in World News Canadian teenager acquitted on criminal charges for calling out dangers of transgender surgery
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An Ontario judge dropped charges against an 18-year-old who placed posters around his school warning about the serious risks of transgender surgeries, which led to him facing a criminal investigation and prosecution.
(LifeSiteNews) — A Canadian teenager who protested the dangers of so-called “gender reassignment” surgery at his school has had criminal charges against him dropped by an Ontario Court of Justice judge after a two-day trial.
The 18-year-old student was charged after he placed posters around his school that had a QR code that linked to a video warning gender-confused people about the dangers and serious risks related to transgender surgery.
After school authorities discovered that the posters with the QR codes were linked to the 18-year-old student, after only watching the first 15 seconds of the 14-minute-long video, school officials said the content was “hateful” and called the police. This led to both a criminal investigation and prosecution.
According to The Democracy Fund (TDF), which assisted the teenager by taking on his legal case as his defense team, its lawyer Alan Honner said that, while the video from the QR code link did have material that some might consider “offensive,” it was not hate speech.
“The courts have consistently held that hate speech must be extreme, promoting the vilification and detestation of a particular group,” noted Honner.
“The trial judge recognized that this case did not meet that standard and accordingly entered an acquittal.”
As noted by the TDF, Canadian law stipulates that the crime of inciting public hatred happens when someone makes hateful statements in a public setting towards a certain person or group.
Honner observed that the school’s decision-making process was done without fully identifying the material in question and without care towards the student’s wellbeing.
Honner said that no reasonably informed person “could determine whether the video constituted hate speech based on the first 15-seconds.”
“Rather than engaging with the student or guiding him towards a better understanding of the social issues, the administration unfortunately chose to pursue a legal remedy,” he added.