118 Replies to “Rehtaeh Parsons And The Rest Of The Story”

  1. Trial by Facebook. This is what the world is becoming. Takes a courageous journalist to dare to write this.

  2. Leah Parsons wants to know what people think.
    Well, I think a bunch of your daughter’s obvious problems – going drinking and getting naked with boys at 15, for example – might be in part due to the ridiculous name you hung on her. If her name was “Heather”, chances are this story never happens.
    James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake “Who gave you that numb?”.

  4. Check out this person’s well developed logic!
    “Thank God, that there is FaceBook because if it were up to a journalist? Christie Blatchford, Rethaeh may have been stoned by the public and sent to an Islamic country to be slain! Leah is still dealing with prejudice in the form of journalistic freedom? Give me a break. And, yes may no parent ever go through this living nightmare.”

  5. Thanks for this Kate. Blatchford is one of Canada’s few real old fashioned Journalists and she has real backbone. When no one else had the balls to report on Caledonia with the facts she faced the firestorm for speaking the truth. My hat is off to her again. And yourself for supporting Blatchford on your site. Thanks again. A very sad sad tale. Trial by Facebook, and our foolish gutless politicians always agree to make more useless laws that will never be enforced.

  6. Ms Blatchford has a lot of nerve: has she not given ANY consideration at all to the Atlantic Journalism Awards gala night?

  8. Well this makes Anonymous look like a bunch of yahoo vigilantes filled with hate instead logic, easily conned by a populist narrative and actually part of the very problem they claim they are solving.
    So difficult these days being morally superior.

  9. First time poster here, we discussed the case on another forum and someone linked the Rehteah’s twitter account. It was train wreck and looked to be for alot longer than 2 years. Lots of pics of her getting drunk and high as well as seminaked pictures of herself. What people on the forum noticed over the course of the week or so the topic was active was that someone was cleaning her twitter account of the more incriminating posts and pictures.
    The hate from posters on Blatchford’s blog is scary…

  10. Letting your 15 year old daughter go to drinking parties with teenaged boys? What could possibly go wrong? Sounds like irresponsible parenting to me. Is Mrs. Parsons trying to deflect blame and guilt?
    Christie Blatchford is a national treasure. I would love to see her in the Senate, it would increase the common sense in that august chamber many fold.

  11. Nold, that was hilarious. I haven’t seen that site before, and as I read I kept thinking, “this could be the Onion”. Thankfully, though, wee Clitoria Jackson may undergo a name change. hahahaha
    mhb23re

  12. It is truly unfortunate that actions have consequences. When there is no chance of conviction, charging teenagers with a heinous crime is truly unjust. Enough smart people weighed the evidence and concluded that there was no indication of rape, other than the complainants word, and overwhelming evidence by others that it was consensual.
    What we used to call teasing, sure can cause real pain, and perhaps laws on harassment need revisiting but the evidence required to get a rape conviction should not be changed as we are probably at a point where the rights of the victim and the suspect are fairly balanced.

  13. “If her name was “Heather”, chances are this story never happens.”
    Stupidest thing said on the internet today. Bravo sir. Bravo.
    If you see somebody puking their guts out, do you give them some space, or go over, pull down her pants and proceed to f*ck what’s left of her 15 year old brains out while giving the thumbs up to your friends? If you do the latter, you are a rapist since that person is in no place to give consent. Shooting it and distributing video/photos of the event also might be an indicator that you are piece of human excrement especially if the person in those videos is a 15 years old girl.
    I’m one of those old fashioned types who does happen to believe that you have to be careful out there in the big wide world, BUT that doesn’t mean I also think that it absolves people of behaving in a disgusting, exploitive manner that victimizes a super drunk human being by turning them into a F*ck toy for a bunch of guys.
    Of course you guys would defend this behaviour here. If it weren’t for super drunk chicks you guys would never have sex.

  14. Good on you Kate and Christie. You’re a needed voice here and on Christie’s blog. Nearly every comment on her blog is from women.

