Rehtaeh Parsons Rape Case Solved By Anonymous in Less Than 2 Hours Despite "No Evidence"

[Posteritatis]

32. I'd add a nice healthy purge of the school's administration to that, too

Cole Harbour District High's been a troubled place for a long time; this is just the most over-the-top unacceptable example. It's not a terribly nice part of town (by our standards at least - again, "troubled" describes the area well) and the school in particular's had a checkered past at least as far back as when I was attending high school in town in the nineties.

A lot of it around there is straight up machismo, male chauvinism, and a hefty dose of bullies-sure-are-utter-assholes to boot. The dude-bro mindset in general around here, and the fact that it's taken for granted, is a bigger problem than the social upper crust being outside of the law's reach. (They likely are as much here as anywhere, of course, but there's much less of that crust where I live.)

There's plenty of utter viciousness involving bullying in general, especially types of bullying that involve sexual violence or opportunities to drag someone through the mud and document it. The province in general, and local schools in particular, only started trying to systematically look at what to do with that about two years ago or so, with some mixed reactions to their thoughts and proposals so far. The Parsons case is making it very abundantly clear that things aren't working and need to be fixed yesterday, and that fact is still utterly dominating local news and conversation in general.

I dunno what specifically is going to come of it. I expect this case will start moving fairly quickly now that the entire planet's shining spotlights on the town (and I am at least glad this almost certainly destroyed the justice minister's career), but I'm trying to be hopeful, and it at least feels like this is getting people to begin to understand that no, bullying isn't just "kids being kids," not that it ever was.