Amanda Todd: a Victim of Paedophile Predation

[Cyrano Johnson]

Because her name came up on the "Bullying" thread below, I thought I'd link to this article, which alleges that Amanda Todd was not just a victim of peer bullying; the biggest part in her death appears to have been played by a paedophile predator who systematically stalked and harassed her for years.

EDIT: The story cited herein is Vice.com's "A Jailbait-Loving Perv Destroyed Amanda Todd's Life." Since Vekseid is concerned that this story names people whose guilt hasn't been proven, I'll remove the direct link for consistency's sake. But it should be easy to locate and read for yourself via Google search.

(I'm fascinated by "Anonymous'" continued emergence as a kind of ersatz vigilante-hacker superhero collective. A reminder that the power of anonymity on the Internet can work more than one way.)

[gaggedLouise]

Very interesting and depressively truthful. I think many of us have at least seen that kind of bastardite underbrush on the web sometimes, and the internet really has made it much easier to engage in stalking, harassing and misrepresenting people without having to take any responsibility or even place one's name under it.

[Dashenka]

I don't think she became victim of a Paedophile. He was the start of it all but do they know who he was? Was he even a he? How old was he? Was it not just a 'kid' playing a bad joke? I'm saying making it right what he did but it was part of a much much bigger problem. I'll try to explain how I think of it.

Internet is becoming a global communication medium. More and more young people use twitter, facebook and stuff like that to communicate with friends. So did Amanda. Initially with friends, later alone. When she met this person, he asked her to flash and she did. Very innocent, maybe naive. She isn't the first and won't be the last. It's the strength and the weakness of the internet. Anonymity.

It cannot be stopped and society has to find a way to deal with it by education the young children but also their parents of the 'dangers' of internet. This is in my opinion not the biggest problem or concern in the Amanda Todd story. Her friends abandoned her and turned against her. Just the cruelty of teens? Or is the problem bigger than that?

What broke my heart and I mean that (I cried bucket loads after seeing her clip on youtube) is that she felt alone. How can it be that in modern society a rather handsome, 15 year old girl feels alone I asked myself. It's where society in my opinion has failed. The guy who put up the picture was wrong. The girls who beat her up were wrong. But what about everybody who had the chance to help her but didn't? Plausible denial? Or ignorance? Or just how modern society works? Ask yourself, honestly, would you step up to help her if you were 15 and she got beaten up by a group of girls? Or would you grab your phone and film it? Or stand around and do nothing. I know what I would do...

Even in the youtube comments people call her a whole and a slut for flashing her boobs but be honest, is that enough to drive a young girl to commit suicide or is it the fact that everybody abandoned her because nobody wants to be friends with her because of their 'reputation'?

Society is to blame. You and me. For not being there for Amanda and for all other people who need help but are being abandoned because we don't want to ruin our reputation.

[Moraline]

I keep writing stuff and deleting it here, this topic gets me very emotional.

I have just to much to say on this topic.

I think I said it all in the bullying thread.

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=154127.msg7076857#msg7076857

Speak out against this type of behavior and encourage those that are victims to get help.

NEVER tolerate bullying in those around you.

[Cyrano Johnson]

Hi Moraline:

As I should have stated more clearly, the information here is really just meant to be supplementary to what you posted in the "Bullying" thread. Thanks for posting.

Hi Dashenka:

Yes, Anonymous allege to know who the predator was: a man named - from BC. (They also tracked down someone who was leaking naked autopsy photos of her[!], one -, who was indeed a kid.) There are further links in the article.

One reason this is of interest to me is that -- while of course the paedophile's blackmail strategies would have been ineffectual without social ignorance to work with, and you're right that there is a very real sense in which these events should make us all reflect on bullying in general and the private hells our society often consigns people to -- I'm not comfortable with - being allowed to recede to a footnote. He's not a footnote. Whatever guilt is shared by other parties in her life, he is* the single person without whose sickness and malice Amanda Todd would almost inarguably still be alive; and he's a representative of a very specific kind of online threat to teens that goes far beyond just the diffuse nature of the Internet and anonymity and how these combine with "society." This should not be lost sight of, and (I think the folks at Vice are right about this) it has been allowed to recede into the background or to be ignored entirely in much reportage.

* This is provided, of course, that Anonymous is right. And that's the other interesting thing this story brings up for me. It's easy to condemn bullying when practised against the defenseless and innocent: but would I object to someone using the Internet to make life a nightmare for a paedophile who had himself used it to effectively hound a girl into her grave? If - really was posting nudes of a suicide victim, do I feel sympathy for him that Anonymous hacktivists -- who after all are governed by much the same anarchic and tasteless standards of geek culture that have produced and nourished slimy individuals like Hunter Todd (mentioned in the article) -- changed the bio on his Twitter account to identify his specific brand of misbehaviour and call him a "Raging faggot" into the bargain? If Anonymous have it wrong, and this is the problem with vigilantes, then they're nothing more complicated than a bunch of thugs themselves; however, one has to concede that they've demonstrated enough technical skill over the years to at least have plausibly gotten it right. And if so, what then?