  15. “Letting your 15 year old daughter go to drinking parties with teenaged boys? What could possibly go wrong? Sounds like irresponsible parenting to me. Is Mrs. Parsons trying to deflect blame and guilt?”
    Yes, because expecting teenage boys not to rape is too much. Boys rape. That’s what they do! So it’s the duty of the girl’s parents to ensure that she is chaperoned around these little rapists 24/7. No parties, no dates, no nuthin. In fact… don’t even tempt them. Best to cover her head to toe with only her eyes poking out. Say… maybe you guys should talk to the Taliban. You seem to be on the same wavelength.
    Why is it so hard to get it through people’s heads that just because a victim may have put themselves in a compromising position, doesn’t mean a crime didn’t take place. If that was the case, there would be no such thing as crime, since in every case it’s the victim’s fault. House broken into? Why didn’t you have bars on your windows? Gas station robbed? Why not have a security guard frisk everyone who enters the store? Mugged? You should have taken karate.

  16. Kate should do an airbrush of the photo of the boy giving the thumbsup while slamming into the drunk 15-year-old girl and hold an auction to help pay the legal bills of the boys who she believes are being treated unfairly. You guys could all put it on teeshirts as a sign of your belief that it’s alright to f*ck drunk 15 year olds and post photos on the internet.

  17. No one said these guys behaved well. Maybe they are indeed terrible people with whom no decent person would want to associate. But that’s not a crime.
    The question is, “Did they commit rape?” The evidence strongly suggests “no.” If there were witnesses who say that, before she got sick, she was egging the boys on and rolling around for a time with two guys…naked and laughing, then the rape accusation (i.e. that she was taken advantage of) is weakened. Yes, being drunk messes with the mind…but you would have to establish that the boys set out to make her drunk and then took advantage of her. Again, the witness accounts argue against this.
    Her friend said she tried to get Miss Parsons out of there. Furthermore, the friend left and came back with her freaking mother to try to get her out of there. That means that time passed. Either young Miss Parsons drank more and got to the point of where she got sick or she started to sober up or who knows. But it was clearly not a case of a couple/few guys seeing that they have a drunk girl in their midst and then pouncing before she could get away or sober up. The fact that, over time, neither a friend nor that friends mother could get her to leave the naked presence of the boys also hurts the claim of rape.
    But the most damning problem here is that, by ALL accounts, Parsons never presented what occurred as rape – even over the next week – after she had clearly sobered up. She knew that she had had sex…but the only time rape was mentioned was after the picture(s) started circulating.
    Sure, the guys may have been 1st class a$$holes. Or maybe they were seduced by a girl who was (for all you know) the main instigator. But there was clearly big problems with making this about rape.
    I still think that there’s something else to this story. Whenever I hear about a suicide by a teen who was “bullied” and then, right afterwards, I hear the parents saying that the “system” failed their kids, my Spidy-senses start tingling.

  19. John, there’s very little evidence the sex was coerced, and ample circumstantial evidence that Rehtaeh was a willing participant.
    The problem is not that “Boys rape! It’s what they do!” it’s that teenagers drink and have sex, it’s what they do, and it’s the job of parents to ensure that their opportunities for that and the subsequent consequences are limited.
    Also, I cannot be the only person to notice that between the name, the method of suicide and the subsequent media outrage that this whole situation is creepily similar to the movie Heathers.

