05/02/2020 2016 ONCJ 35 (CanLII) | CanLII harassment by repeated tweeting on the other. It presumes ownership by the creator of a hashtag, or at least control of who participates in discussion using the hashtag. The proper use of Twitter is complicated, as it is developing. One view is Mr. Elliott’s as expressed in tweets such as, “You don’t know the value of twitter. If you want a private conversation use email,” and tweets expressing the importance of allowing others to tweet even if you think their opinions have no validity and are garbage. Ms. Guthrie’s view is the opposite. Though she testified that Mr. Elliott had a right to give his opinion, she took the position that she could demand that she be excluded from receiving it, which is her right – but also that he had to comply and cooperate, which is not her right. Given Ms. Guthrie’s view, Mr. Elliott would have had to know it in order to know that she was harassed. Knowledge, as discussed above, is really knowing. But that he knew that he was harassing her is not the only reasonable inference, based on the evidence that at the time, he was observing her constant involvement with him: participating in the mocking of him, unblocking to communicate with him, telling others he was a men’s rights activist harassing women online, saying his name and celebrating the “Ugh” at the mention of his name at the meeting. This very context and history, which the prosecution relies on to show that Ms. Guthrie was harassed, raises doubt as to whether Mr. Elliott knew she was harassed. This is quite apart from the campaigns against Mr. Elliott that were hatched at the summer meeting, and the Twitter discussions among Ms. Guthrie and her followers about his alleged harassment of women. In order to prove circumstantially that Mr. Elliott knew that Ms. Guthrie was harassed, Crown counsel relies on specific tweets. For instance on August 12, in what Ms. Guthrie describes as the big blowout, Ms. Guthrie retweeted six tweets that others had written about Mr. Elliott and containing his handle. Ms. Guthrie describes this day as when she became fearful of Mr. Elliott. She testified that she retweeted those tweets, given his ongoing monitoring of her feed and despite the fact that she had blocked him, to tell Mr. Elliott to stop sexually harassing women. Ms. Guthrie wanted Mr. Elliott to know that these others did not think his behaviour was acceptable. And Mr. Elliott was still blocked by Ms. Guthrie. These retweets by Ms. Guthrie are not evidence that Mr. Elliott knew that she was harassed. By her own testimony she was engaging with him; she wanted him to know something. And she was communicating what others thought, which was not about herself but about other women being harassed. And, of course, she was doing this on Twitter. She had blocked Mr. Elliott and believed this stopped him from following her, but she knew that blocking does not work because you can go out of Twitter and see tweets from a person with an open account. And she knew he would see these tweets anyway because she had included his handle, which meant he would be notified of them. At the most, these tweets would send a mixed message as to Ms. Guthrie’s state of mind with respect to the only issue I am here concerned with: did Mr. Elliott know that she was harassed? She was fully participating in a campaign to educate him about his harassment of women. Mr. Elliott tweeted often after August 12, and many of his tweets contained Ms. Guthrie’s handle or quoted excerpts of her previous tweets. I have already concluded that they had the effect of harassing her. But the reason that neither Ms. Guthrie nor Crown counsel rely on any threatening or sexually inappropriate comments in the tweets is because there are none. An example is the August 22 tweet in which he stated that Ms. Guthrie had labelled him “creepy.” The prosecution argues that he still continued to barrage her with tweets, implying that he did it despite knowing that she thought he was creepy. But the full tweet, to someone named @Robsonian, is: “Offered to help @WiTOpoli…crazy@amirightfolks labelled me ‘creepy’. Gladly let it go. Watched them attack others…Defended.” This tweet does not show that Mr. Elliott knew that Ms. Guthrie was harassed by the content of his tweets or the repeated communication. It refers right back to the dinner and the poster negotiations, and is a description and defence of what he perceived he had been doing. As in other instances that I described in the facts above, his use of Ms. Guthrie’s handle was as a proper noun in his argument to @Robsonian. He was giving his side of the story and Ms. Guthrie happened to play a major role. He did know that she might receive it. This is an innocent tweet, but is included in the totality of tweets that Ms. Guthrie testified harassed her and made her fearful. It does not support an inference that Mr. Elliott was repeatedly tweeting knowing that she was harassed. Similarly, each tweet in this totality is presented as an attempt to communicate with Ms. Guthrie without reference to any other possible legitimate use of either her handle or the hashtag. file:///Users/nerissa/Downloads/Columbia CSV/R v Gregory Allan Elliott.htm 34/43