After experiencing Zoom bombings in 2021, Queen’s allegedly made a false criminal accusation against a student.
On Feb. 2, 2021, Jack*, a Queen’s student, attended a Zoom lecture titled, “The Present Life of Blasphemy: Kanye West in American Popular Culture.” Here, court records from Kingston Police show the Queen’s student was charged with mischief under the Criminal Code of Canada, and he was served a summons to appear on June 22, 2021. He filed a notice of action—the first step in a civil lawsuit—against Queen’s University on June 7, 2023.
“This was an online lecture in my religion course featuring a guest speaker from Yale. The lecture was going fine until all of a sudden videos of pornography and violence started being played on a shared screen,” Jack said in a statement to The Journal.
“It was extremely disturbing to me and I imagine everyone else in the lecture. It sounded like there were several people involved.”
In 2021, The Journal reported the Zoom bombing included anti-Black, anti-woman, queerphobic, and antisemitic imagery.
In Jack’s notice of action filed against Queen’s University he contends the institution wrongly identified him as the individual responsible for the Zoom bombing. According to his filing, no one at Queen’s had any basis for making the allegation.
“Employees of Queen’s University knew any evidence it had weighed against Jack as a suspect of the Zoom bombing and expressed reservations about relying on it to proceed criminally,” the notice read.
Jack is claiming damages in the amount of $500,000 for negligence, and $73,569.85 in special damages with punitive damages amounting to $50,000.
Queen’s reported that Jack was the Zoom bomber and asked Kingston Police to proceed with criminal charges. Allegedly, Queen’s prevented Kingston Police from determining Jack wasn’t responsible when its employees failed to provide the investigating officers with all the information they had.
The first time Jack learned about the allegations against him was in June 2021, when he was served the summons. On Aug. 20 of the same year, the University allegedly realized they wrongly accused Jack.
“The Zoom bombing itself was extremely traumatic and shocking to me, but being accused of it was even more devastating. It was traumatizing for me and my family. It has left a very negative feeling about my undergraduate experience and has affected my sense of trust in institutional power,” Jack said.
The Crown withdrew criminal charges against Jack soon after because there were no reasonable prospects of conviction.
“In all cases, the Crown has an ongoing obligation to assess the strength of the case throughout the proceedings,” Ministry of the Attorney General Media Spokesperson Maher Abdurahman said in a statement to The Journal.
“If the Crown determines at any time that there is no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction, or that it is not in the public interest to proceed, the Crown is duty bound to withdraw the charges.”
A university owes its students procedural fairness and a thorough and competent investigation, according to Jack’s civil filing. Instead, he alleges Queen’s jumped to a conclusion based on false assumptions and a careless investigation.
In a statement, Queen’s University declined to comment as this is a pending legal matter.
*Name changed for anonymity.
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