‘This was hate speech’: Ontario drag performers win defamation case against blogger
Global News
A Thunder Bay drag performer who successfully sued a Facebook blogger for defamation over baseless accusations of pedophilia says she hopes the case serves as a cautionary tale.
A Thunder Bay drag performer who successfully sued a Facebook blogger for defamation over baseless accusations of pedophilia says she hopes the case serves as a cautionary tale to those who traffic in anti-LGBTQ+ slurs and hate speech.
“I want them to know that they need to be afraid to be bigots again, because we’re tired of it,” said Felicia Crichton, one of the three drag performers who won their cases against the administrator of a Thunder Bay Facebook page.
Brian Webster was ordered to pay $380,000 in combined damages to drag performers and a Dryden, Ont.-area LGBTQ+ non-profit after a judge found he falsely and recklessly accused them of being “groomers” in posts about drag story time events at libraries in northwestern Ontario.
Crichton said the ruling was a relief and a sign people who peddle in hate will not find impunity on social media.
“They seem to believe that there were glory days when they were allowed to believe this with absolutely no recourse. And I think that the only truth in that is that there was a time when social media didn’t connect us so quickly, and it wasn’t so easy to have a paper trail of everything that you’ve said,” she said.
“There are receipts now.”
The performers and Rainbow Alliance Dryden sued Webster in two separate cases, alleging he accused them of being “groomers” and “grooming” children in his posts about their drag story time events in Thunder Bay and Dryden. One of the posts also linked to web pages about unrelated people who had been allegedly charged with child pornography offences.
Webster responded with likes and laughing emojis to comments on those posts from 2022 that in turn accused the performers – whose names and pictures were in some cases visible – of being pedophiles, mentally ill and sexually abusive, the court heard.
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