Documentary filmmaker Sébastien Rioux will ultimately have to wait several more months before knowing the sentence that will be imposed on his cyberstalker Peter Poncak, who put him through real hell online for two years. The case was postponed until February, Friday, due to court congestion.
“Your case is important and I want to be able to give it the time it needs,” Judge Luce Kennedy told Mr. Poncak, who had come to the Rivière-du-Loup courthouse. Sébastien Rioux was also there and was to read a statement to the Court during the hearing.
As is often the case, however, the backlog of numerous files prevented the judge from proceeding. The magistrate also took the opportunity to highlight the overload of work currently incumbent on the Court. “We have so many files, we are at the point of fixing files in July and August currently in Rivière-du-Loup because we have so much volume. This is the reality here and I can’t change it,” she said, apologizing repeatedly for this new postponement.
Peter Poncak’s sentence was initially scheduled to be pronounced in September, but was postponed for the first time to October 13 due to the judge’s health problems. The hearing is now set for February 2, 2024, in the morning. The file has been marked priority.
Mr. Rioux is a documentary filmmaker and musician from Trois-Pistoles aged in his late forties. At the end of 2019, he decided to file a police report against Mr. Poncak, who had sent him a meme from the film on social media Takenwhere we read “ I will find you, and I will kill you. » In French, this means: “I will find you and I will kill you”.
At the time, police initially traced Poncak before questioning him, but no charges were filed. However, it was after this first complaint that everything changed, the columnist of The PressIsabelle Hachey.
In early 2020, Mr. Rioux began receiving a torrent of threats, insults and hateful messages on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, as well as by email.
The artist was at a point where he even dreaded sitting in front of his computer in the morning, starting his day. “I was starting to get scared. I received photos of myself with a target in my forehead. Photos of me, as a child, being shot by people,” he explained in an interview.
Mr. Rioux finally filed a complaint a second time in the fall of 2020. An investigation was opened again. And almost a year later, on August 4, 2021, Gatineau police, supported by the Montreal cybercrime squad, arrested Peter Poncak, aged 38, after linking his various online accounts to an address IP.
In March, after nearly two years of legal proceedings, Peter Poncak was finally found guilty of criminal harassment, a charge that carries a maximum prison term of ten years. Poncak was known online by pseudonyms like Nick Gurr and youranalmaster, among others. “If you are the victim of online hate, file a complaint. It’s worth it. The more you do it, the more hateful people will fear taking action,” Sébastien Rioux said immediately.