Writing a screenplay about outing abusers- so timely! Here are some legal and logistical questions, essentially: How best could a group of people share a secret online document that lists known abusers? Setting is Ontario Canada, and the legal aspects should be extremely accurate.
The characters are a group of women who want to keep track of which men in a small community have been accused of sexual misconduct. The whole community would be ~300 people, with about 30 women in the secret group- like a sorority within a college cohort. The list would end up with maybe 30 men's names, accused of varying degrees of misconduct.
The document must be virtual.
All of the women are loyal to the women's group at first, but some loyalties are later strained when the names of men they care about begin to show up on the list. The list would likely get leaked to specific abusers (who'd likely be humiliated and furious, so their actions would likely aim to protect their confidentiality, ensure exoneratrion in a trial, and maybe enact social revenge on their accusers)
How could these characters plausibly create their list?
1. Logistics-
How best could the characters share an online list that would make it unlikely for anyone finding the list to trace it back to a specific creator(s), or know specifically who informed on a given man?
Imagining a saved text document with a couple of trusted moderators, on a secret Facebook group... women privately tell a mod what happened, and she adds info to a list and never discloses who told her. Having more than one mod helps increase plausible deniability- nobody remembers who added that name, sorry!
2. Naming & Descriptions-
Could the list involve slightly-encoding or somehow altering how they discuss the names & offenses of the accused, so that if the document were found, it wouldn't count as libel? Would any of these work:
Coded name: "Warvey Heinwein is a rapist"?
Real name + "alleged": "Harvey Weinstein is an alleged rapist"?
Hypothetical situation: "If you were casting an actor to play a power-hungry rapist, you could cast Warvey Weinwein- he'd be great!"
Blind item: "This big man, major studio head, Broadway musicals, is a rapist!"
Other options?
3. Later trials-
Let's say that some of these men are later (individually) brought to trial for their behaviour.
Could the contents of the list somehow compromise the efficacy of the trial? How? Any way to prevent that?
4. Other concerns-
Anything else that could affect the plot? |
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