Update: I’ve now interviewed four additional people, two of them by voice recording. All four (three women and a man) experienced or witnessed Greg’s abuse as described in the anonymous quote included below. One of the four is the woman who wrote the comment. She agreed to use her first name for the interview. I will not be using it, however, because it is too unique and I was able to find out a good deal about her online starting with just her first name. Both sisters tell me in their interviews that they mostly avoid social media because of Greg Elliott. I am including only a snippet (“I Wrote That Comment”) of the 35-40 minutes I’ve recorded for now. All four are willing and quite anxious to talk to larger media sources. I have been in contact with two quite veteran journalists and will be approaching others soon. It’s very powerful material.
Greg Elliott isn’t on trial for disagreeing with feminists on Twitter, contrary to the title of a popular reddit post and YouTube video starring serial misrepresenter of court facts Christie Blatchford. Greg Elliott is on trial because he could not or would not control his harassing and stalkerish behaviour toward women on and off Twitter. The most important sentence in Blatchford’s many National Post columns on this case is the half sentence that she and reddit users cannot deal with in good faith: “shadowing the events [Steph Guthrie] organized.”
The question before the court is not whether Mr. Elliott said unkind things about feminists. Newsflash: no such law. Canada’s been run by a Conservative “party of one” for a decade. The legal question is whether his repeated, unsolicited communications, given the full circumstances, were sufficient to cause a reasonable person to fear for her safety.
According to Canada’s Criminal Code, Section 264 2b., criminal harassment includes:
(b) repeatedly communicating with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them;
where
(2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.
So far as I can tell, Mr. Elliott’s lawyer made little more than a half-hearted effort to suggest he didn’t engage in repeated, unsolicited communication. He spent far more time on the question of whether Steph Guthrie and Heather Reilly reasonably feared for their safety.
Besides giving short shrift to the “shadowing” aspect, Blatchford refuses to even mention that one of the charges involves Mr. Elliott continuing to stalk women on Twitter and in physical spaces even though a previous peace bond was issued to him in a separate court matter, the substance of which, as far as I can tell, is not publicly known. While I would rather not have violent and misogynistic Toronto Police and courts addressing this matter, more on that below, it does no one any good to minimize the rot and criminality of Mr. Elliott’s actions.
An anonymous comment to a related blog post claiming to be from one of Mr. Elliott’s four sons or two step daughters appeared shortly after his initial arrest (TW for a graphic description of severe violence against women; full quote here):
Hello! This is not the first instance of Greg harrassing people. In fact, GAE was in a relationship with my mum for eleven years. Throughout that time he was tyrannical, severely physically abusive and emotionally abusive. After she left the incredibly abusive relationship he continued to stalk her for years. His “art” that he posted around the city actually started because he posted signs directed at my mum, saying they belonged together.
Trust me, I had to witness his violent rage for years, and it seems as though he hasn’t changed. My mum actually moved three hours outside of the city to get away from him. If my mum’s swollen black and blue face isn’t enough to prove that this guy is a monster, I don’t know what is. Many of his quotes around the city are directed to me and my siblings- jabs at us (he tried very hard to turn her against everybody who cared for her, even her kids). …
If Greg were getting what he deserved and the punishment were of the appropriate “eye-for-an-eye” practice, he would have his possessions destroyed, his friends and family screamed and sworn at, his face headbutted, his head smashed through a glass table, he would be viciously punched, kicked, bitten, thrown into the wall and onto the floor. He would also be threatened into not talking to his friends or children. He would be screamed at and called worthless, whore, ugly, old, cunt, bitch (to name a few. He would have his partner break into his house and rifle through his diary, only to sit and wait in the dark until he was home so his partner could beat him. He would have to explain swollen bruised eyes and apendages to his family. He would have been stalked constantly. …
While I am going to respect the anonymity of the writer of this comment, yesterday I spoke directly with someone else who had or has specific legal terms constraining Mr. Elliott. (This person agreed only to be identified as someone from Mr. Elliott’s family or one of his exes or a person whom he stalked similarly but is not one of the two women who took the stand against him at trial.) Mr. Elliott continued to violate the legal terms of the peace bond or restraining order even after the current trial had started. The continuing violations were regular and severe enough that the person moved houses and changed jobs.
