Importance Of Social Media In Sexual Assault Cases

Why is social media important in sexual assault cases, I can tell you, social media has become so pervasive in our courtroom, introducing this evidence, both for the crown and defence, whether it’s WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, whether it’s the public or private domains, and there’s different considerations whether it’s public or private. But from the prosecution’s perspective, they’ll often use social media to confirm the complainant’s version of events, about a timeline, about consent, about the behaviour of the accused, showing consciousness of guilt after the act, apologies, you name it, it can be used to support and confirm what the alleged victim is saying about the case. And it’s really become, you know, in every case, especially involving young people, there’s always social media themes which can either confirm or refute the crown’s case. Conversely, for the defence, we use social media as well. We’ll often have social media messages which show the complaint is timelines off, which shows that here her, you know, credibility is just shot because they’re saying something totally inconsistent online and refuting and not corroborating their case at all. So, this has become so pervasive in every case that we do at our firm, it seems. I mean, just whatever case I had the last several years has whether it’s private or public messages, and there’s a huge difference. I mean the public domain is one thing, and we can just use those in court, because it’s open to the public. There’s no reasonable expectation of privacy. But when it’s a private message, for example, on WhatsApp, we have to give the crown and the court notice that we’re going to introduce this, a reverse disclosure application records and the possession accused. And I covered that in another video, and that’s a bit of a disadvantage, because we’re actually showing our cards. In the past, we didn’t have to do that before the amendments to the Criminal Code. And for example, in Jian Ghomeshi’s trial, his lawyer, Marie Henein, uses such great effect to actually destroy the credibility of those witnesses. Now query whether, if he had had to provide that to them in advance, they may have been able to tailor their answers. Well, this is wonderful, you know, for most for the victims that are telling the truth, great. You know, we’re not surprising them. But what about the victims who are lying? There are those out there, and they get a chance to tailor their questions based on some inconsistencies they said in social media. So, it’s a very developing area. We’re using it in almost every case. In every case, there seems to be text messages, private messages, public messages, Facebook messages, you name it, people like to talk, and I can tell you, it either helps the crown or it helps the defence. In a given case, every case is different. Of course, I’ve seen cases where an accused has no chance of winning after the crown accesses their social media because they made apologies and they admitted what they did, which is fine, they do go do their time and plead guilty. On the other hand, I’ve defended many cases where the text message, the media message and the voice Facebook messages completely refuted the crown’s case, and in some cases, the crown actually withdrew the charge as a result of this. So, it’s a very developing area, in the sense, almost every prosecution now has some form of messaging that either the crown or the tenants are using to either support their case or defend the case. Anyway, that’s an interesting topic for today, and if you’d like to watch that video, you could watch that video on documents in the possession of the accused, and how you introduce those, in courts, as well. It’s a totally separate YouTube video. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for watching our video, we are absolutely committed to bringing the best possible criminal and DUI educational videos. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you’ve been charged with the criminal offence in Ontario and require our services, please click on the link in the description below.