she “flashed” someone while chatting online. The screen capture was used to blackmail her into sending more photos, one of which was eventually shared with her classmates.
Her mother, Carol Todd, said Amanda didn’t tell her she’d been coerced into sending photos to a stranger until they had been posted.
“When something like that happens, parents need to remain non-judgmental,” said Todd. “It’s hard, but you can’t go ballistic or kids won’t tell you anything.”
A Vancouver father agrees. He told the Province newspaper he wasn’t sure how to react a few months ago when his daughter, a Grade 9 student, told him a video of her friend engaged in a sexual act with an older teen was circulating online.
The boy had apparently taken the video of the girl without her knowledge and then sent it to his friends.
“We were sick and stunned,” he said. “My wife and I struggled with what to do with the information.”
The father decided to contact a Vancouver police school liaison officer, who brought in a school counsellor to deal with the issue.
“We all make mistakes, as teenagers especially,” he said. “You try to learn from them and move on. But when [the mistakes are] online, it doesn’t go away. It’s out there forever.”
Const. Heather Partridge, a Vancouver police school liaison officer, said dealing with “sexts” and sexual pictures that are being spread around schools occupies about 30 per cent of her job. Ten years ago, the issue didn’t exist. Five years ago, it wasn’t really on the radar. But in the last couple years, the problem has only increased.
“Don’t share naked pictures with your friends,” Partridge said. “Don’t post naked pictures of yourself. We talk about it until we’re blue in the face. It really feels like it’s spinning out of control.”
Are social media mistakes the new teenage rite of passage?
Experts say the Internet is certainly the new school playground where bullies and predators hunt for prey. But, unlike the real world, it’s much harder to put up fences.
The hope, experts say, lies in better education.
At the very least, tech-savvy kids need to be up on the Criminal Code of Canada, section 163.1.
A photo, video, drawing or even written words that depict a person under the age of 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity is child pornography. Child pornography is illegal — it’s illegal to make it, distribute it, possess it and even to access it.
“Kids think in the here and now,” said Det. Kate Caprarie, an Internet child exploitation investigator with the Vancouver police. “A girl thinks her boyfriend is her one true love, sends him an explicit photo, and then he shares the photo with his friends. It’s out there and it’s really tough to get it back.”
In addition to identifying and investigating child pornography, Caprarie’s job involves working to delete pictures once they’ve been posted on the Internet. Her success often depends on how quickly police are notified and how far the pictures have spread.
With help from the kids who sent it, and sometimes sites such as Facebook, which is generally responsive to requests for removal, it is possible to “claw it back.”
But some sites resist requests. And once the photo falls into the wrong hands, it can be impossible to remove. Some child porn has been traded for 20 or 30 years on the Internet, said Caprarie.
Police also see sexually explicit photos being used as blackmail. As in the Todd case, girls may be convinced to expose themselves on webcam once, and then be blackmailed into sending more photos.
Boys are vulnerable through the gaming world, where predators are known to pose as girls to get them to send sexual photos before threatening to post them unless they’re given money.
The Children of the Street Society ran more than 620 Internet safety workshops in B.C. classrooms last year. When staff ask students if they’ve been sexually solicited online, hands go up, said executive director Diane Sowden.
“When we ask what they did with the message, most say they just deleted it.”
Sowden said that needs to change. Kids need to be taught that it’s OK to talk to adults about what they’re encountering online, whether its solicitation or a sexual photo sent by a friend.
“The problem is that kids sometimes know a lot more about the Internet than their parents … and they’re afraid that if they tell them, they’ll take their technology away.”
Children of the Street has a four-month waiting list for its workshops. The non-profit society has been invited to speak to students as young as nine.
“Kids are not mature enough for what social media offers,” said Sowden. “They don’t understand the laws and they don’t understand the consequences that can come with the push of a button.”
She’s had to explain numerous times that although Snapchat, the latest photo messaging app, allows senders to set a time limit on how long users can view their images, it can be circumvented when someone takes a picture of the screen or a screen capture.
“Suddenly that image is completely out of their control,” she said. “We try to push [students] to think further.”
