Slate’s Amanda Hess has written about the case of Retaeh Parsons, a Nova Scotia girl who committed suicide last year, four years after being the victim of bullying over a photograph of her being sexually assaulted. She became famous across Canada after the police originally refused to prosecute those who assaulted her. The national, and then international, outcry, inspired some creativity among the reluctant police, who have now successfully prosecuted one of the perpetrators for child pornography.
The main point of the article was to comment on how
the judge in the case has barred Canadian journalists and everyday citizens from repeating the girl’s name in newspapers, on television, over the radio, and on social media. He cited a portion of Canadian criminal code that bans the publication of a child pornography victim’s name in connection to any legal proceeding connected to that alleged crime.
She quotes a Halifax reporter Ryan Van Horne on the perverse effect:
If you say the name “Rehtaeh” in Nova Scotia… you’ll be met with “instant recognition” of the case and all of the issues it represents. But when Van Horne asks locals, “You know that victim in that high-profile child pornography case?” he draws blanks. The famous circumstances surrounding Rehtaeh Parsons’ bullying and death don’t fit the traditional conception of a child pornography case, which makes linking the two difficult if reporters aren’t allowed to use her name and photograph.
This sounds like a horrible version of Frege’s Morning-Star/Evening-Star puzzle: News media (including social media) are allowed to talk about Retaeh Parsons (the famous child victim of sexual abuse and online harassment); and they are allowed to talk about the victim in that high-profile child pornography case. But they are barred from talking about Retaeh Parsons as the victim in that child pornography case. In Fregian terms, it’s as though we banned any reference to the “morning star”, but were still allowed to talk about the evening star.
Of course, there’s nothing terribly unusual here: Often important privacy concerns turn on concealing the identity of what appear to be two different individuals. It only seems so perverse here because the person whose privacy would implicitly be protected is 1) famous for her role in this case; and 2) deceased, which means that the only people whose privacy is being protected are the police officials who screwed up so badly in the first place.
Common Infirmities 