Response to "The always-on stalker"
Last week's cover story by Hilary Beaumont inspired swift, emphatic reactions from readers in Halifax and around the world—a small sample of the comments from thecoast.ca follows below. As you can read on page 6, some of the institutions implicated in the story are promising to respond with corrective action. We will share any developments with you.
Incredible story! Thank you @hilarybeaumont. This story is an example of "the usual treatment" you come to expect for women in Nova Scotia. This is unacceptable. Are we a bunch of uneducated, muted, poverty-stricken girls? Or are some of us successful, strong women unafraid to step up and speak for our sisters who cannot? Do we really have to accept this kind of service from our government when our earnings help support the very services that are NOT working and are hurting us? If we cannot come together in numbers for ourselves, can we please step up/speak up for our daughters AND our sons? —Starr Reid
It's really frustrating to see how far we HAVEN'T come since Rehteah Parsons' death. Organized cyber-harassment and stalking campaigns against women feel like they're everywhere these days, and the people who deny that they're happening are either just plain delusional, or stand to gain something from the silence of victims. Often at the heart of these movements there are lone men who are the instigators, fed by an echo chamber of creeps and pervs.
We need to hold these people accountable for their actions, and the police accountable for their inaction. Nicole has already taken accountability by putting her story out in the open. Hopefully this does something to force the issue so the victims can get closure. Amazing work, Hilary. —Cait Parkinson
Computer crimes are complicated and quite frankly difficult to investigate but an effort has to be made. I'm not anti-police, and I know many police officers first-hand. I'm confident that all of them would have liked to help these ladies but unfortunately I don't think any of them would of had the necessary skills to do it. This I believe is the reason why they were referred to the CyberSCAN group. —Just An Opinion
There's something seriously wrong with Nova Scotia's justice system and dealing with scary stalker exes in the digital age. Nicole and Kim aren't the first case: I'm very close to another person who had much harsher retaliation from the local justice system when she tried to escape her ex, both physically and digitally.
This stuff isn't made up, it's a critical failure of the system that will not work to regulate or right itself until the problem is made very public, and the public holds those departments responsible for the failure accountable. —10-chan
Thank god for women like Nicole, Kim and Rehtaeh, who continued to seek justice despite all of the bs they had to go through. Their courage will no doubt help someone we love in the future. —Kathy J Minnis