Woman feels police were slow to take her complaints about vicious tweets seriously
By
Amy Dempsey
BRUNO
Supplied photo
Supplied photo
Vanessa
Bruno believes officers haven't done a good job of taking her complaints
about online threats seriously, a charge police deny.
For six months, Vanessa Bruno was
tormented by an anonymous online stalker. She says he figured out where
she lived, threatened to wait outside her workplace to rape her and
messaged her through a fake online account in the name of her brother,
who had recently committed suicide.
"I thought you were a strong,
independent Italian woman! Hahahahaha you're nothing but another
soon-to-be rape statistic," the stalker wrote on her blog. "Watch out
b----, I'm gonna have you soon."
Michael Sopinka, 29, of Stoney Creek has
been charged with criminal harassment, threatening death and
threatening bodily harm. A lawyer appeared in court on his behalf Friday
to collect disclosure from the Crown and set a return date for Feb. 21.
None of the allegations against Sopinka,
who has been released on bail, have been proven. His lawyer, Frank
Crewe, said it's too early to comment on the case.
Bruno says the alleged perpetrator was a complete stranger to her.
The case comes at a time when much
attention is being drawn to the gendered harassment women face online —
in Toronto, where Gregory Alan Elliott, 53, is on trial after pleading
not guilty to criminal harassment charges stemming from Twitter
exchanges with women; and worldwide, most recently through a widely read
and well-reviewed essay by American writer Amanda Hess for the Pacific Standard, "Why Women Aren't Welcome on the Internet."
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