05/02/2020 2016 ONCJ 35 (CanLII) | CanLII But he mentioned her or directly tweeted her in both September and November. She did not recall seeing all the tweets that mentioned her – but again, communicating twice is enough. I therefore find the repeated communication that the section requires. Was Ms. Reilly harassed? For Ms. Reilly it was the content of the tweets that harassed her and caused her to fear for her safety. Ms. Reilly was frustrated by Mr. Elliott’s continuing to respond to what she had written. She was frustrated that Twitter’s blocking function was inadequate. She defined his replying or referencing her tweets as contacting her, and that included his commenting on her tweets to #TOpoli. Although I do not agree that commenting on someone’s comments on an open hashtag discussion is contacting the person, her subjective view was that she did not want to have any contact with him. But the way that he contacted her was harassment. On August 28, two weeks after their exchange about the proper use of Twitter and her offending his sensibilities, he sent a tweet starting as Snark and quoted her, and used her handle in the text. He wrote. “Snark. How fat IS your ass?” Two days later he tweeted to her: “@LadySnarksalot And your ass is still fat. And you’re still a hateful ‘bitch’ who enjoys ganging up on people”. This latter tweet combined a valid comment (about ganging up) with a gratuitous reference to a woman’s body. And he added vitriol by including “hateful ‘bitch’”. When Ms. Reilly testified that she retweeted negative comments about him, because she was glad to see other individuals were seeing that his behaviour was harassing, she was talking about him harassing her, not harassing others. Harassment is a subjective state of mind of the victim, and I find that Ms. Reilly was harassed by Mr. Elliott’s tweets that did ultimately reach her. Did Mr. Elliott know that Ms. Reilly was harassed? There was no background history of emails, Twitter exchanges or personal meetings with Ms. Reilly. As soon as Mr. Elliott tweeted about Toronto garbage pickup trucks and tomato plants, Ms. Reilly told him to stop following her feed, and their argument about controlling Twitter began. Ms. Reilly tried, initially, to cut off the exchange quickly. She told him on August 9, just 12 days after he had first tweeted about her using #TOpoli, to please stop replying to her and that she had nothing more to say to him. Then tweets from others that Ms. Reilly retweeted told Mr. Elliott to stop what he was doing. He responded enough that I can infer that he read them. Otherwise, as I have reviewed, Mr. Elliott was silent between August 14 and 28, and sent only one tweet on the 28th. That day, Ms. Reilly replied to Mr. Elliott: “Just couldn’t ignore me, huh? Leave me the fuck alone.” Again she told him to stop. Here the same issue arises as with Ms. Guthrie, but I reach a different conclusion. Mr. Elliott generally used Twitter to say whatever he wanted and to argue about what Twitter was for. His direct and indirect tweets to Ms. Reilly are in response to something, either that she had tweeted or retweeted, or that others had tweeted about what he had said. But he peppered his tweets with mean, crass and insulting comments that were not necessary to the argument that he was making. And she repeatedly told him that she did not want to hear from him, either directly or by retweeting others telling him to stop. She tweeted explicitly: “please leave me alone.” In the midst of this negativity, Mr. Elliott asked on August 12 why Ms. Reilly favoured one of his tweets when she wanted nothing to do with him. This is the tweet that Ms. Reilly conceded was fair comment. But it preceded her August 28th tweet telling him to leave her “the fuck alone”. And in both September and November Ms. Reilly signal boosted, retweeting tweets in which she and others told Mr. Elliott to leave her alone. There is no direct evidence that Mr. Elliott knew that Ms. Reilly was harassed. He never said as much in a tweet. Ms. Reilly was herself attacking Mr. Elliott, by using #GAEhole, retweeting the false allegations about his creeping on 13-year-olds, and encouraging others to deface his artwork in her retweets of August 24 and 25. On the circumstantial proof of what he knew, I can rely on all Mr. Elliott’s tweets in inferring his knowledge. He is smart and does not miss much. He responds to almost everything about himself. When someone has told you to “leave me the fuck alone” and you persist in calling them “a hateful ‘bitch’” and say they “have a fat ass”, you know that you have harassed them by your language even if you are engaging in a legitimate argument at the same time. file:///Users/nerissa/Downloads/Columbia CSV/R v Gregory Allan Elliott.htm 40/43