Approximately 50 people stood across the road from the Halifax RCMP and Halifax Regional Police headquarters on Sunday afternoon, protesting what they call police inaction in the case of Rehtaeh Parson’s alleged sexual assault.
Rehtaeh died April 7, after she was pulled off life support. She had tried to take her own life three days earlier. Her mother, Leah Parsons, says the suicide was a result of a sexual assault Rehtaeh had faced over a year ago. Parsons says her daughter was raped by four boys, and then harassed constantly after the incident by fellow students and former friends.
The scene outside the police station Sunday was uncluttered by the routine faces of social activism one is accustomed to seeing in Halifax: this was about Rehtaeh. A former Cole Harbour resident spoke to the group, sporting a blue “Justice for Rehtaeh” poncho. Another speaker had come to the station after working the overnight shift—she had chosen attendance over sleep.
At the protest, demonstrators demanded that the RCMP continue their investigation of Parson’s rape. The event was organized by the online group Anonymous, which is threatening to release the names of the four suspects if they aren’t prosecuted.
Organizer Dave Rossetti says he isn’t part of Anonymous, but worked with its members to plan the event. “Do your job,” he said to police inside the building across the street. “Because it looks like other people are going to do your job for you if you don’t.”
“There will be action taken if the police don’t work,” said one member of Anonymous, who wore a mask and refused to be named. He says that the Internet group wants to respect the wishes of Leah Parsons, Rehtaeh’s mother, who attended the event and does not want the boys to be named.
However, he says that if their demands to see the suspects of the investigation face trial are not met in a timely fashion, Anonymous may re-evaluate.
Shortly after the Anonymous demonstration was over, about 12 people—including two young women—arrived for a counter-protest. They held signs saying “4 The Boys!!” (sic), “Speak the truth” and “Theres 2 sides to the story” (sic).
The meagre rally was organized by a Facebook group administrated by a girl, whom the group’s commenters identify as a sister to one of the accused rapists. The girl won’t comment to The Coast, but on the group’s wall she wrote she was “here to tell all the boys to keep their heads up and never back down.”
One of the group’s 140 members (as of Sunday) writes that Rehtaeh had “wanted the d” (sic). Another writes that after explicit photos of her were spread throughout her school and community, she subsequently “cried rape to save face.”
According to Jacqueline Vincent, a board member at the South House Gender Resource centre, false rape allegations are extremely uncommon. “People use the spectre of false reporting as another way to blame the victim,” she says. “That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how the justice system works when you report a sexual assault.”
“If you’re a rape victim…you have to be prepared for being socially ostracized [and] disbelieved.”
According to Statistics Canada, only one in 10 sexual assaults are reported to police. Avalon Sexual Assault Centre writes that from 2006 to 2007, the acquittal rate for sexual assaults in Nova Scotia was 13 percent—seven percentage points higher than the rate for other violent offences.
In the wake of Rehtaeh’s death, sexual assault survivors are speaking out.
Kim Wall is a 46-year-old Halifax resident with an 18-year-old daughter: “I have raised her to know the dangers of being a girl.”
As a young girl living in Cole Harbour, Wall says, her body was repeatedly exposed to male scrutiny.
Wall took to the microphone on Gottingen, across the street from RCMP and HRP headquarters, and shared her story. When she was 11 years old, she says, she was biking on a local trail when two older boys grabbed her and pulled off her shirt. “They attempted to remove my shorts when I got away,” she said. “I deserted my bike, covered my bare chest and ran screaming as if my life depended on it.”
When police later investigated the incident, she says, they closed the case. “They talked to their parents and the boys said they were sorry,” she says. “Not sorry they tried to rape me—sorry they scared me.”
Wall says she would later be assaulted at least twice in school by fellow students. Her educators would turn a blind eye. One would ask if she had been “looking for it.”
“Those weren’t the only times I’ve been assaulted—they’re just the times I talked about,” Wall says. “I was forced to expect and accept this treatment as a female.”
A press release by Avalon Sexual Assault Centre says that Rehtaeh wasn’t alone in Nova Scotia. Between 2011 and 2012, their nurse examiner responded to 119 sexual assaults. 63 per cent—about 52 victims—were women and girls between 13 and 25.
When Shelby Smith, 18, read a newspaper headline about Parson’s death while at work, she was “horrified.”
“It brought me back to when it happened to me,” she says. “There’s a sort of pain that you go through when you’re raped that nobody can understand unless they’ve been in the same place.”
Smith says that after she was sexually assaulted, she turned to a support system of friends. “This girl was all by herself. I know she was going to counseling, but that’s not the same,” she says. “When I read that her friends had called her a slut and she had to change schools I almost bawled my eyes out. This girl was feeling the things I did—and so many people do—and nobody was there.”
Smith is not a hacker, but she has devoted herself to doing everything she can to help Anonymous put pressure on the police. “We are the voice of Jane Doe, Steubenville,” she says. “I’m just one person, but we’re a collective group of people…[we’re] everyone who is not awash in a tide of apathy.”
This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2013.
Wouldn’t Cole Harbour High have been a better locale for a symbolic protest? After all, it’s the one place that the victim, perpetrators, participants and bystanders have in common.