  20. Blatchford’s account of what really went on that night is more or less what I suspected weeks ago. Of course, I was condemned as a monster for daring to besmirch the memory of the little martyr and ask what could really be going on here.
    Who’s behind the marketing, Kate? I think it’s obvious. Answer: the Liberal Party, who planned to use the incident as a cudgel to beat the Nova Scotia NDP, who’ve shut them out of power in Halifax these 15 years, and the federal Tories (using the RCMP as a proxy). Put bluntly, this is part of the Young Pretender’s restoration campaign, who, rest assured, plan to use the girl’s bloody shirt as a standard.
    Let he who is intelligent ask himself who sicced Anonymous on the young men of Cole Harbour in the first place, and what such a person has to gain from the restoration of the House of Trudeau in Nova Scotia and in the rest of the Dominion. Let him ask as well what such a fellow would have done if one of his own had been the target, and whether any of this would have made the papers if it were. Pity the young men of Cole Harbour couldn’t afford the huge payday Leah Parsons thinks she deserves or get a Toronto lawyer to sue her into the ground pro deo if she wouldn’t shut her gob.
    Al: You hit the nail right on the head. If Leah Parsons had bothered to discipline her daughter and raise her with something resembling morals, none of this would have happened. As it is her daughter’s blood is on her hands as surely as if she’d hanged the girl herself.
    Kate, in the comments you were very kind to Leah Parsons indeed. (No prizes for guessing who was first in line to scream blue murder at Blatchford for besmirching the memory of her baby.) In a better ordered world it would be Parsons’ neck that the Queen of Nova Scotia would be having prepared to answer for her daughters’, though every bitch in Halifax howled in Parsons’ favour.

  21. Teens do have sex. So do adults. When it happens, there shouldn’t be any issue around consent. Sometimes people might get drunk and do it, and if there is regret, you live with it. BUT something weird was going on here. If you don’t see something wrong with pulling down somebody’s pants while they are vomiting and sticking your penis in them, then you might be a sociopath. You see, it’s hard to give consent when you are puking your guts out, and I’m not sure that you can argue, “well right before she started puking, she nodded and bent over, so I just figured I should go for it, and maybe shoot some photos.”
    And what about posting the photos on the internet? Do you think she gave her consent to that as well? “Yes. I agree to you posting humiliating photos of me on the internet. I especially like the one where you are F#cking me while I puke. Hilarious!!!”
    Why should I be shocked that you guys defend this sort of behaviour and place the burden of responsibility on a young girl? My god… I hope none of you have daughters, or sons for that matter.

  22. Food for thought. Did SHE sexually abuse drunken teenaged boys? Why the sexist assumption that the males were the initiators? Teenaged girls have sex, it’s what they do.

  23. “Did SHE sexually abuse drunken teenaged boys?
    Yes. That boy was just standing next to the window with his pants down when suddenly she ran up, started puking and slammed her vagina down on top of his penis, all while using mind control to force the other boys to snap photos of the event and post them on the internet.
    My god. How is it you are even able to type words with a brain like that? It’s practically a miracle.

  25. May I just say….well “BULLY” for Blatchford!
    The problem with ‘modern society’ is the proposition that you can be ‘boffing’ half the village or more and still expect respect. This is not like the Rape of the Sabine women by invading armies of men:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women
    Where exactly is the ‘stolen virtue’…?
    I will assume that the boys in question were not looking for a spouse or making any lifetime commitments.
    I don’t know about the Parsons clan; but I don’t let my daughters go to all night parties, ensure that when they do go out, that there is adequate supervision and expect their timings for departure and arrival to be met.
    Yes we were all teenagers once, and it should teach you that exploring stupidly is part of the process. That doesn’t mean as parents you encourage or provide opportunities to be stupid.
    @ John:
    I don’t think anywhere you can make the case that Kate, is endorsing the criminal act of rape.
    What is in dispute is the FACTUAL BASIS, on what will hold up in a court of law.
    If you don’t have a enough evidence, beyond ‘he said, she said’ the nature of the beast is that you can’t convict on the basis of hearsay evidence. Well are all the witnesses now going to file affidavits to properly nail the perpetrators in question or did the gal behave stupidly and invite abuse?
    Criminal law standards are such that you are “INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY”; trial by Facebook won’t cut it.
    The fact that she felt badly about something later and is now gone of course is tragic for those left behind; but criminal law standards are there because convictions of the innocent are a greater tragedy.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  26. John, the article clearly states that the picture can’t identify anyone. There are no faces to see. In fact it states that the bent over person cannot be identified as male of female. You seem to be going on pure emotion, which is what most people are going on here. Step back and try and use some logic. Or if you have some actual proof you should take it to the police and stop accusing people of doing something that may not be true.
    How many people have been ruined by the media when they are accused of a crime which then turns out to be a false accuastion or not proven in a court of law? I think that the media should not be able to name anyone until convicted. But then we wouldn’t have such wonderful court drama like OJ, right? (that was sarcasm, in case you missed it folks – internet, hard to understand fro some!)

