Army warned about cyberbullying
Veterans being bullied online could lead to suicide, experts caution
OTTAWA CITIZEN
Canadian military commanders have been warned that veterans with mental illnesses are being bullied online by their fellow soldiers, a situation it is feared could prompt some to commit suicide.
Though warnings were sent to senior officers in 2015, and the Canadian Army told the
it believes it now has the situation under control, others told the the online bullying continues.
In a December, 2015, e-mail — one of three warnings he sent to commanders that year — Col. Brock Millman, since retired but who held various senior positions in the army reserves in Ontario, described a cyber civil war that had broken out in which serving and former military personnel from the Toronto area were fighting with each other and harassing injured veterans. Though the veterans subjected to online harassment often responded with hostile comments of their own, many of those targeted were among the most vulnerable — those dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder.
“I think this is going to end with a body,” Millman warned, requesting “command intervention” to deal with the situation. He noted in one of his warnings that a perception existed that some of those involved with the harassment had support from army leadership.
Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Andre Salloum confirmed Jan. 12 to the that the problems were centred on a Facebook group, the 32 CBG Veterans Wellbeing Network. According to the group’s Facebook description, it exists to help current and former members of the army reserve’s Toronto-based 32 Canadian Brigade Group dealing with operational stress injuries. While the group is not officially affiliated with the army, it operates with the knowledge and support of commanders, army officers say.
Salloum told the that a number of army personnel and veterans were alleged to have been involved in cyberbullying, referred to certain veterans as “irrelevant little s—-s,” referring to one as “couch potato,” another as “poser boy” and another suffering from stress as a “whacko vet.”
In other cases, the obscenityfilled posts were aimed at veterans, both injured or otherwise, at other sites. In a comment posted to the
website last year, Hood also denounced prominent veterans’ advocate Sean Bruyea, who suffers from PTSD, as well as another injured veterans advocate, Mike Blais, “as morons.”
But Hood said he made the comments while defending himself against online attacks; that he has never engaged in cyberbullying, and is in fact himself a victim of cyberbullying by others.
In the August interview, Hood said he stood by his various comments and had support for his actions from his commanders. “I’m an infantry sergeant and I speak the language I speak,” said Hood, who also added that he suffers from an operational stress injury.
However in a new statement released Feb. 6 through an army public affairs officer, Hood told the he now pays more attention to what he posts online and “looking back, I regret some of the posts that I published.”
Bruyea, who said he hadn’t heard of Hood until he found himself targeted on the
website, told the the issue of cyberbullying against veterans is greater than any one Facebook group.
“It’s time for military commanders to start taking this seriously before some tragedy happens,” he said.
Salloum said the army does not tolerate harassment of any sort and takes any such allegations very seriously. But, he said, the army is a large institution and it can be challenging to monitor the online presence of several thousand soldiers.
Shortly after receiving the statement from the army that it believed it had the cyberbullying issue under control, the
received an anonymous e-mail warning against publishing this article. “Publish at your peril,” read the e-mail, which appeared to have originated with a Toronto-area server.