Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
My last experience giving testimony was during a criminal harassment proceeding against a man who tirelessly followed my movements online and sent a plethora of unwanted communication in my direction. Based on my experiences, I strongly believe that the criminal legal system is not a constructive way to address cyberviolence against women and girls. Criminalizing this behaviour is a reactive approach that will not end the suffering, and in fact in some cases is likely to prolong the suffering of women and girls online.
Finally, because of existing biases in our society and among our police, a criminalization approach stands to disproportionately penalize and incarcerate indigenous and racialized people while giving a pass or a cushier ride to middle-class white men who inflict cyberviolence. Like other people who have testified before this committee on this issue, I believe that the best way to prevent cyberviolence is early and lifelong education initiatives informed by research. I also believe that we need non-adversarial interventions for survivors that prioritize ending and acknowledging the harm, rather than punishing the persons who inflicted the harm and asking them to be accountable to the state rather than to their community and the survivors whom they have harmed.
While preparing me for my testimony in my own case, the crown prosecutor said something I'll never forget. She told me, “Remember, the only opinion that matters is the judge's.” To me, that statement was emblematic of many of the problems I encountered with the criminal legal system. If the judge's opinion is the only one that matters, what happens to the opinion of the person who was harmed? What if the judge doesn't have an adequate grasp of the key issues that are informing the proceeding? What if the judge fails to understand the nuances of what it is like to move through the world in a body or skin colour different from his own?
First of all, let's be frank. The judge's opinion, even if it is the only one that matters, doesn't form in a vacuum. It is influenced by the judge's station in society. It is influenced by the opinions and stations in society held by the police officers who conduct the investigation and the counsel who argue the case. No human being is without bias, and our biases are shaped by the stereotypes, norms, and power differentials of the society we live in. If a judge, a police officer, or a lawyer does not intimately understand the realities of being a young woman, they are, frankly, not qualified to assess the “objective danger” of the situations young women and girls are facing online.
Second, legal workers often also lack forms of digital literacy—