Author Archives: Ryan Van Horne

Guilty plea in Rehtaeh Parsons case

rehtaeh parsons

Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide in April 2013. Her death helped spark a new police investigation.

A young man who took the picture used to shame and bully Rehtaeh Parsons has pleaded guilty to production of child pornography.

He admitted to taking the picture of another boy, a co-accused in the case, who was in the picture with Rehtaeh in November 2011 when he was 17 and Rehtaeh was 15. Neither of the accused, who were both under 18 at the time, can be named. Their identities are protected by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Crown Attorney Alex Smith read an agreed statement of facts to Halifax Provincial Court Judge Greg Lenehan.

Smith describes the image which shows one boy, naked from the waist down, behind Rehtaeh and pressing his genital region up against her while giving a thumbs-up sign. Rehtaeh Parsons is naked from the waist down.

“At the time the photograph was taken, (one of the accused) was having sex with Rehtaeh Parsons as she was vomiting out the window,” Smith told the court.

The youth in court today faced charges of production and distribution of child pornography. The Crown dropped the charge of distribution.

Another boy, the one in the picture who is charged only with distribution of child pornography, is scheduled to go on trial in November.

There is also a publication ban on the identity of the victim, Rehtaeh Parsons, despite the opposition of the Crown Attorney and her parents. Four Nova Scotia media outlets fought the ban in May, but Judge Jamie Campbell said it was a statutory ban that he had to impose – even though it didn’t make sense because her name was already so well known. In reporting this story today, media outlets continue to observe the ban.

It is the law of the country and judges must do their duty and enforce the law passed by Parliament. That is why the judge cannot be faulted in this case.

This post respectfully disregards the publication ban because a greater public good is served by doing so.

There is a higher goal than upholding the law and that is justice; something that judges, especially those that practice judicial restraint, sometimes do not consider.

There is an oft-told story of a conversation between two great American jurists, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Learned Hand, who met for lunch one day.

As Holmes began to drive away, Hand implored him to “Do justice, sir, do justice!”

Holmes stopped and admonished his fellow judge with this retort: “That is not my job. It is my job to apply the law.”

In the absence of an activist judge, or an Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions willing to make a public pronouncement that no charges will be laid in this case, it is left to the media to wonder about the safety of violating the ban.

Henry David Thoreau, in his essay Civil Disobedience, encouraged people to disobey what he called “unjust laws.”

Thoreau wrote: “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

Let me be clear. It’s not that this law is unjust. It is that it is unjust in this case and should be ignored.

Clearly, this is an exception that Parliament did not think of when they passed the law and they need to amend it.

Lastly, there is a clause in the Youth Criminal Justice Act that allows for the parents of a victim to waive the privacy rights of their children. Glen Canning and Leah Parsons have done so in this case, but Judge Campbell chose not to accept that argument, saying that the Criminal Code provision wins the day – even though it doesn’t really make any sense in this case. See decision here.

Rehtaeh Parsons’ name brings power to any discussion about sexual consent, cyber-bullying, and suicide prevention. Her case prompted important legal reforms in Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada. The federal government, which is working on passing Bill C-13 to counter cyber-bullying, is doing so partly because of what happened to Rehtaeh Parsons.

Most importantly, this change of plea needs to be connected to the case at a time when publication of her name was permitted.

Why?

Because of the way the police and the Public Prosecution Service handled the case. Initially, the police focussed their investigation — such as it was — on sexual assault after an incident in November 2011. They spent most of their early efforts investigating Rehtaeh and took a long time – several months – before interviewing the four teenage boys alleged to have raped her when she was extremely intoxicated.

The Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service reviewed the case, but didn’t lay charges because there wasn’t a strong enough likelihood of a conviction. It was dubbed a “he said, she said” case amid claims that Rehtaeh had made advances, or at least appeared willing earlier in the evening.

By the time the picture was taken, as the agreed statement of facts read into court today would indicate, Rehtaeh was not in any state to be consenting to sex.

Amazingly, the existence of a photograph of a minor engaged in a sexual act did not spark law enforcement professionals involved in the investigation to consider laying a charge of production and distribution of child pornography. Canning said police and school officials knew of the photo’s existence within a week of it being taken.

“They allowed this image to spread even knowing that this was child pornography. They knew who had it and who was doing it and there was nothing done to stop it,” he said. “Every time it was shared, it victimized Rehtaeh.”

