Crown attorneys described a series of connections they say link British Columbia teenager Amanda Todd and the Dutch man accused of harassing and extorting her in British Columbia Supreme Court Thursday.
They included a phone number, a passport photo and a video file named “AmandaTodd.wmv” which a Dutch police expert said was played on a device seized from Aidan Coban’s home in 2014.
Heather Gwin introduced jurors to Facebook records and testimony from a digital expert heard earlier in the trial that she said showed links between multiple online aliases used to harass Todd, in some cases with the same device.
Coban pleaded not guilty to extortion, harassment, communicating with a young person for the purpose of committing a sexual offense and possession of child pornography.
One of the Facebook accounts used to harass Todd, which was linked to several others, was registered with a cell phone number, Gwinn said.
It was the same phone number two women previously said they received in May 2011 while communicating with a man about renting an apartment in Rotterdam.
Both women testified they met the man at the apartment and later received a passport photo depicting him, she said.
Police found a copy of the same photo while searching Coban’s home, she said.
Gwynn showed the photos on screens in the courtroom that appeared to show Coban.
Another Crown attorney, Marcel Daigle, told the jury about the video file “AmandaTodd.wmv.”
He cited earlier expert testimony from a digital investigator with the Dutch national police who said the video was played one day in late December 2010 on a device seized from Coban’s home.
The date matches when Todd was actively harassed and blackmailed online, he said, just under two years before her death at age 15.
The Crown does not know what the video depicted because it had been deleted by the time Coban was arrested, Daigle said. But the Dutch expert said it was not streamed online, but instead played from a file that existed on the device.
Multiple devices found in Coban’s home had software described as an “anti-forensic” program used to delete files so they could not be recovered, Daigle said.
The jury heard evidence during the eight-week trial showing Todd’s abuser repeatedly demanded she do sexual “shows” on a webcam or sexualized images of the teenager would be sent to her family and classmates.
The abuser carried out that threat by sending links to a pornographic website depicting Todd to her family and classmates, the trial heard.
At the start of the trial, prosecutor Louise Kenworthy told jurors that Todd had been the victim of a constant campaign of online “sexual blackmail” for three years before her death in October 2012, starting in November 2009.
The Crown also focused Thursday on proving that 22 different accounts used to harass Todd on several online platforms were run by the same person.
Daigle highlighted the similarities in language and expressions, along with references to previous threats sent by different aliases, saying there was a “tremendous” cohesion.
The Crown is set to expand further on the alleged links to Coban on Friday.
Daigle showed the jury evidence that a photo of Todd showing her breasts was used as a Facebook profile picture by one of the accounts used to harass her.
He recalled expert testimony from a Vancouver police digital forensics specialist who said the only way to show a profile picture on Facebook is to upload the image, meaning it must have been stored on a digital device.
“If you accept my contention that there was one sextor, then that’s evidence, that one picture, that’s enough evidence to conclude that the sextor had child pornography,” Daigle told the jury.
More than one of the accounts used to harass Todd displayed images of the teenage girl as their profile picture, he said, and evidence showed the images were created by taking screenshots of a video that showed her exposing her breasts.
Daigle told the jury it didn’t matter who originally created the videos and images depicting Todd in a sexual manner. What matters, he said, is that the abuser owns and distributes the content, knowing it to be child pornography.
Earlier this week, the jury was shown a Facebook post by Todd in which she expressed her fear that the man harassing her would continue for the rest of her life.
Todd urged people to block one of the abuser’s accounts, saying a “sick pedophile” was blackmailing her, Crown attorney Kristen Lenoble said Wednesday.
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a quick summary of the day’s top headlines. Sign up today.
Add Comment