All Posts Tagged With: "sexual exploitation"
Children’s singer Raffi advocates for social media safety
Red Hood Project is response to death of Amanda Todd
Children’s entertainer and advocate Raffi says he was “shaken” and “angry” when he heard about the death of Amanda Todd, a British Columbia teen who committed suicide in October following years of Internet sexual exploitation and bullying by her peers, and that’s why he co-founded the Red Hood Project.
Billed as a movement to make social media safe for young users, the project includes a website, a Facebook and Twitter page, and a letter the beloved “Baby Beluga” singer-songwriter co-wrote and sent to Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on Nov. 14.
The letter, which includes Todd’s mother’s signature, says that the 15-year-old was blackmailed through Facebook and urges the social media company to correct “the security failures that made such victimization possible.”
“Of course education of parents and young users is important, we recognize that, but we think the onus ought to be on those businesses — social media companies who create the risk in the first place — to do all that they can,” Raffi Cavoukian, who goes by just his first name onstage, said in a recent interview.
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What students are talking about today (October 16th edition)
A fake medical student, a fake gun & Dalton McGuinty
McGill U. medical students (Andrew Tolson)
1. After nine years as premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty stepped down last night and prorogued the legislature. By 9 p.m., the newspapers had stories suggesting he’ll run for the federal Liberals against Justin Trudeau. Paul Wells writes that he would be astonished by that. “But then, McGuinty has already astonished me once tonight,” he adds. Wells explores the Teflon Premier’s legacy and examines a (possibly) telling recent speech.
2. A man rejected from medical school at New Zealand’s Auckland University decided to go anyway. He spent two years attending classes, labs, and hospital placements and was only caught when a classmate put his name on a group assignment.
3. A 28-year-old woman who was walking to the University of Windsor Monday was told by a man carrying a fake gun to hand over a computer bag. The woman described the gun as “two sticks taped together.” The University of Windsor Campus Police arrested and charged a 21-year-old.
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Teen sexual exploitation proliferating online
Tip line was contacted about B.C. teen who killed herself
Mikael Miettinen/Flickr
A national child exploitation group received a tip almost a year ago about 15-year-old Amanda Todd, the British Columbia teenager who took her own life last week after being sexually exploited by an online stalker and bullied by her peers.
A concerned citizen contacted cybertip.ca last November to report that images of then-12-year-old Todd were being circulated online, said Signey Arnason, director of the tipline for reporting online sexual exploitation of children.
“We did receive one report, and that was passed along to law enforcement as well as child welfare,” Arnason said Monday. “It was not a report from her, but it was a report from a concerned citizen.”
Todd died last Wednesday, a month after posting a haunting video on YouTube that cited the sexualized attack that set her down a path of anxiety, depression and drug and alcohol abuse.
During her nine-minute video, the teen explained in hand-written notes that she was in Grade 7 when she was lured by an unidentified male to expose her breasts via webcam.
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