  27. Reading your comments Scar, it’s troubling what you might consider seduction. Your thoughts on this could have been uttered by a rural Afghan patriarch. Your logic is shockingly like that of the Taliban.
    Hans, you are right. The truth has to be out. Was this full-blown rape? As in, put on a ski mask, and lurk in an alley and force a woman at knife point? No.
    But it’s still rape to have sex with a person who cannot consent. Especially if that woman is a girl, and she is so drunk that she is puking out the window. And it is a crime to distribute child pornography, which is what it is when you shoot photos and video of the act.
    Should these guys go to jail for 25 years? No. Should they be up sh!ts creek and serve as examples to the rest of teenage boy-dom that this sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable? Yes.

  28. John,
    I am so glad you’re hear to tell us exactly what happened. I guess you were there, not snapping pictures, you know, but just observing so that you’d be able to tell everyone else afterwards.
    Oh, you weren’t there? Then what gives you, mr. low-and-stupid, the gall to assume that you know better than anyone else? Christie Blatchford has spent years telling it exactly as she sees it, not as whatever the flavour of the month pretends it is. She, unlike 95% of her profession, actually investigates the story, and reports in an unbiased way. Look at the facts: the incident wasn’t reported until weeks after the fact, the girl’s story changed repeatedly, and there are other girls who confirmed that backwards Heather confirmed the sex was consensual.
    Apparently, you’ve never heard of teenage girls who issue rape accusations after they’ve been caught giving in to their desires, or when the boy – or teacher – they’re pursuing spurns them. There are a number of excellent documentaries along this theme; To Kill A Mockingbird comes to mind. That you would dismiss one of the basic tenets of our legal system – the presumption of innocence – and immediately rush to judgement is evidence of a very tiny mind, easily swayed.
    I’m not surprised that you’re unaware of the fact that one’s personality is, to an extent, affected by one’s name. The Romans had a saying “Nomen est omen“, and since I’m sure you’re unaware of Latin (it’s a language, BTW, not a type of dancing), let me translate: “Name is destiny”. It’s been the subject of serious pyschological study in the last 100 years, and the results are fairly conclusive. But of course, you’re smarter than over 2,000 years of human history, so you don’t have to worry about it.
    I’m sure little backwards Heather was never teased on the playground about being “backward”, which of course would quickly morph into “retarded”, “slow”, etc. Since that never happened to her, she’d never have had a reason to try to grow up too fast, to try to prove to the boys that she wasn’t backward, to overcome the stigma her fatuous, unthinking mother foisted on her. There’s just no way that I can conceive of a world where that would happen. (Hint: John, this is what people with more than a grade school education call ‘sarcasm’.)
    It seems from here, John, that you swallow anything the MSM dishes out. Doubtless, you think the Shiny Pony would make an “excellent” PM. Your remedial assignment is to look up the word ‘credulous’ and use it in a sentence.

  30. The modern progressive is so desperate to be seen to care, that they will swallow anything. Right John?
    I guessing you were never a horny teenager, naturally low testosterone does happen.
    As Twain sniggered, “A lie will travel 1/2 way around be world, by the time truth gets its boots on”.
    The legal requirements of innocent until proven guilty, exist because of the emotional reaction of concerned people.
    The young womans story is sad but predictable, are the emoters here as stunningly ignorant of human nature as they pretend?
    This is the true sign of a loon, to insist human nature is not what is is. Denial is a way of life for our cultural elites and their sycophants.
    Given the ingredients of the “party” , what did these kids parents expect?

