Rehtaeh Parsons' Death

Overview

Rehtaeh Parsons was a Canadian teenager who committed suicide in April 2013. Like fellow Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, her death was closely tied to cyberbullying following an X-rated viral photo.

Background

In November 2011, Rehtaeh Parsons attended a house party where she was allegedly gang raped by a group of four boys. One of them took a photograph of the act and distributed it among her classmates and friends at Cole Harbour District High School. Humiliated by the incident and subsequent harassments, Parsons and her family eventually moved to Halifax, where the girl spent nearly six weeks in a hospital after she began contemplating suicide. In November 2012, the police decided not to pursue the case further on the grounds of insufficient evidence and declared the spread of the photos a “community issue.”

Suicide

On April 4th, 2013, after continued harassment, Parsons made an attempt on her life by hanging herself in the bathroom. She remained on life support for three days in the hospital before she was declared brain dead on April 7th. That evening, her mother Leah created a Facebook fan page^[1] to memorialize her seventeen-year-old daughter. Within four days, the page accrued nearly 30,000 likes.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

After the Canadian newspaper Chronicle Herald^[2] ran a front page article about her death on April 9th, the story quickly began circulating in the news media and internet culture blogs including the Huffington Post^[3], the Daily Dot^[4] and the Frisky.^[5] The next day, actress Jada Pinkett Smith^[6] shared a photo of Parsons along with her story on Facebook, where it gained more than 16,000 likes and 2,600 shares. In the following days, Parsons’ story was featured on ThinkProgress^[7], Feministing^[8]. the Daily Dot^[9] and People^[10], who referred to the case as the “Canadian Steubenville.”

Father’s Response

On April 10th, Parsons’ father Glen Canning released a statement about his daughter and her death on his personal blog.^[11] The site quickly became unavailable due to heavy influx of traffic and the piece was re-published on the Huffington Post^[12],CBC^[13] and the Chronicle Herald^[14] later that same day. In his statement, Canning said that he wanted her name to be associated with the positive aspects of her life and not what happened at the end of it, concluding with a plea to the Justice Minister of Nova Scotia to revaluate the “digital trail” of evidence surrounding his daughter’s case and why the police waited months before even interviewing the accused.

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.
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.

Official Response

The same day, Nova Scotia Justice Minister Ross Landry revealed his intention to revisit the rape allegations, saying he hoped to have a meeting with Leah Parsons about the problems she had in pursuing the case. Following this news, spokesman for the Halifax Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Scott MacRae stated that the photo in question was evaluated to see if it would have been considered child pornography, but refrained from confirming any details of Parsons’ allegations. He also noted that the police are concerned with how the social media vigilantism and the “sensitivity of the family” might lead to unforeseen consequences such as spread of misinformation (shown below). Following this statement, Motherboard^[16] examined why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were failing young girls like Parsons and Amanda Todd, both underage girls who had illicit photos of themselves distributed online against their will.

Anonymous Involvement

Also on April 10th, Anonymous issued a video communiqué (shown below) called #OpJustice4Rehtaeh^[17], calling for the government to move forward with the case and threatening to release the boys’ names to the public if no further actions were taken. They claimed it took them two hours to find the identities of two of the boys in question.^[26] Leah Parsons made a public plea^[18] to keep the names quiet, as she believed her daughter would not want more bullying. Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account @YourAnonNews^[19] responded later that day, asking people not to reveal the boys’ names out of respect for Parsons’ mother. On April 11th, news of the Anonymous operation associated with the case was reported on the Huffington Post^[20], International Business Times^[21], Reddit^[22], the Daily Dot^[23] and Salon.^[24] Following the attention from Anonymous, Premier Darrell Dexter announced that cabinet minister Marilyn More would oversee the response to the girl’s death in an attempt to figure where the government failed her.