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Scathing allegations of a mass drugging and sexual assault at a Western University residence during Orientation Week go viral on social media.
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How social media 'blew the lid off' alleged sexual violence at Western – London Free Press (Blogs)
Police and other officials can no longer ignore allegations that aren’t made through formal channels
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Police and university administration react quickly to the online reports as students organize a campus-wide walkout that draws 10,000 people.
Welcome to the new digital frontier in the fight against sexual violence, say policing and gender violence experts.
“There’s no doubt the amount of social media attention, which also galvanized mainstream media attention, was a major motivator for police and the university to really act and take this seriously,” said Barb MacQuarrie, community director of the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western’s faculty of education.
“It just blew the lid off the problem in a way that we’ve never seen before. This is not possible when you have individual complainants coming forward through what needs to be confidential avenues.”
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London police made direct contact with more than 600 students while investigating online allegations of drugging and sexual assault at Medway-Sydenham Hall affecting upward of 30 women, but after nearly three weeks, no complainants have come forward.
The investigation remains open, as police recognize individuals may not feel comfortable coming forward with a complaint immediately.
When it comes to gender-based violence, there is a long-standing reliance on formal complaints or individuals coming forward to police, MacQuarrie said.
Even five years ago, it would have been common for an institution to dismiss unverified reports made on social media and react only to complaints made through official channels, she said.
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What’s different this time is how Western administration responded to the social media allegations.
“Rather than saying these are only social media reports that can’t be validated and they need someone to come forward before they can act, they just said, ‘We accept that there’s a problem,’ ” MacQuarrie said.
“We can never underestimate how important a step that is. That is an absolute turning point in the way we deal with the problem. It’s a really big change.”
When reports of crime on social media gain significant attention, police are often compelled to respond — not simply because of the seriousness of the allegations, but also to preserve their image and public trust, said Chris Schneider, a sociology professor at Brandon University who researches technology, social media and its impact on policing.
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Police departments are also operating amid harsh criticism of their handling of gender-based violence complaints in the past, said Stacey Hannem, a criminology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.
“There’s a long history of police not paying very much attention to sexual violence at all,” she said.
“I think we’re seeing a bit of reflexivity on the part of police, saying ‘We recognize that this is a problem and we’re going to investigate it anyway and see if there’s any evidence we can verify independently,’ without necessarily relying on people to take the step and come forward themselves.”
Hannem and Schneider have co-authored an upcoming book, Defining Sexual Misconduct, on the dynamics between public accusations, social media and criminal justice.
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While social media is a way for people to speak out about sexual violence on their own terms, using online platforms to draw attention to alleged criminal behaviour is not without pitfalls, Schneider and Hannem said.
With the sheer volume of material posted on social media, there’s no way police can follow up on every allegation that makes its way online, Schneider said.
More significantly, police and institutions may have a tendency to respond only to the loudest and most privileged voices on social media, the ones that command the most public attention, Schneider said. There are equity concerns for marginalized voices that don’t have a social media megaphone.
“When we look at sex workers, Indigenous women or otherwise marginalized women, they might have less of a social media following than others, less of an ability to boost their signal and subsequently less of an ability to attract police attention or investigations,” Schneider said.
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Social media presents a “double-edged” sword for policing that warrants more discussion, said James Walsh, an associate professor of criminology and justice at Ontario Tech University.
“It provides the police with tons of information, and potentially very relevant information, that previously would have remained private,” he said.
“On the other hand . . . they are having to police the facts of what comes out online, what’s actionable and reliable and what’s purely rumours and speculation.”
Other than posts that go viral or attract significant public attention, there is often limited transparency about what social media allegations make their way to a full-blown police investigation, Walsh said.
“What there is a lack of now is a set of coherent policies and procedures. How police deal with digital evidence and social media can vary widely from department to department,” he said.
“There probably needs to be a clearer set of guidelines.”
jbieman@postmedia.com
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Sometimes, you just have to return to the classics.
That’s especially true as Halloween approaches. While you queue up your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.
We resurrected excerpts from these reviews, edited for clarity, from the dead — did they stand the test of time?
