Crown prosecutors seem to be guided by the childhood chant: “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you” in deciding not to press charges against a B.C. man who operates a vicious revenge website focused on his ex-wife.
But the prosecutors should reconsider. Name-calling, accusations and other nastiness can destroy reputations, careers and family relationships. Harassment doesn’t have to be physical to cause pain and injury.
Patrick Fox, who has also gone by the name Richard Riess, said in a Canadian Press interview that he created the site about his former wife, Desiree Capuano, to cause “as much damage to her reputation and life as possible,” but that he would never physically harm her.
He said he would take the site down only if she reached a low point in her life that satisfied him or if she died. He said it “would be great” if she killed herself, but that isn’t his goal, although, “I don’t think the world is going to be worse off when she ceases to exist,” he said.
The couple were living in the U.S. and had a baby son when they separated in 2001. Capuano says Fox hid the child from her for years; Fox says she abandoned the boy.
He was deported from the U.S. in 2013 after being convicted of perjury and now lives in Burnaby. She lives in Arizona and has custody of the child.
Fox operates a website in which he makes a wide array of accusations against his former wife, accusing her of being a drug addict, a white supremacist “and just an all around bad person.” He has published personal information about her, and has sent her colleagues links to his website.
Capuano firmly denies all of Fox’s accusations. She says he has also sent her hundreds of threatening emails, including some with photos of his gun licence.
However, Crown prosecutors said they could not conclude that Capuano had an “objective basis to fear for her safety.”
“I don’t understand how, just because he’s not physically in front of me with a gun, that it’s not considered to be harassment,” she says. “Just because he’s not hitting me physically doesn’t mean that it’s not abuse.”
A spokesman for B.C.’s Criminal Justice Branch said RCMP arrested, interviewed and released Fox in July 2015. Investigators later recommended charges, but they were not approved.
While distance precludes the possibility of Fox physically attacking his ex-wife, the kind of attacks he makes can easily be harmful to a person’s physical and mental health. His accusations could fall under criminal libel law. A University of British Columbia law professor says the case could fall within criminal harassment law.
The digital world evolves at a rapid pace; the legal world much less so. Nevertheless, it can’t be right that someone could launch such attacks with impunity.
The Crown’s legal minds should revisit this case and find a way to stop the ugly harassment, not just for the sake of Desiree Capuano, but to protect everyone from becoming the target of hate and vitriol.
