A Quebec artist who had made himself cancel following the relentlessness of an Internet user relaying false allegations of sexual assault, won her case in court, which ordered the woman to pay him $1.5 million.
“The #MeToo movement has been beneficial and necessary to bring to the forefront [le fléau] sexual assaults. Michaela Higgins, however, crossed the line with her publications portraying Frédérik Durand as a serial sexual abuser based on false or questionable sources,” Justice Nicholas Devlin of the Court of King’s Bench recently commented. Alberta.
This singular case, which illustrates how a movement can be hijacked, occurred in 2020 when a Californian woman decided to target Mr. Durand, aka Snails. Specializing in electro music, the DJ performed up to 125 times a year for annual revenues of up to $3 million, indicates the judgment rendered last month.
Canceled
But his world fell apart when Michaela Higgins opened an Instagram account accusing him of sexual misconduct, even calling him a “predator.”
“The messages targeted the promoters so that they would cancel his events,” we read in the judgment.
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Combined with the pandemic, these defamatory messages meant that Mr. Durand saw his income fall into the red.
A civil suit for defamation followed in Alberta, given that certain messages sought to cancel a tour in this western province. There was also a strategic interest, since civil law is different in the rest of Canada than in Quebec.
Mme Higgins, who also called herself Caeli La on the internet, had chosen to defend herself alone.
Denied allegations
The civil trial was therefore held in Edmonton. To succeed, Mr. Durand had to demonstrate that the woman, through her publications, wanted to destroy his reputation among other people. He did not have to prove that the remarks were false.
“Mr. Durand went even further, to clear his name as much as possible,” noted the magistrate.
Thus, the artist went to find several of the women mentioned in the defamatory publications, to demonstrate that Ms. Higgins had distorted reality in order to pass off consensual encounters as sexual assault.
“One of the women [qui avait été agressée sexuellement selon Mme Higgins] had publicly refuted the allegations, the judge noted. But in the immediacy of the time, she began to be attacked online for having defended Mr. Durand,” lamented the judge, recalling that Mme Higgins had ignored posts that did not support his erroneous narrative.
Safe spaces
The latter also punished Mme Higgins for sharing other posts, recalling that there is a false “belief that sharing defamatory statements written by others is a protected activity”.
“This misunderstanding should be firmly corrected,” recalled the magistrate. Sharing or re-posting defamatory statements is just as defamatory as the original statement.”
Ruling in favor of Mr. Durand, the judge awarded him $1.5 million, or half of what he asked for. This is because his loss of income could not only be attributed to Mme Higgins, since the pandemic also played a role in this.
But to those who think that women victims of sexual misconduct should keep quiet, the judge reminded the importance of raising public awareness on the subject.
“There must be safe spaces to send warnings about the behavior of public figures,” he thundered, recalling however that “those who seek to publicize allegations in the public interest must do so fair way”.
The case of Mme Higgins and Mr. Durand, however, illustrate the risks of “blithely sharing defamatory content in the jungle of social networks, which have an aversion to verified facts,” concluded the magistrate.
Note that since the start of the #MeToo movement, the number of complaints for sexual offenses has only increased according to the Institut de la tourisme du Québec. In 2016, there were 5,251 while in 2022, the number had climbed to 10,334, an increase of 97%. And in the vast majority of cases, the filing of charges leads to convictions.
What Justice Nicholas Devlin said:
“False statements with malicious intent have the potential to cause immense and unfair harm, as appears to be the case with Frédérik Durand. »
“Mr. Durand hopes to revive his career, and he has every right to do so without fear of being defamed again.” »
“In the case here, the campaign [de diffamation] by Michaela Higgins became mischievous when she ignored obvious information showing the contrary [de ce qu’elle prétendait]. »
“Frédérick Durand has demonstrated that Ms. Higgins repeatedly defamed him by republishing unfounded allegations without legal justification that he was guilty of the worst criminal and immoral activities. »