  31. This is a sad story but what am I missing here? According to the article…
    “But she was still a good girlfriend: She later returned to the house with her mother, and again tried to persuade Rehtaeh to leave, to no avail.”
    What kind of parent would attend a party like this to retrieve her daughter’s friend and do nothing? What kind of morally bankrupt thuds do they have for parents in Nova Scotia anyway?
    Something is really amiss here.

  32. Sadly I am closer to the tragedy of suicide as my brother took his own life in 2010. All I have seen over the last few weeks is a bunch couch dwellers with puffed out chests and fake outrage pointing fingers at the RCMP,Harper or Dexter . Fact is all the screaming in the world will not bring Ms.Parsons back.Rather than dealing with point

  33. God, read the comments under that article. Blatch discusses some of the reasons charges weren’t laid, and an irrational shit-storm ensues. Note how many of the comments rely on personal experience (which trumps everything, including the law, in the eyes of liberals). I was assaulted, I know what it’s like, ergo these boys are guilty. It’s really frightening, to be honest.
    I’ve known a teacher that was accused of sexual misconduct and the girls made it up. It destroyed him, despite his being found not guilty. If any of these commenters were on the jury they’d have hanged the poor bastard.
    It’s also amusing to read just how many of the commenters have no idea who Christie Blatchford is –because you know, writing for the National Post & before that the Globe & Mail means you’re just a no-nothing hack.

  34. JUst another example of why Christie Blatchford is probably the finest and most creditable journalist in the country today.credible

  36. @John–you seem so knowledgeable about that particular pic. How do you know she was throwing up? How do you know it was a girl in the pic? (who was bent over)–from Ms Blatchford’s description all one can see is the boy’s face and a body bent over with the head out the window. I’ve thrown up for over-indulging before–never out a window–usually over a toilet or sink–sometimes on the street/lawn. By the way, I went through my teenage years without raping a girl…it’s not, as you contend, what teenage boys do. What most teenage boys do is look for a willing participant to have sex with them. The fact that her best friend mentioned that Ms Parsons was naked and laughing on a bed with two boys and didn’t leave when asked to by her best friend…would suggest to me that Ms Parson is what we would have called (back in the parlance of early-80s high school)–“an easy lay” and probably a vector for all sorts of STDs.

  37. While we’re on the subject, yes, 99.99 percent of the bad things that happen to people can be traced back to their own mistakes. Here’s the difference in our perspectives, John. Normal people accept the consequences of their actions, and learn from their mistakes. The truly wise, meanwhile, don’t learn from their mistakes, necessarily, but from the mistakes of others so as to not repeat them.
    The truly foolish, meanwhile, not only won’t learn from their mistakes, but blame everyone else for them. They try to re-order the world so as to ensure that other people will have live with the consequences of their actions, letting them get off scot-free.
    Cases do exist where there is no room for doubt that the woman really was raped (and didn’t just have to find a way to explain to her ma what the bollocks she thought she was playing at in the basement of some lout). News wire reports from Dar Al-Islam are full of stories about how women are regularly savagely gang-raped by mobs of perfect strangers, and are lucky to be pulled out of the scrum before they’re torn to pieces in broad daylight. That sort of thing has (so far, and no thanks to uncontrolled importation of savages) been rarely observed in Halifax or many other cities in civilized nations.
    Even the feminists concede that cases where no reasonable doubt of rape exists—that is, for example of women who five minutes previously were minding their own business being dragged into side alleys and being raped at knife or gun-point by a total stranger—are extremely rare in Canada. Men of sound mind, raised in civilized nations, simply do not do this. Mandating that women over the age of 14 carry concealed guns at all times when not accompanied by fathers, brothers or husbands, and be trained in their use, would put paid to practically all the cases that do exist.
    Women, like men, can, and should, be held responsible for their own conduct, for their own self-defense, and for the consequences of their own negligence. I submit that the responsibility for letting her daughter run wild, become the laughing stock of the village and do irreparable damage to her value on the marriage market, thereby destroying her mother’s plans to live on the pig’s back on her son-in-law’s money in her old age, is solely that of Leah Parsons.
    All Parsons wants is someone else to answer for the fact that she could not have failed more completely as a mother, and give her what she thinks the world owes her. Sorry, no. On the contrary, given the cost of this farce to the village’s reputation, Cole Harbour has a large account receivable from Leah Parsons. If she wants charity in her old age, she can send her inquiries to Justin Trudeau, not the people of Cole Harbour or the Queen of Nova Scotia.

