The trial of a Dutch man accused of online harassment of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who shared her story on YouTube before killing herself in 2012, has begun in western Canada.
"It's Amanda's time
," her mother Carol Todd told the Supreme Court of British Columbia at the start of the seven-week trial in the city of New Westminster.
In October 2012, the girl committed suicide after posting her story online.
In a video, viewed more than 14 million times, she scrolled through sentences written in felt-tip pens on scraps of paper.
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The defendant, Aydin Coban, a 40-year-old Dutchman, faces five charges today including possession of child pornography, criminal harassment and extortion, charges to which he pleads not guilty.
In court, prosecutor Louise Kenworthy claimed that Amanda Todd had been harassed from her 12 to 15 years by a single person operating under twenty different user names on Facebook, YouTube or Skype.
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Aydin Coban is believed to be the man who persuaded her to show him her boobs via webcam, then uploaded her picture after she refused to
'give him a show'
.
He was extradited to Canada in December 2020. In 2017, Aydin Coban had already been sentenced to almost eleven years in prison for practicing “sextortion” on dozens of young girls, a scam aimed at blackmailing someone. one by deceiving pornographic photos to monetize them or obtain others.
These teenagers were in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, the United States and Canada.