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Hold a thought for Jimmy, a student with Crohn's disease whose classmates distributed a photo of him with his pants down in a bathroom stall. Hold a thought for Mary, whose ex-boyfriend distributed a collection of explicit images to her family and friends at work. Hold a thought for Tina, a nurse who faced a sea of online torment from a disgruntled family member because he was cut out of a will.

Roger Merrick, director of public safety investigations for the Department of Justice, opened the July 26 session on cyberbullying and cyberstalking at the 29th annual conference for the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL) with the above.

“These three people could be members of your family – your daughter, your son, your husband, your partner,” said Merrick.

Merrick is the former director of CyberSCAN, an investigative unit designed to track cyberbullying claims in Nova Scotia. The program, launched in 2013 under the now-defunct Cyber-safety Act, was part of the government’s response to address cyberbullying following the tragic death of Rehtaeh Parsons. The act, intended to “provide safer communities by creating administrative and court processes that can be used to address and prevent cyberbullying,” was struck down in 2015 when the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia ruled it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

To prevent tracking, cyberbullies often use multiple social media platforms – everything from Facebook and Twitter to Kijiji and Plenty of Fish. They also use anonymous handles, proxy servers, and phone and text scramblers to carry out sophisticated hate campaigns against their targets.

“The courts have concluded that the intimidation caused by this kind of harassment is a real form of harm,” said Merrick. “Unlike more conventional forms of harassment, the victim of cyberbullying or cyberstalking is less able to escape or hide from their tormentor.”

“The ways in which women are judged online compared to men are much harsher and much more problematic,” said MacKay. “In the case of revenge porn, it’s about humiliation and the marginalization of individuals, like women, who are already somewhat marginalized.”

Wayne MacKay, a Schulich School of Law professor and former Chair of Nova Scotia’s Cyberbullying Task Force, was the second panelist to tackle issues of cyberbullying and revenge porn. He says an estimated 60 per cent of nine to 12-year-olds have engaged in sexting.

“The term ‘sexting’ is really an adult expression mostly used by those who do not ‘sext’,” said MacKay. “Young people don’t think of it that way. It’s simply free expression from their point of view.”

MacKay emphasized the fact that both the victim and the perpetrator have freedom of expression and privacy rights at stake in non-consensual image-sharing situations. He also noted that while anyone can be targeted by a cyberbully, there is a clearly gendered component to sexualixed cyberbullying, especially when it comes to revenge porn.

“The ways in which women are judged online compared to men are much harsher and much more problematic,” said MacKay. “In the case of revenge porn, it’s about humiliation and the marginalization of individuals, like women, who are already somewhat marginalized.”

So what can the law do?

Less than a year ago in Australia, a parliamentary committee was tasked with examining the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. As explained by David Adsett, the deputy director of national business improvement for Australia’s Public Prosecution Service, the committee found that “the non-consensual sharing of images and their corresponding offenses should not include an intent to harm or proof of harm element.”

In Canada, “the law is certainly not the only answer, but it can be the anchor for a broader-based effort to change not just the law but attitudes, opinions, and culture,” said MacKay. He went on to cite existing laws used to deal with revenge-porn situations, like Bill C-13 (federal), Manitoba’s Intimate Image Protection Act (provincial), and the former Cyber-safety Act of Nova Scotia.

Legal remedies, education, and confronting what Monica Lewinsky refers to in her TED Talk as the “empathy deficit” should all be assessed in the future. MacKay also advocates for a new Cyber-safety Act to supplement current protections for victims of cyberbullying under criminal and common law.

“Our laws should reflect our values as a society,” said MacKay. “In that sense, we need to address this.”