  38. Most of you, especially John, and virtually everyone in the comment section of the article are missing the point. Blatchford isn’t making any judgment about the girl’s character. Nor should any of you.
    The point Blatchford’s making is that there was NO evidence that could be introduced into court to secure convictions.
    John: “Should they be up sh!ts creek and serve as examples to the rest of teenage boy-dom that this sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable? Yes.”
    Geez you’re friggin’ dumb. On what evidence, moron? On what evidence? There wasn’t any, and an experienced CA said so.
    Dick Slater: “If Leah Parsons had bothered to discipline her daughter and raise her with something resembling morals, none of this would have happened. As it is her daughter’s blood is on her hands as surely as if she’d hanged the girl herself.”
    You’re even worse than John, as if that was possible. This isn’t about morality; it’s about lack of evidence, you twit. Do girls get routinely assaulted in other cases through no fault of their own? Of course they do. By your putrid logic, every woman who gets sexually assaulted deserves it.

  39. Your comments are always unnecessary, John, because we already know with 100% accuracy what your position will be on any given topic: whatever boilerplate prog-lib narrative is circulating in the prog-media, you always repeat that narrative, down to the last identical detail, as if these pre-determined conclusions are your own thoughts.
    All your opinions are, in that sense, completely redundant.
    The little prog-fairytales you blindly subscribe to teach you that push-button, boilerplate outrage is “fact”. The fact that you act like you’re delivering the Sermon on the Mount is really your mistake, isn’t it, John?

    “…expecting teenage boys not to rape is too much. Boys rape! That’s what they do! So it’s the duty of the girl’s parents to ensure that she is chaperoned around these little rapists 24/7.”

    Umm, you weren’t there, John. And unfortunately for you and your one-man kangaroo court conclusions, Rehtaeh’s girlfriend was there:

    She said she was in and out of the bedroom where Rehtaeh had disappeared, and that at one point saw Rehtaeh on the bed with the two boys, naked and laughing. The friend tried to get her to leave with her, but Rehtaeh wouldn’t….She later returned to the house with her mother, and again tried to persuade Rehtaeh to leave, to no avail.

    Note that it wasn’t until two weeks after her first statement to the police that Rehtaeh claimed that she told the boys “no.”

    Add to all this conversations police know Rehtaeh had with friends the day after the party, which revealed a young woman filled with regret for what she portrayed as consensual sex with two boys and who was now afraid her friends would think her “a slut.”

    Look, John: The fact that these young partiers were drinking and behaving so profligately is (unarguably, to me) just one more sign that something’s wrong in our culture, and with the parents of all the individuals involved. And the subsequent cyber-bullying is shameful and sickening, and, it could be reasonably argued, criminal. But your judge-and-jury determination that it was a slam-drunk case of rape is in complete and utter defiance of all the evidence.

    What (the original police and prosecutors) had was a complainant whose evidence was all over the map, independent evidence that supported the notion that any sex was consensual, and no evidence that Rehtaeh was so drunk that she couldn’t consent: The case was a mess.

    If every female who every had sex after consuming alcohol is deemed to have been raped then just about every male in the western world — including yourself, most probably — is a rapist.
    The case is a mess, and so is your uninformed final verdict:

    “If you see somebody puking their guts out, do you give them some space, or go over, pull down her pants and proceed to f*ck what’s left of her 15 year old brains out while giving the thumbs up to your friends?”