[Oniya]

I take most of what Anonymous does with a couple spoonfuls of salt.  For every 'ooh, wow, look at that!' thing that they do, there's at least two cases where they themselves become little more than bullies.  If they want to be 'Internet superheroes', they need to listen to Uncle Ben.

[Vekseid]

Please do not post names of people accused by 'Anonymous', until at least they are genuine public figures.

I certainly hope that something better can arise from this situation and if the one accused really is harassing hundreds of young girls like this, may he get the punishment he deserves. But first ensure that the accusation is true before spreading names in reference to the act.

[Cyrano Johnson]

If they want to be 'Internet superheroes', they need to listen to Uncle Ben.

... "Perfect Every Time"? "Stir up some passion with Uncle Ben's"?

... ohhhh that Uncle Ben. Gotcha.

[TaintedAndDelish]

It used to be that people were a bit more shrewd about hiding their identity online. When AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve were around, you had a handle or name, but it was obscure and it was just common knowledge that you don't post personal or identifying inormation online.

When Facebook, MySpace, and other services where people posted their pictures and shared their contacts and personal information came out, I cringed. It just seemed like a terrible idea on so many levels. This trend of being open and transparent makes it that much easier to be attacked and manipulated.

I thought this story was terribly sad, and more so, the fact that she wasn't able to walk away from it. Changing one's name is a lot easier when its just a name.

[Dashenka]

I think you misunderstood. He is the cause, no doubt about that and for that he should be punished accordingly.

What I meant to say is that Amanda was obviously screaming for help (drugs, alcohol, cutting herself, two earlier suicide attempts). How come nobody heard those screams or didn't act accordingly if they heard it?

The whole story is rather close to my own bed as similar things have happened to me. I was a bit older than Amanda was and I had the support from friends and family which makes it all the more shocking. A young girl who felt so alone that suicide seemed the best option to me means there is a lot more than just a guy who took a picture. He should be punished but we (the human race) should learn from this. By all pointing the finger at this guy we don't learn. He goes to prison and nothing changes and in a week or a month or a year another Amanda Todd will be in the news. And another one and another one.

After I posted this, I've talked about it to a friend of mine who is a mom of a 12 year old girl in England. Those kids form groups and one is the leader and if you don't follow what she says, you'll get kicked out of the group and be a social outcast at your school. That's where we are. We should all learn from this. Not just to stop bullying but to change how we function as a society. Moral values are just gone. Maybe I'm old fashioned for my 26 years but I don't think it's normal that we allow our kids to do the horrible things they are capable of and teach them the dangers of internet, rather than just saying it's a good thing.

[Cyrano Johnson]

What I meant to say is that Amanda was obviously screaming for help (drugs, alcohol, cutting herself, two earlier suicide attempts). How come nobody heard those screams or didn't act accordingly if they heard it?

It's a complicated question to be sure. But to be fair, there is a ton of literature available from suicide watch and anti-bullying groups to help recognize the signs, support groups and hotlines et cetera. On this front, the main take-away from a story like Amanda Todd's is that the awareness of these resources hasn't reached enough families and enough kids yet*. (Larger social questions can come into play, too. I personally think it's unrealistic to expect to be able to stop kids from forming social hierarchies, but it's worth looking at what happens soically in schools and what means are available to change toxic patterns like this.) 

(* EDIT: There is something else here, too. Even if people see the signs, they may not know how to help, or may be hesitant about getting involved in someone else's problems on the grounds that they might wind up incurring more harm to themselves than they manage to impart help. At a certain extreme this is just cowardice -- the person not willing to say something when they see somebody getting gratuitously attacked. What's harder to acknowledge is that there are situations where it may be hard to argue with as prudent caution. Suffering doesn't necessarily ennoble people, and that we may know someone who has obvious dysfunctions -- severe addictions, suicidal behaviour, personality disorders -- does not necessarily make it the case that there's an obvious way to "act accordingly" even with all the basic public health tips at one's disposal. It's like the lifeguard's nightmare, the proverbial drowning victim who winds up pulling under well-meaning but untrained would-be rescuers along with them; sometimes all that's really available for others to do is try to get them some professional help and hope they pull through. Speaking as someone who has lost friends to suicide -- I can't imagine how much worse it must feel to lose a child this way -- this makes me hesitant to be entirely free in condemning everybody around Amanda Todd.)

By all pointing the finger at this guy we don't learn. He goes to prison and nothing changes and in a week or a month or a year another Amanda Todd will be in the news.

The specific guy is less important than the phenomenon he represents. Sending one guy to prison may not change anything; a concerted assault on the pedophile and "jailbait" predator networks plausibly would. And perhaps what this story makes clear is that this needs to happen. Talk about the big-picture social questions is good and healthy, but it isn't enough.