The photo spread like wildfire through her community in a suburb of Halifax. Fellow students called Rehtaeh Parsons a slut and some total strangers texted her and asked her if she wanted to have sex with them. The bullying became too much so she switched schools and sought counselling. She claimed she was raped, but no charges were laid and this added to the grief. She struggled for months, but in April 2013, she committed suicide by hanging herself in the bathroom with a belt.

Her case attracted worldwide attention and even prompted the intervention of Anonymous, who started #OpJustice4Rehtaeh to get the police to reopen the case. The police reopened the case and, amid the furor, some people defended the four boys saying that the sex was consensual.

Within a few months, the police laid charges of production and distribution of child pornography against two of the four boys, but some claimed it was just a way to put an end to mounting public pressure.

Today’s guilty plea should put an end to those claims.

When Judge Greg Lenehan told the young man to meet with a probation officer and cooperate with them in the preparation of a pre-sentence report, he responded in a subdued voice. “Yes, sir.”

He is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Nov. 13.

For Leah Parsons, Rehtaeh’s mother, nothing will ever bring her daughter back. But keeping her memory alive and using it to make some important changes, means a great deal to her.

“None of it is enough, but the fact that he’s pleading guilty is some consolation,” she said. “I do feel some solace in that she just wanted to be validated and she wanted people to know that this actually happened to her.”

Don’t pit one worthy cause against another

Some folks are pointing out that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a waste of water. With so many people in under-developed countries dying from a lack of clean drinking water, and so few people dying from ALS, this highly successful marketing campaign that has been so prevalent on social media is misguided.

When you look at the raw numbers, it’s a compelling case.

More people die from a lack of clean drinking water than ALS. You can even find some diseases that kill more people than ALS. But look deeper, how many of those diseases are exacerbated by the way we live, poor diet, alcohol consumption or lack of exercise?

People who get ALS get it because they draw the short straw. Plain and simple. I’m not going to pit one worthy cause against another, but I was nominated for the ALS ice-bucket challenge and I accepted – and donated.

The pharmaceutical industry hasn’t found a cure to help these people because it’s not profitable and doesn’t bring a good return to shareholders. If I can help with a little bit of time, a little bit of money, and have a little fun doing it, count me in.

I wonder, how much money would have been raised for ALS research, if somebody just donated money and didn’t make a funny video that also challenged others to give? A lot less, and there’s no doubt about that.

What is the reason for ALS deaths? Lack of research into a cure. What is the reason for deaths related to a lack of clean drinking water? It’s not the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and it’s not a lack of research money. Can money help? Sure it can, but if you think that giving people access to clean drinking water is important, as I do, then use the publicity that this campaign has generated to say that while you support ALS research, you are concerned about access to water or some other disease that doesn’t get enough research funding. Instead of dumping a bucket of ice water over your head, say you’ll fund research for another disease or you’ll fund a project to bring clean drinking water to those who don’t have it.

It’s like using the fundamental principal of jujitsu, but in a slightly different way. In jujitsu, you use the force of your opponent against them. In this case, use the force of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to bring attention to another worthy case and help raise money for that instead.

Oh, I’m also helping to raise money for a project that will drill a well in Ecuador and provide a continuous source of clean drinking water to a village.

 

 

 

 

An early autopsy of the newspaper industry

newspaper-2

The newspaper business is slowly dying, but it didn’t have to be this way.

The Poynter Institute reports that 1,300 more newspaper jobs disappeared in the United States in 2013.

In what is surely a most cruel form of irony, the people responsible for running the newspaper business – the suits, the MBAs, the publishers – could have made the decisions to at least soften the decline of the industry if not prevent it, but they failed miserably.

Supposedly, they had all that business savvy, but they proved that they didn’t. They supposedly had the knowledge to read the changing business landscape and the authority to make the decisions to adjust; they did neither well enough to make a difference.

Here’s something you need to know about newspapers. They were never really a challenging business during their prime. In many communities and cities, they were a licence to print money – especially if it was a one-newspaper market. Classified advertising was the huge cash cow for many newspapers and there was also revenue from display advertising that pushed the percentage of revenue from non-subscription sources to upwards of 75 to 80 per cent.

Think about that. The people who got the newspapers at their doorstep paid for 25 per cent of the cost of collecting that news, printing it on newsprint, and delivering the bundled-up dead trees to the homes of subscribers.