    What’s the source of your evidence, John? You weren’t there — I assume you weren’t there — so how, for example, do you know that she was “puking her guts out?” How do you know she wasn’t, say, leaning on the windowsill?
    Why are you pretending to know the truth about something that occurred when you weren’t there, while simultaneously completely ignoring the evidence of those who were present?
    How do you know that the person with (her, presumably) head sticking out of the window was Rehtaeh Parsons, for example? How do you know the identity of the person standing behind that unidentified person? How do you know that the unidentified person with his/her head out the window was being penetrated? How do you know that the pair in the photo weren’t, say, two shitfaced male friends making a prank photo for larfs? (Ever been to, umm, Yellowknife on a Saturday night?)

    The photo is of a male naked from the waist down…pressing into the bare behind of another person who is leaning out a window. What the picture doesn’t reveal, however, is a recognizable face, if there even was a sexual assault going on, or if the second person was a female.”

    Put down the PC pitchfork, Mr. Kangaroo Court. Your “outrage” is neither fact nor evidence. Stop pretending that it is.

  40. The comments at that website are a timeless case study in groupthink.
    Including this gem;
    Christie Blatchford is the real “slut” here, nothing else but an attention whore. A young girl was abused and harrassed by little bastards, and all she knows to do is writing such a bullshit.

  41. Tough one. I admit that the details of the incident are sketchy and if what Blatchford is reporting is true then this was simply a party gone bad. This cyber bullying however is a new phenomenon. In the old days such bullying was usually remedied by moving to a new school or town. This cyber bullying however follows these kids everywhere and they can’t get from under it. When do we say enough is enough and do something about it? There have been too many teen suicides lately to ignore this.

  42. @KinburnSen – How do “we” do something about it… usually the “we” turns out to be the government, and it usually ends badly because we all know that the government rushes to put thing in place without thought to placate the masses, who are howling for “us” to do something!
    My first thought about “cyber” bullying is that I can ignore it. I can have Facebook and block people, I can ignore the taunts and name calling. Just as I would ignore them in real life. If it got so bad then I guess I would not log into Facebook at all. Then the bullying would have to move back into real life, and can be dealt with the same way as always, with bullies being faced down, or by just avoiding those people who are bullying you. Yes, sometimes the bully wins, and the best way is just to avoid them. I remember those days… not fun, but a fact.

  43. Yes, KinburnSen, the cyber-bulling in this case is appalling.
    I haven’t closely read all the comments on this thread, but I don’t think anyone here — or Christine Blatchford, or any commenter under any other report/article/blogpost I’ve read — thinks it’s a good thing, or that it’s okay.

  46. @KinburnSen – what struck me is how little Leah Parsons apparently did to resolve this beyond moving Rehtaeh to a new school in the same town, which isn’t going to do squat.
    For the princely sum of $600, she could have legally changed her and her daughter’s names to something a tad less stupid and Googleable, moved to a new town or province and given her daughter the chance to start over with a clean slate.

  47. No, sir! Truest thing said today.
    That is why some countries, France comes to mind, only allow names in some standard
    document. For France it is the Martyrology.
    Sir! May your first grandson be named “Praise-God Barebones” after the 17th C parliamentarian.

  48. Where were all the chest puffing progressives when the weak laws were put into place; looking for root causes

  49. Save hard copies of all your posts, John – and present them next time you want to get out of jury duty.

  50. Indeed, it is unlikely to have happened if her name had been “Heather”.
    As a university lecturer, I know that a young woman with a sensible name – Sarah, Grace, Victoria (Mary seems to be obsolescent), Heather, will do fairly well. I also have never seen, and don’t expect to see, a Kaylee, Cayley, or even a Linda. “Krista”, depending
    on spelling, can be problematic. It isn’t that I have any prejudice against them, I just will never encounter them professionally.
    The reason? Sensible, solid families usually give their children sensible names. A foolish name (obviously not the kid’s fault) indicates a problematic family. A foolish family will produce a kid with some serious problems.
    Some names just shriek, “trailer trash”!
    So the name is an indication of family background – not wealth, but solidity, sense of responsibility, and good sense.

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