The Halifax police have re opened the Rehteah Parsons case in the wake of her death citing “new and credible information”. Anonymous, the hacktivist group launched a campaign after her death that they named #OpJusticeforRehteah. They claim to have identified the four boys who took and sent the picture and have given that information to the police. The Canadian police, however, made sure to say that the additional information “did not come from an online source.”
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| Protesters holding vigil for Rehteah |
Though it comes too late in this incredibly sad story of both human and government failure, Nova Scotia Justice Minister Ross Landry is seeking to change Canadian law and try to find a silver lining in this very dark cloud. If passed, this law would make it illegal to circulate pictures of a sexual nature without consent. Though what happened to Rehteah occurred at age 15, the proposed law would address this long standing problem for people of all ages, not just minors.
As young people in a digital world, we can see the effects that this law will have if it is passed. I’m sure every one of us knows someone, or has even heard rumours about someone, who had sexual pictures of them sent around. It’s tragic that, in our hyper-connected environment, people at their most vulnerable are being used as a source of comedy and ridicule all because of one bad decision.
I hope that making distribution of those kind of pictures without consent a federal crime will stop teens from trading naked pictures of others like baseball cards. It’s a damn shame that an act as easy to trace as sending a picture between cellphones is not tracked by the police. It’s a bigger shame that the legal loophole with regards to sexual cyber bullying was so extreme that it took repeated suicides to motivate the country into action.
I hope another girl doesn’t have to die for this.
I hope we learn our lesson.
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