Cyberbullies take a hit

An anonymous threat posted to a Brooks Secondary School student’s blog has put one Powell River family on edge.

As the grade 12 student scrolled down on her latest blog post two weeks ago she discovered that someone had posted an anonymous message telling her that she would be targeted at school and she should “watch her back.”

“It seemed very much like a death threat to me,” said the girl’s father who was shown the message that morning.

He explained that at first his daughter wanted to ignore it and carry on. “Her passion is to go to school and she was going to forget about it,” he said. “She did not want to be taken out of school to go the RCMP to talk about it.”

The family notified the school and the police because they did not know if the threat was local or from outside the country. “These Internet things could be from anywhere,” he said.

A file was opened up on the threat, and officers have tried to determine the origin of the message, but initial attempts did not uncover any usable leads.

So far, there has only been the one message and the situation needs to escalate before the police can warrant bringing more resources to the file, the father said.

“She’s a very strong young woman,” he said. “She was upset that someone would do this, but is handling it well. She’s not letting it rule her life.”

There did not seem to be any context for this to happen, he added. She had not been targeted by prior bullying other than “the name-calling which is quite apparent in schools.”

Despite that, he said his daughter has probably experienced less bullying in school than he and his wife had as students.

“I find that teachers and principals do a good job of monitoring it a lot better—other than the cyberbullying,” he said. “It’s not a physical bullying anymore—it’s emotional and mental.”

Brooks principal Kathy Rothwell agrees.

“We deal with bullying of any kind every day,” she said. “It’s so widespread and happens in so many different ways. Cyberbullying is the worst, though.”

Traditional bullying behaviour is sometimes easier to deal with because the perpetrators can be clearly identified. Cyberbullying usually happens off the school grounds but bleeds into the campus.

“I’ve seen a huge increase with technology because now you can make comments almost anonymously, which you couldn’t before,” she said.

Rothwell said that in years past, students would write notes to each other. “Now they use the Internet.”

According to a 2011 Ipsos Reid survey of Canadian teens, one out of four said they witnessed online bullying. Sixteen per cent said someone posted an embarrassing photo of them online and more than half have had negative experiences with social networking.

Rothwell said she has worked to create an open school culture at Brooks where students are encouraged to speak with counsellors, teachers and administrators about concerns with bullying behaviour. “Our counsellors deal every day with these kinds of issues,” she added.

In some cases, Rothwell said that schools are advising parents to take the matter straight to the RCMP to deal with.

“Bullying has evolved in recent years and through means such as social media it can now reach places that were once safe,” said constable Tim Kenning, Powell River RCMP. “This opens the doors for a lot of social, emotional and psychological issues for our youth.”

Police treat accusations of bullying seriously and the prevalence is of real concern for law enforcement, he said.

Potentially, people who engage in bullying behaviour could be charged with criminal harassment, uttering threats, assault, theft and hate crimes, said Kenning.

He added that each case presents its own challenges. In some cases, teens are being bullied by anonymous people, in others the perpetrators are known to the victim.

He explained that one case he worked on centred around a recently broken-up high school couple where one person knew the other’s account passwords and began posting with the other’s account.

“It causes another barrier to the investigation,” Kenning said.

He added that police in the province are watching a recent case on Vancouver Island.

A 17-year-old Saanich girl was convicted of distributing child pornography and uttering threats last month.

The girl, who can not be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, sent explicit text images of her boyfriend’s former girlfriend and threats via Facebook to physically harm the other teen if she came to her Victoria-area high school.

The girl’s lawyers have begun to appeal her conviction saying that the ruling unfairly labels teens who possess explicit images of other teens as child pornographers.

“It’s monumental,” he added. “Depending on how the appeal goes, it could change the way everything is done. Everyone is keeping their eyes on this case.”

Kenning said the police seized over 36,000 text messages from the girl’s cell phone carrier and about 4,000 images from a group of youth.

“Messages that they thought were private were not,” he said.

Police not only have the ability to obtain warrants for checking the contents on phones, but also can look into the phone company or Internet provider’s servers for evidence. Now a new law to combat cyberbullying, Bill C-13, could give police more power to fight cyber crime.

If passed it will compel Internet providers to lengthen the periods that they hold on to clients’ data to make it easier for police to gather evidence. Critics claim that the bill erodes Canadians’ right to privacy.

Since 2008, the last Wednesday of February has been celebrated as Pink Shirt Day or Anti-Bullying Day in BC. This year, it is Wednesday, February 26.