Then, along comes a new medium called the Internet that can deliver the news to readers for a pittance. You still need to pay reporters, photographers, designers, and people to upload the news to a website, but you eliminate some huge cost centres. You don’t need to buy newsprint, you don’t need to buy expensive printing presses, or pay the salaries of people to print it and deliver it.

Comparatively, it’s a cheaper, more environmentally friendly way of delivering news to readers. It offered the promise of huge savings if the new medium was embraced, but the industry timidly put one toe in the water instead and continued printing newspapers while paying lip-service to their websites.

Then came the complaints that the Internet wasn’t working for them because they had to give content away because people wouldn’t pay for it. During this time sites like Craigslist and Kijiji siphoned classified ad revenue. Instead of copying their business model to keep those eyeballs on newspaper websites, they continued to charge for classified ads and drove more and more classified ad users to these free websites.

Like anything that has gone extinct, the companies that run newspapers failed to evolve.

If the companies that run newspapers want to exist — and continue delivering news — after the great demographic bubble of the baby boom passes on, they’ll need to get their heads out of their wazoos and stop printing news on dead trees.

Trashing the litterbugs

Tim_hortons_cup_trash

 

 

My daughter was only about four years old when we were out at a park and she noticed some litter on the ground.

“Oh, look,” she said. “Somebody forgot their garbage.”

We produce way more than our share of garbage in North America that the least we can do of it is properly dispose of it. When I was a kid, we were taught that littering was bad. Then, we tried to add another layer of responsibility on top of that and it seems like the North American brain short-circuited.

“Recycle and dispose of my garbage? But I’ve got TV shows to watch,” I imagine the modern-day neanderthal saying.

We live in a society with too many lazy slobs and not enough people who care. The evidence is overwhelming. Yesterday, my son took part in “Clean up to win,” a neighbourhood clean-up that coincides with the end of Tim Hortons’ Roll Up the Rim to Win contest. In about three hours, one person picked up more than 500 empty cups that had been discarded in Spryfield. He was not alone, many others from the Adventure Earth Centre in Halifax, who are part of HEAT (Helping the Earth by Acting Together) are participating in the clean-up. Tonight, those who participate get to enter their name into a draw for prizes. To be fair, there was some other garbage from a local McDonald’s, but about two-thirds of it originated from Tim Hortons.

This is the kind of contest we need. One that helps prevent litter and waste, rather than causing it.

Happy Earth Day, everyone.

Ignore the branding: These are the oranges you’re looking for

Navel Oranges

As a teenager, I worked for a few years at a produce store in Montreal and learned a great deal about fruits and vegetables from my boss, Harvey Levy, who loved to educate his employees.

One day, we got a shipment of navel oranges and they were delicious. Harvey, as he often did, sampled them before buying a few hundred cases of the juicy, seedless citrus fruit that is popular with consumers.

He knew it was good value – a better value than the navel oranges sold by Sunkist which relied on branding to pump up its price and reputation. Yes, pilgrims, Sunkist is not a type of orange, it’s merely one of many companies that grows and sells navel oranges.

Harvey knew that some customers would be skeptical about the oranges because they didn’t have the Sunkist stamp, so he asked us to cut up a bunch of them and offer them as samples.

For many people, tasting was believing and they happily bought the oranges which were on sale. They, like me, learned a valuable, lesson about oranges and branding.

Some people, narrow-mindedly refused to even try a free sample, even though these oranges tasted great and offered all the same health benefits of the name-brand orange.

“I only eat Sunkist oranges,” some said.

After I finish shaking my head, I pity people like that.

Police brutality in Russia

Pussy Riot members whipped by police

I have not watched much of the Olympics. Partly, it’s a lack of interest but mostly it’s because I am not a TV watcher. If the Olympics did not happen, the world would carry on. As much as I admire the Olympic ideals, the event has strayed a tidy step from its roots.

That said, I don’t think anyone who takes an interest in the Olympics or does anything less than calling for a boycott of the Olympics can be so summarily categorized as a supporter of the Russian regime. You can enjoy and appreciate the Olympics while not supporting the behaviour we see in the video (see link above.) Polemics rarely settle issues and often start arguments.

The Olympics have brought a lot of attention on Russia. This plague of human rights abuses did not start in the run-up to the Olympics — it has been going on for years. The Olympics have shone a bright light of scrutiny on Russia. The picture is ugly to be sure, but awareness is the first step to a cure. The remedy will take a long time and I hope the suffering will be mitigated by some more progressive thinking.