That’s something Vancouver police are also doing through their school liaison officers. But Partridge said it’s an uphill battle unless schools and parents are also on board.
The Ministry of Education confirms the B.C. school curriculum does not specifically address sexting, although the province’s new ERASE Bullying resources and website contain material about cyberbullying.
Beyond that, social media education is left up to school districts, many of which are working to incorporate it in some way.
But Partridge said she sees students being asked by teachers to have email accounts without education about Internet safety.
“If kids are expected to have a laptop in school and if there’s going to be wi-fi in every classroom, I think there also has to be talk about safety,” she said. Carol Todd agrees, adding education should be more than a list of Internet dos and don’ts.
“We need to teach digital citizenship,” she said.
“From a young age, we teach our kids to be polite, to say please and thank you. We need to teach them that it extends online. It’s not an instant thing. It doesn’t come naturally.”
She believes the message only gets through when it is reinforced day after day.
Todd shares Amanda’s story with as many teens as she can and often encounters kids who can talk the talk about Internet safety, but “they don’t really get it until they’ve been put in that situation.”
The teens with the deepest understanding are those who have seen friends, or have themselves been, hurt by social media.
Emily Dunderdale began to look at social media in a very different way as she watched Amanda Todd’s struggles.
A close friend of Todd, Dunderdale saw first-hand the devastation caused by the stranger who posted topless photos of Todd on the Internet, sparking the bullying that caused her to take her life.
These days, Dunderdale is off-line more than she’s on it, and she sometimes forgets where she left her phone.
“It’s not a big part of my life anymore,” she said.
The teen, who is entering Grade 11 in September, has also started to speak out when she sees friends and peers who are careless online.
“I have friends who use ask.fm [a new social media site where users can post questions to others while remaining anonymous]. They get comments from people saying mean things. I call them and tell them to delete it right away,” she said.
Dunderdale said that one bullying comment attracts others, and the taunts quickly “pile up.”
“No one has to listen to that,” she said. “Get off the site.”
She also knows several people who have been hurt by sexting.
“It never stays between those two people.”
Surrey teen Chelsea McColm admits social media is a huge part of her life.
“I’m on it 24/7,” the 14-year-old said in response to a Province request for teens to talk about their social media use.
But, like Dunderdale, McColm said she’s very aware of its dark side. She also knows people who’ve been hurt by sexting.
“I wouldn’t ever do it,” she said. “If it gets in the wrong hands, it can ruin you.”
McColm said social media is discussed “on the sidelines” in her classes. It’s not formally part of the curriculum, but some teachers talk about staying safe online.
But it’s her mom who has had the biggest impact on her Internet education. Although McColm has had a phone since Grade 6 (and a smartphone since Grade 8), she has to give her mom access to every social media site she’s on.
“I can have all the social media I want, but she keeps an eye on it.”
McColm said she likes the agreement.
“It works well. She just wants me to be safe.
A photo, video, drawing or even written words that depict a person under the age of 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity — or the depiction of the sexual region of a person under 18 for a sexual purpose — is child pornography.
Child pornography is illegal to make. If you’re underage and you take a picture of yourself to send to someone else, you’re making child pornography.
It’s also illegal to distribute it, which includes sending the picture to a friend.
Possessing child pornography and accessing it are also crimes. Passing on a photo to your friends, or posting it to Facebook, could result in charges. The federal government will consider making the electronic distribution of any intimate images without prior consent a new Criminal Code offence, Justice Minister Peter MacKay said Friday.
It’s among several recommendations contained in a new report by federal, provincial and territorial justice and public-safety ministers that was expedited following the death of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Nova Scotia teen who took her own life in April after images of her alleged rape were circulated over the Internet.
“I will consider the report and its recommendations, which will help guide the way forward to ensuring our children are safe from online exploitation,” MacKay said in a statement.
The report also recommends enhancing existing criminal law responses to bullying and cyberbullying and modernizing investigative powers with respect to electronic communications.
Need help?
If you have been impacted by a sexual picture being shared by a peer, visit cybertip.ca for a step-by-step guide to get help. The website, run by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, also includes a reporting line.
© Copyright (c) The Province
