The trial of a Dutch man accused of harassing and sexually extorting B.C. teen Amanda Todd before she took her own life in 2012 continued Tuesday, with disturbing testimony from the girl’s parents.
Carol Todd told the second day of the trial how she heard her daughter “shriek” and come running downstairs on Nov. 12, 2011.
The teen had discovered a Facebook account that was using a topless image of her as its profile picture, her mother testified. The account had friended several of Amanda’s friends and acquaintances at Westview Secondary in Maple Ridge, she added.
“Mom, what are we going to do, why is this happening?” was Amanda’s response, Carol testified. “She was afraid again of what it would be like going back to school, so she was distressed. And I was distressed with her.”
A day earlier, Crown read out numerous social media messages it alleges Aydin Coban sent to Amanda using 22 fake accounts between 2009 and 2012 as a part of a targeted “sextortion” campaign against her. Coban has pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges, including extortion, possession of child pornography, and criminal harassment. He was extradited to Canada to face trial in 2020.
Among the messages presented Monday was a YouTube message in April 2011 that demanded Amanda give 30-minute “live shows” via webcam or the sender would “f— up” her life “at Westview Secondary too.”
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Carol told the court Tuesday that after Amanda found the Facebook account with the explicit image of her, she began staying home and by December, had “stopped going to school altogether because of the fear and anxiety of being in front of her peers.” In January, Carol testified, she changed schools.
During cross-examination, defence lawyer Joseph Saulnier questioned that timeline, suggesting Amanda had almost completely withdrawn from Westview at least a month before the discovery of the Facebook account because of a traumatic incident involving a boy unrelated to the alleged “sextortion.”
Saulnier referred to a statement Carol gave to police two days after Amanda’s suicide in which she said her daughter had probably left the school by October 2011. In response, Carol said that statement was likely more accurate than her memory now, and that Amanda had not spoken to her about such an incident involving a boy.
Amanda’s father, Norm Todd, also took the stand, describing how his daughter came to him with threatening messages she’d received after she moved out of her mother’s home to live with him in 2010.
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“She brought the messages that someone was stalking her online, the pedophile,” he told the court.
“They were about her exposing herself online or it would be sent out to her schools and friends and stuff, so blackmailing her, threatening her.
Norm said some of the messages contained web links, including one that led to a video of Amanda lifting her top and exposing her breasts.
“She was scared and kind of panicky. Didn’t know what she could do about it,” he said.
Social media 'a main focus for' Amanda
Throughout Tuesday’s testimony, the court heard from both parents about how important social media was to their daughter.
“I think it was a really big part, a main focus for her,” Norm testified, adding that she spent a significant amount of time chatting online.
At one point during cross-examination, Carol rejected the defence’s suggestion that it was “impossible” to keep Amanda off the internet.
“I wouldn’t say it was impossible to keep her off the internet. There were parameters that were set. But she oftentimes went beyond those parameters.”
Carol said she and Norm had tried to align their rules about internet usage but that “it often didn’t work out that way,” and that Amanda had more access at her father’s house.
Carol told the court about how, during a meeting with police following a December 2010 incident of sextortion, Mounties suggested Amanda stop going on social media.
That break lasted a few months, the mother said, before she and Amanda’s dad gradually allowed her to re-enter her Facebook world.
Mounties also recommended she delete people she did not know from her more than 1,000 Facebook friends, Carol said. Her daughter deleted some, she added, but not all of them.
Norm told the court he had tried various ways to limit Amanda’s online activity, but that it was difficult as social media was one of her most important places for social activity.
“At some points, I cut her off. At some points, I gave her some trust if she followed the rules,” he said. When he did cut her off, he said Amanda “freaked out.”
Conversations with Amanda about limiting access or adding parental controls tended to lead to arguments, he said under cross-examination, testifying that his daughter once “ran away” to her mom’s house in the Fall of 2011 after he took away her cell phone and internet.
'Sextortion' campaign
On Monday, Carol described first learning about the harassment campaign against her daughter when a Facebook account by the name of “Alice McAllister” sent her a link to an explicit video of Amanda a few days before Christmas in 2010.
Carol went on to detail how her daughter’s mental health declined over the ensuing months, amid further threatening messages and subsequent bullying at school associated with the harassment campaign.
Crown has alleged Coban engaged in a four-year “sextortion” campaign against the girl.
Prosecutor Louise Kenworthy told the 12-person jury that evidence would prove the 22 social media accounts were operated by one person and that that person is Coban, and that in several cases, Coban actually did send links to the explicit material to scores of people including family, schoolmates and school administrators.
His defence has yet to make its opening arguments, but lawyer Saulnier told reporters outside court on Monday that while there is no doubt Amanda was the victim of crimes, Crown needs to prove that his client was the one who committed them and that the prosecution’s evidence allegedly linking his client to the online messages was not strong.
Not long before she died by suicide, Amanda, then 15 years old, posted a video to YouTube of herself silently holding up a series of flashcards describing the torment she endured. It gained worldwide attention and became a rallying cry against cyberbullying.
In the video, she described how someone in an online chatroom asked her to expose her breasts, and how she later received messages from a man threatening to release intimate photos of her if she didn’t “put on a show” for him.
The trial is scheduled to last seven weeks.
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