05/02/2020 2016 ONCJ 35 (CanLII) | CanLII Ms. Guthrie’s view is that if he was using her handle or a hashtag that she created or was associated with, then he was attempting to communicate with her. This made her feel stalked and harassed. Ms. Reilly agreed with this analysis in reference to Ms. Guthrie. So did a tweeter named @CromartyHeather, a stranger to these proceedings but whose exchange with Mr. Elliott could stand as a summary of the case concerning Ms. Guthrie. @CromartyHeather tweeted: “Apparently there’s a troll in the #AOTID feed. Ha ha ha, least self-aware dude ever.” Mr. Elliott engaged with @CromartyHeather and referred to his dinner with Ms. Guthrie. He said, unconvincingly in my opinion, given his later offers of rides that he concedes could be perceived as flirtatious, that “not one thought of her as a sexual option ever entered my mind. She imagines otherwise.” @CromartyHeather replied to Mr. Elliott in a tweet that encapsulates the accusation against him regarding Ms. Guthrie: “And yet you keep bringing her up. In every convo. Ones she’s not at all involved in. You stalk her event’s hashtag.” Then “She doesn’t talk about you because she doesn’t like you. YOU, however, can’t stop thinking about her. Telling.” Mr. Elliott’s reply sums up the defence: “She doesn’t own a hashtag. Twitter’s public. What kind of elitist control freaks are you? Censoring Twitter? Go to Facebook”. Not only Ms. Guthrie, Ms. Reilly and @CromartyHeather characterized his using Ms. Guthrie’s handle and the hashtags she followed as harassment. The police took this view in designing the Sysomos search and it’s also the position of Crown counsel in submissions. In respect of Mr. Elliott’s reply about “Twitter is public,” counsel submits: “It is clear that Mr. Elliott was referring to Ms. Guthrie and that he was aware of Ms. Guthrie’s connection to the #AOTID.” I agree with Crown counsel that the exchange with @CromartyHeather and Mr. Elliott’s reply make this clear. He even refers to “the #AOTID contributor who makes inaccurate statements about people based on her own crazy fears or needs.” But this does not address what Mr. Elliott was doing. He was openly commenting on the #AOTID event about trolling, openly giving his side of the dispute with Ms. Guthrie, and openly stating his views on how Twitter should be used. Each aspect of his tweeting is legitimate. To repeat, tweeting on a topic and exercising freedom of expression, arguing facts about his history with Ms. Guthrie (possibly falsely regarding his having no sexual interest), exercising and expressing his opinion on the proper use of the medium that everyone was using, is permitted. To argue this tweet as a sample of criminal harassment does not advance the proposition that Mr. Elliott knew Ms. Guthrie was harassed; it raises doubt as to whether he knew or not. It comes back to the two understandably different ways that Mr. Elliott and Ms. Guthrie viewed the whole affair. His volume of tweets harassed her because of her view that she could control people’s non-threatening, non-sexual use of her handle and hashtags that she used beyond not reading their tweets and taking the ineffectual step of blocking. He cannot be imputed with knowledge that Ms. Guthrie was harassed by his tweeting. Mr. Elliott was not responsible for that view, which is at least arguably incompatible with Twitter. There is more evidence about his knowledge that she was harassed. After September 9, he stopped tweeting her until the November tweets with her handle and #AOTID. He did use other hashtags. This significant behaviour stop can give rise to at least two reasonable inferences. One is that he stopped even using her handle because he knew that he had harassed her. The other inference is that there would be no reason for him to believe he was harassing her because he did as she asked and stopped contacting her. His six November tweets were all to others, and they continued to argue his position about his dispute with Ms. Guthrie. Even the last, on November 13, when he told @justinsb to “go listen to @amirightfolks play her shit music in crappy bars with your loser faux-feminist friends” is part of a bitter exchange with @justinsb. His conversation with @CromartyHeather, as usual, contains no threats, sexual harassment or language that would in itself be harassing. It refers to Ms. Guthrie though not by name or handle. Ms. Guthrie saw some of these tweets, though not the whole exchange. She had re-blocked Mr. Elliott after she unblocked him to send her September 9 tweet. She testified that in her opinion he used the hashtag to go around the block she had placed on him. She was entitled to conclude and think that. But her conclusion is based on the notion that an event hashtag could be restricted. It can’t be. Mr. Elliott was entitled to joust with @CromartyHeather about her telling him that he was obsessed with Ms. Guthrie. His use of #AOTID does not add in any way to the circumstantial case proving what he knew about Ms. Guthrie’s state of mind on November 15. file:///Users/nerissa/Downloads/Columbia CSV/R v Gregory Allan Elliott.htm 35/43