“Rear Window” (1954)
“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick pulled off by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg, sets him up at an apartment window where he can observe, among other things, a murder across the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is laid out before you, as seen through the eyes of a Peeping Tom.
James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it good fun.
— Bob Thomas
“Halloween” (1978)
At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller film called “Halloween.”
Until now, Jamie’s main achievement has been as a regular on the “Operation Petticoat” TV series. Jamie is much prouder of “Halloween,” though it is obviously an exploitation picture aimed at the thrill market.
The idea for “Halloween” sprang from independent producer-distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a terror-tale involving a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill fashioned a script about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown intending to murder his sister’s friends.
— Bob Thomas
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one nail-biting sequence to another. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including closeups of skinned corpses. The squeamish had best stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”
Ted Tally adapted the Thomas Harris novel with great skill, and Demme twists the suspense almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is carried a tad too far, though it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.
Such a tale as “The Silence of the Lambs” requires accomplished actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She provides steely intelligence, with enough vulnerability to sustain the suspense. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.
— Bob Thomas
“Scream” (1996)
In this smart, witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are being killed in the same gruesome fashion as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.
If it sounds like the script of every other horror movie to come and go at the local movie theater, it’s not.
By turns terrifying and funny, “Scream” — written by newcomer David Williamson — is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its references to Wes Craven’s competitors in gore.
— Ned Kilkelly
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Imaginative, intense and stunning are a few words that come to mind with “The Blair Witch Project.”
“Blair Witch” is the supposed footage found after three student filmmakers disappear in the woods of western Maryland while shooting a documentary about a legendary witch.
The filmmakers want us to believe the footage is real, the story is real, that three young people died and we are witnessing the final days of their lives. It isn’t. It’s all fiction.
But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, take us to the edge of belief, squirming in our seats the whole way. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.
— Christy Lemire
“Saw” (2004)
The fright flick “Saw” is consistent, if nothing else.
This serial-killer tale is inanely plotted, badly written, poorly acted, coarsely directed, hideously photographed and clumsily edited, all these ingredients leading to a yawner of a surprise ending. To top it off, the music’s bad, too.
You could forgive all (well, not all, or even, fractionally, much) of the movie’s flaws if there were any chills or scares to this sordid little horror affair.
But “Saw” director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who developed the story together, have come up with nothing more than an exercise in unpleasantry and ugliness.
— David Germain
Germain gave “Saw” one star out of four.
“Paranormal Activity” (2009)
The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.
The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.
The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.
— Glenn Whipp
Whipp gave “Paranormal Activity” three stars out of four.
“The Conjuring” (2013)
As sympathetic, methodical ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make the old-fashioned haunted-house horror film “The Conjuring” something more than your average fright fest.
“The Conjuring,” which boasts incredulously of being their most fearsome, previously unknown case, is built very in the ’70s-style mold of “Amityville” and, if one is kind, “The Exorcist.” The film opens with a majestic, foreboding title card that announces its aspirations to such a lineage.
But as effectively crafted as “The Conjuring” is, it’s lacking the raw, haunting power of the models it falls shy of. “The Exorcist” is a high standard, though; “The Conjuring” is an unusually sturdy piece of haunted-house genre filmmaking.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “The Conjuring” two and half stars out of four.
“Get Out” (2017)
Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.”
In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has — as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”
It’s long been a lamentable joke that in horror films — never the most inclusive of genres — the Black dude is always the first to go. In this way, “Get Out” is radical and refreshing in its perspective.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.
“Hereditary” (2018)
In Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature-film debut “Hereditary,” when Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, sneaks out to a grief-support group following the death of her mother, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”
A night out with “Hereditary” is many things, but you won’t confuse it for an evening of healing and therapy. It’s more like the opposite.
Aster’s film, relentlessly unsettling and pitilessly gripping, has carried with it an ominous air of danger and dread: a movie so horrifying and good that you have to see it, even if you shouldn’t want to, even if you might never sleep peacefully again.
The hype is mostly justified.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Hereditary” three stars out of four.
Read the full review here. ___
Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.
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