By Canadian Press

Deleted bookmark led to child pornography site that depicted Amanda Todd: Crown

Jul 29, 2022 | 4:07 PM

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — A Crown attorney says a device seized from the home of the Dutch man accused of harassing British Columbia teenager Amanda Todd contained a deleted bookmark to a child pornography website with content depicting her.

Louise Kenworthy told the B.C. Supreme Court jury trial of Aydin Coban that previous expert testimony showed Todd’s name and several online aliases used to harass her were also on devices seized from the home.

Coban has pleaded not guilty to extortion, harassment, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and possessing child pornography.

Kenworthy says in closing arguments that an RCMP expert in digital forensics had testified about finding a folder bearing Todd’s name that had been deleted from a web browser on one of the devices.

The officer said the folder had contained links to the profiles of a number of Todd’s Facebook friends.

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Kenworthy says the officer also testified he found evidence that several of the accounts that harassed Todd had logged in on two devices seized by Dutch police when Coban was arrested in January 2014.

These accounts were active at the exact times when the teenager from Port Coquitlam was experiencing harassment, Kenworthy said.

The officer testified there were also “actual fragments of chat” with Todd on one of the seized devices, she said.

At the start of the trial two months ago, Kenworthy told the jury Todd had been the victim of a persistent campaign of online “sextortion” over three years before her death at age 15 in October 2012.

The jury saw evidence that Todd’s harasser repeatedly demanded she perform sexual “shows” on a web camera, and followed through on threats to send sexualized images of Todd to her family and friends.

Earlier this week, the jury was shown a Facebook post by Todd in which she expressed fear that the person harassing her would continue for the rest of her life.

Todd urged people to block one of the harasser’s accounts, saying a “sick pedophile” was blackmailing her, Crown attorney Kristen LeNoble has said.

The Crown also spent Thursday describing alleged links between Coban and Todd through a phone number, a passport photo and a video file bearing the teen’s name.

Crown attorney Heather Guinn said one of the Facebook accounts used to harass Todd, which Facebook records and expert testimony have connected to several other aliases, was registered with a mobile phone number linked to Coban. 

She recalled testimony from two women who said they received the number in May 2011 while communicating with a man about renting an apartment in Rotterdam.

Both women told the court they met the man at the apartment and later received a passport photo depicting him, Guinn said.

Police found a copy of the same photo while searching Coban’s home, she said.

Guinn displayed the photos in the courtroom, and they appeared to show Coban.

Another Crown attorney, Marcel Daigle, cited earlier testimony from a digital investigator with Dutch police who said a deleted video file called “AmandaTodd.wmv” had been played on one of the seized devices in December 2010, corresponding with a time when Todd was being actively harassed.

Daigle said multiple devices found in Coban’s home had software described as an “anti-forensics” program used to delete files so they can’t be restored.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2022.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press