Rainbow Alliance Dryden et al v. Webster and Crichton et al v. Webster, 2025 ONSC 1161 and 2025 ONSC 1162
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has granted summary judgment in two defamation proceedings against an online Facebook blogger whose posts accused the plaintiffs of “grooming” children at drag story time events in Northwestern Ontario.
In Rainbow Alliance Dryden et al v. Webster, 2025 ONSC 1161, and Crichton et al v. Webster, 2025 ONSC 1162, the plaintiffs alleged that Brian Webster, the administrator of a widely-read Facebook page known as “Real Thunder Bay Courthouse-Inside Edition” defamed them by describing their drag story time events at public libraries in Dryden and Thunder Bay as “grooming” children.
The plaintiffs were a Dryden-based 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride organization and 3 individual drag performers based in Dryden and Thunder Bay. They claimed that by referring to them in his posts as “groomers” or engaged in “grooming” of children, Webster had smeared them as pedophiles or persons engaged in sexual abuse of young people. In one of the posts, Webster included links to webpages about unrelated persons charged in relation to child pornography. Both posts attracted comments from Webster’s readers describing the plaintiffs as pedophiles, mentally ill persons, and comments suggesting that they should be “hunted” or subject to physical violence.The court found that Webster’s attempts to defend the action on the basis of fair comment was self-serving and contrived ex post facto. Her Honour found that Webster used emoji reactions to signal his support for the abusive comments on his post, stating that “he created an echo chamber for hate speech”. Her Honour concluded that Mr. Webster’s assertion that he was not referring to pedophilia when he referred to the plaintiffs as groomers, was “not credible”.
While plaintiffs in libel actions are not required to show intent on the part of the defendant, Pierce J further concluded that “Webster intended to create revulsion directed at the drag queens hosting the story hour, counselling people to keep their children away from the event” (referring to the drag story time events).
In finding that the posts were defamatory, the court accepted expert evidence from Dr. Corinne Mason, a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Dr. Mason explained that “grooming is manipulative behaviour used by sexual abusers to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught. Allegations of ‘groomer’ and ‘grooming’ appear in hateful rhetoric to imply the LGBTQ+ people, or those perceived to be sexually or gender diverse, are pedophiles.” There was no evidence that any of the plaintiffs have ever engaged in such misconduct.
Her Honour concluded that “[t]he defendant intended to smear the reputations of the individual plaintiffs and RAD with the message that they used their drag queen/king persona and activities to groom children for sexual abuse. There could hardly be a more damning message than that, spread across the Internet.”
Pierce J awarded the plaintiffs each $95,000 in damages, consisting of $75,000 in general damages and $20,000 in aggravated damages. These were the amounts sought in the Statements of Claim. Webster is thus liable to pay a total of $380,000 in damages, plus the costs of the proceeding to the plaintiffs.
General damages are presumed when a defamation claim is proven, and there is no requirement to provide evidence of out-of-pocket loss. Aggravated damages are awarded where the defendant has engaged in “high-handed, oppressive, outrageous, or malicious conduct”. In awarding aggravated damages, Her Honour concluded that Webster “was motivated by actual malice towards the plaintiffs who were members of a vulnerable community”.
