Rehteah part 2

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.”

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.

Rehtaeh Parsons

Rehtaeh

        Her name is Rehtaeh Parsons, and she died after being taken off life support Sunday, April 7. Her death was the result of a suicide attempt that was ultimately successful. The vile circumstances that led to this poor girl’s death should serve as a wakeup call to all Canadians out there. Online bullying and slut shaming have reached scary new heights in our society. We must take action to ensure that the sick and twisted chain of events that cut short the life of Rehtaeh Parsons never happen again.

She loved all of her many pets

          One night in November 2011, Rehtaeh and a friend went to another friends’s house and had a bit to drink.There were four other boys there, and at some point during the night her friend left. She was only 15 years old when she was raped by the four boys. During the rape, one of the boys took a picture and decided that it would be funny to circulate it online. Though she was drunk and barely remembered the incident the next morning, no one would ever let her forget it. No one believed that it was a rape. Everyone just thought she was a slut. Her old friends abandoned her, and she moved away to Halifax to seek escape. The bullying continued, and she fell into depression. The shaming had become so extreme that Rehtaeh was admitted to hospital and on suicide watch for 6 weeks. Eventually she managed to move home and was able to start fighting the depression. She tried to hold her head up high, and tried to simply forget about what happened. 

           She attempted to prosecute the boys who did this to her. She went to the police, they did nothing for her. They said there was no case. They did not even interview the boys until the end of the investigation. No child pornography charges. No rape charges. No bullying charges. Nothing. 

Rehtaeh and her father just chillin

           Rehtaeh died from suicide April 7th at 11:15 PM. She was 17 years old.

           Rehteah’s father wrote a beautiful but heart breaking piece about her. The full article which I very strongly suggest you read and share virally is available by clicking the excerpt.

“I had to write something about this. I don’t want her life to defined by a Google search about suicide or death or rape. I want it to be about the giving heart she had. Her smile. Her love of life and the beautiful way in which she lived it.  The family I found out this afternoon my daughter saved the life of a young woman with her heart. How fitting. She also gave someone a new liver, a kidney, a new breath, and a new chance to love. She saved the lives of four people with her final gift of life. She was that wonderful. Someone out there is going to look at the world with my daughter’s eyes. The most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

         The piece written by her father and interview with her mother almost brought me to tears. There is a strength and nobility in the way her parents are dealing with the death of their precious daughter. There are no calls for revenge, or vigilante justice. Just some good, honest people trying to do the best they can after losing the one they loved the most in this world.

        I guess the rest of it falls on us, the teenagers of today. It’s our job now never to tolerate another instance of a young woman being bullied and abused. Alcohol is not consent. Rape makes rapists out of the perpetrators, not sluts out of the victims. Let this tragedy be a turning point that forever changes how we view those victims.