Change — whenever it happens — would quite likely have taken much longer without the Olympics. For inspiration, look to South Africa. I remember thinking that Apartheid would never end there. With scrutiny and pressure from the international community, the seemingly impossible happened.

I admire the bravery of the protestors in Russia. Their courage is beyond compare.

How to avoid car-pedestrian accidents

We here at the Department of Common Sense are alarmed at the high number of car-pedestrian accidents in Halifax.

There is a lot of finger-pointing and, if blame were to be meted out, it would be assigned equally as both motorists and pedestrians are to blame. The finger-pointing is counter-productive, though, so we think it’s best to focus on solutions.

To my fellow pedestrians: When you’re lying in a hospital bed, it doesn’t make you feel any better to have been right that you had the right of way. I walk more than I drive, but when I walk, I always make sure that I have made eye contact with the driver and that I see a noticeable slowing down before I cross. There have been many times that this has made me a spectator to an inattentive motorist zooming in front of me, and, while it is frustrating, it is painless.

On the rare occasion that I drive, I always make an effort to look at the pedestrian and make a gesture to let them know that I’ve seen them. To drivers: stay off your cellphone, don’t put makeup on in the car, and for God’s sake keep your dogs off your lap. You’re driving a big hunk of metal and your job is do it safely. There are pedestrians out and about. Keep an eye out for them.

In 29 years of driving and 40 years as a pedestrian, this simple technique has prevented car-pedestrian accidents involving yours truly. (Knock on wood)

This is a public service message from the Department of Common Sense.

Branding Halifax: not exactly as advertised

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage is inviting citizens of Halifax Regional Municipality to define our city. It’s very kind of him to attempt to engage citizens, but I fear the focus on words – not actions – might prevent us from achieving the stated goal: branding Halifax.

With the help of a marketing company, there is a social media campaign that is prompting people to put on their thinking tuques and come up with a new slogan for the city. In many respects though, it’s like asking Rumpelstiltskin to turn straw into gold instead of loading up your rucksack and heading for the hills to pan for gold.

Attempting to conjure up a brand through a clever marketing campaign might generate buzz, but I doubt it will lead to a true, lasting brand. You forge a brand by consistently acting a certain way over time.

With apologies to Dr. Seuss, a brand is sort of like Christmas.

“It comes without packages, boxes or bags!”

“Maybe branding doesn’t come from a store.”

“Maybe branding … perhaps … means a little bit more!”

A public relations firm can help promote a brand, but in HRM’s case, defining it is up to the government and the citizenry. The government can shape a brand by the way it governs and citizens can do so by the way we live.

If you want to define Halifax, don’t focus on the witty bon mots and pithy slogans – especially if they are hollow words.

If you must have a slogan, make them hallowed words and act accordingly: smartly, openly, honestly and consistently.

Persnickety parking enforcer wins Dick Clod Award

Parking ticket issued at 4:05 p.m. on New Year's Eve when there was little traffic on Lower Water Street in Halifax.

Parking ticket issued at 4:05 p.m. on New Year’s Eve when there was little traffic on Lower Water Street in Halifax.

It’s New Year’s Eve in Halifax. Across the street from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, a four-door sedan is parked illegally for five whole minutes.

Miraculously, it has not impeded traffic on Lower Water Street, but it’s only a matter of time before it chokes off this major artery and prevents the city’s workforce from getting home to ring in the New Year.

Josh Richter, Badge #50085, is walking the beat for Parking Enforcement Division H and he’s fighting the bitter December cold as he takes out his pen to issue a parking ticket. Not content with merely giving this scofflaw a $25 fine, he calls for tow-truck support. This parked car is a serious problem that must be dealt with quickly because there are a lot of people trying to get home from work at 4:05 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

A mother and two small children emerge from the museum just in time to stop their car from being towed away. Our diligent parking enforcer briefly regains his wits and halts the towing process so the trio is not stranded downtown — but the $25 parking ticket stands.

Thank goodness for parking enforcers like Josh Richter, who are so well-endowed with common sense that they assiduously enforce parking bylaws even when it’s not necessary and keep our fair city safe from the scourge of parked cars.

For sticking to the letter of the law and enforcing parking regulations even when it does no civic good, Josh Richter earns the 2013 Dick Clod Award – a dubious honour given to those who are persnickety without peer.

Nominations for the 2014 award are open. Please send them in.