Episode 252: Starting when Amanda Michelle Todd was just 11 years old, a person began a campaign of sexual extortion, relentless harassment and cyberbullying. Over the next three years, Amanda endured constant pressure from the man who used 22 online aliases on four different social media platforms to coerce and lure her into performing pornographic cam shows for him.

On September 7, 2012, Amanda posted a now-famous video on YouTube in which she used a series of flashcards to tell her experience of being blackmailed into exposing her breasts via webcam, which later led to her being bullied and physically assaulted. The video gained global attention when it went viral after Amanda completed suicide at her family home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, a month before her 16th birthday on October 10th, 2012. As of this writing, the video, still up on YouTube, is just about to crack 15 million views.

Amanda’s mother, Carol Todd, was driven by grief of her daughter’s loss to become an activist. She established the Amanda Todd Trust at the Royal Bank of Canada, which receives donations to support anti-bullying awareness education and programs for young people with mental health problems.

In 2014, a Dutch-Turkish man, Aydin Coban, in his 30s when the abuse of Amanda Todd began, was identified as the man who’d been harassing her and at least 39 other young girls and young gay males in the Netherlands, U.K., and Canada. After legal proceedings in the Netherlands wrapped up, Coban was imprisoned there. Although charged with five offences related to Amanda Todd here in Canada, Amanda’s family would have to wait for justice for her.

In June 2022, almost ten years after Amanda’s death, after being extradited to Canada, Aydan Coban stood trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. On August 5, 2022, the jury found Coban guilty of all five of the charges he was facing.