In honour of International Women’s Day, Focus Media Arts Centre in partnership with the Unheard Voices Committee has released an educational video entitled Unheard Voices: Criminal Harassment in Canada.
“The student had been looking for me and going to every single classroom asking for me . the student wasn’t in my circle. I didn’t know him” – Interviewee
“There’s four different ways that harassment can occur, repeatedly following someone, repeatedly communicating with someone, watching them (where they live, work, or go to school) or by threatening them.” – Davin Garg, Crown Attorney
“Sometimes there are voicemails that are left or text messages as well as social media posts. All that can be used to prove a criminal harassment charge.” – Robert Chevalier, Toronto Police Officer
Criminal harassment, or the commonly referred term “stalking”, is a form of abuse that takes a heavy toll on the lives of people who are victimized. Criminal harassment is one of the less visible forms of abuse making it difficult for the victims to access support and assistance. In fact, victims are often reluctant to report incidents of criminal harassment because they do not recognize stalking as a form of abuse or consider it illegal since no actual physical violence or assault has taken place. Additionally, victims have no awareness of their rights and are afraid that police and the criminal justice system would not take their allegations seriously. Although criminal harassment can be experienced by both men and women, in most cases, men are the perpetrators and women are the victims. The impetus for developing a project focused on criminal harassment first came from a Focus Media Art Centre (FOCUS) youth radio show on the topic of healthy relationships. In this show, a young woman described her experience of dealing with a former boyfriend who continued to text, Facebook, email and stalk her at school, regularly since breaking up a year before. She was surprised to learn from the public health professional being interviewed alongside her, that this behaviour constitutes criminal harassment and is against the law.
You can watch the full video from the link below:
You can watch the full video from the link below:
