Sextortion case shows need for resources
The conviction of Aydin Coban for the “sextortion” of British Columbia teenager Amanda Todd has prompted calls from lawyers and advocates for more regulation, resources and education in Canada to protect future victims.
Lianna McDonald, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said Todd’s case served as a warning, but Canada “failed to act.”
“Looking back, essentially nothing has been done to be proactive and actually address the issues that put kids at risk every day: platforms that allow anonymous adults to interact with our children in unsupervised digital spaces, any time or anywhere,” she said.
Coban, a Dutch national, was convicted on Saturday of extortion, harassment, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and possession and distribution of child pornography in relation to Todd.
She was 15 when she died by suicide in 2012, after years of harassment from 22 social media accounts that Crown attorneys said were controlled by Coban.
His sentencing hearing will be held in B. C. Supreme Court in September.
The jury’s decision came days after Statistics Canada released data showing that police-reported extortion cases rose nearly 300 per cent in the last decade. Todd’s mother, Carol Todd, has said the extortion her daughter suffered has become a global problem that needs to be addressed by governments and law enforcement. Her daughter’s suicide gained international attention in 2012. Todd had posted a video in which she used flash cards to describe being tormented by an anonymous harasser. It has been watched nearly 15 million times.
Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, was first introduced in 2013, following Todd’s death, and aimed to combat online harassment by making it illegal to distribute intimate images without consent. At the time, Carol Todd criticized the privacyrelated provisions in the bill.
“It’s been 10 years since Bill C-13 was introduced. It needs to be revamped, and the word sextortion needs to be put in the Criminal Code somewhere,” Carol Todd said in an interview Friday, before Coban’s conviction.
But David Fraser, an internet and privacy lawyer with the Canadian law firm McInnes Cooper in Halifax, said creating a new law specific to sextortion isn’t necessary, something made evident by Coban’s conviction. He said generalized laws allow police to pursue charges more freely, because technological advancements far outpace law-making. He did identify two benefits to proscribing sextortion explicitly: clarity for law enforcement and recognition for victims and the emotional harm they endured.
“Extortion that takes place online is still Criminal Code extortion,” he said. “It’s worth a conversation, but I did say shortly after the death of Amanda Todd that our laws were sufficient to take care of that. What failed her, it appears, was the legal system rather than the laws. “
Fraser said police have often failed to translate existing laws into an online context. He is calling for more resources and training for law enforcement.
Coban was extradited to Canada in 2020 from the Netherlands, where he had been convicted of similar allegations to those in the Todd case. He was sentenced in Amsterdam in 2017 to almost 11 years
in prison for cyberbullying dozens of young girls and gay men.
Darren Laur, chief training officer at White Hatter, an internet safety and digital literacy education company, said he wasn’t surprised by the verdict.
“It’s good to see that with this conviction, it does create case law specific to sextortion under existing extortion laws. The laws have been there. We’ve just been waiting for cases to go to court to create case law to support the Criminal Code,” Laur said.
The Department of Canadian Heritage said in a statement the federal government is working to address harmful content online, including the possibility of a regulatory body.
“Canadians should be able to express themselves freely and openly without fear of harm online,” the government said in the statement.
“The Government of Canada is committed to taking the time to get this issue right and continuing to engage Canadians, stakeholders, and affected groups every step of the way on the road to tabling legislation as soon as possible.”