Mother worried about Instagram account telling kids to kill themselves

Watch video: An Oshawa mother is worried about an anonymous instagram account telling kids to kill themselves. Minna Rhee reports. 

TORONTO – An Oshawa mother is worried about a brazen example of cyberbullying.

Kathryn McKissock said an Instagram account was set up last week entitled “if_u_on_this_kill_urself.” The anonymously administered page then uploaded photos of McKissock’s 12-year-old daughter Emily and three of her friends.

“It was like really heartbreaking,” she said while trying to hold back tears. “I didn’t know what to do. And a lot of my friends are on it and I didn’t know, why would someone do that?”

There was two other accounts titled “Ugly_Oshawa_B****es” and “Ugly_Oshawa_Sluts” but the photos on those have been deleted.

“I was more scared that one of my friend’s would actually kill themselves or do something really bad,” Emily said.

Kathryn said she went to police but was told the pages don’t necessarily constitute a crime.

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“There’s nothing criminal they have done. They said, sorry but bullying doesn’t really count as a charge,” she said. “Why would you have to wait until there’s a tragedy for somebody to come and do something?”

Global News was not able to contact Durham Regional Police at the time of publication.

Canadians across the country have been paying more attention to the seriousness of cyberbullying in recent years after the suicides of Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd.

In November, 2013 the Harper government announced changes to the criminal code which prohibited “intimate images” being shared without the consent of the person in the photos. But none of the photos on this particular Instagram account contained anything sexually explicit.

Last week, a man in the Netherlands was arrested in connection with the cyber bullying of Amanda Todd.