At one point, a security guard had to escort Greg from an event this person was at even though the terms of the bond or order stated that he was to leave on his own if it was discovered that they were at the same event. This person also stated that Greg’s “art,” his trademark “snoetry” and graffiti with clear references to the individual, continued to show up in her or his old neighbourhood and in places Mr. Elliott knew the person to frequent. Since police never caught Mr. Elliott in the act, they felt they couldn’t charge him further.
I am almost a free speech absolutist, but this case is about more than speech. It’s about a man who not only repeatedly sent unwanted communications to women while under a peace bond, but who also continued stalking (or Blatchford’s more mild “shadowing”) them in their places of residences and at the events they attended.
While police as well as the women involved in the case have testified that Mr. Elliott did not sexually harass them, Ms. Guthrie indicated that she did not hire him for the job they initially met about because she felt he was creepy upon meeting him and subsequently noted the way he sent sexually harassing tweets to other users. Many of Mr. Elliott’s tweets have since been erased, but there is plenty of evidence that Greg regularly sent “unsolicited sexually suggestive tweets at women.”
(Disclosure: While we initially followed @greg_a_elliott from @occbaystreet, a group account I administer, we quit following him after he sent unsolicited, sexually explicit tweets, no longer available, about a woman journalist.)
Several tweets in this non-comprehensive list of tweets between Ms. Guthrie and Mr. Elliott from the days immediately before their most substantial falling out involve Mr. Elliott offering unsolicited rides, nights away at a mansion, movie nights, or alcohol. Heather Reilly testified that his tweeting about her and her friends’ precise location caused her to “fear that Elliott was at the same bar and search the room to make sure he was not.”
I very much admit that this may be a close question in law. Many many women clearly agree that it is reasonable to fear in such circumstances; other women I know and respect have told me they do not think it is reasonable given just the tweets.
While the court will not take evidence of alleged previous abuse from Mr. Elliott into account, I think it should. Is it possible for a perceptive woman like Ms. Guthrie (or any woman) to feel a creepy vibe immediately from someone with a past like Mr. Elliott is alleged to have? My experience with the women in my life says a loud yes. Did Mr. Elliott do a bunch of stuff to feed into that creep narrative on Twitter? Absolutely. I saw it happening a bunch in real time and many of those tweets remain around. Does starting to “shadow” all of someone’s events ramp that up even further? Who, honestly, would think otherwise?
The standard in law, of course, is not what a group of reddit MRA’s think women should or should not feel, but what a reasonable woman, similarly situated, can be expected to feel in terms of fear.
There remain duly troubling questions about Toronto Police, an alleged “conspiracy” by a letter writer to the judge that has never been proven, and why this particular case. Things justly make women fearful on social media every few minutes. I am on the record quite clearly as against policing as a whole. (See, for instance, my co-written essay “Law Without Violence.”) I am also a well-known critic of Toronto Police in particular for incredible violence against women, racialized people, those without homes, and people in emotional distress. One of the officers involved in making this case go, frankly, has been involved with harassing a woman I count as a close friend. That same officer has been very central to Toronto Police’s strategy of stalking, spying on, and harassing many activists I know.
Toronto Police, furthermore, were smack in the middle of a bunch of black eyes for ugly, misogynistic behaviour at the G-20 where they stripped searched women en masse (we later proved they filmed certain of those strip searches) and for an officer’s comments that gave rise to the original Slut Walk, which also involved TPS creepiness). Was the aim in this case specifically to get certain powerful, feminist activists to instead be “filled with gratitude for Toronto Police”?
Whatever the answers to those questions, reality matters. The person who talked to me yesterday about Greg’s continuing violations of legal terms and who has moved houses and jobs put it quite frankly: “I view police as a last, terrible resort. But what other options are there?” I will continue to advocate and hope for workable responses to harassment and abuse of women – responses that eschew police altogether – just as I have been keenly involved with Circles of Support and Accountability, a rather effective alternative to the worst kind of crimes against children. But until those options are minimally viable, it would be quixotic, or worse – abuse enabling, for me to expect women who fear violent men to go into all out hiding rather than involve police.
good gawd, another weblog 