In this courtroom sketch, Aydin Coban is pictured at B.C. Supreme Court, in New Westminster, on Monday, June 6, 2022. The Dutch man, who is accused of extorting and harassing Port Coquitlam teenager Amanda Todd before she died in 2012, has pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges.

Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jane Wolsak

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - Amanda Todd's mother told a British Columbia Supreme Court that her daughter let out "a shriek" before running downstairs to show her a Facebook profile using a topless photo of the Port Coquitlam teenager as its main image.

Carol Todd testified Tuesday on the second day of the trial of Aydin Coban, a Dutch man who prosecutors say waged a campaign of "sextortion" against the teenager, who died in October 2012 at age 15.

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

Todd told the jury trial that she and Amanda stood in the kitchen in November 2011 looking at the Facebook profile and she recognized that it was "friends" with people her daughter knew in real life, including her classmates.

"She was afraid now, again, of what it would be like going back to school. So she was distressed. And I was distressed with her," Todd said.

Around that time, she said, Amanda switched schools because of bullying from peers related to the alleged online harassment.

Crown prosecutor Louise Kenworthy told the court on Monday that messages were sent to more than 100 Facebook users who Amanda knew, telling them she had exposed her breasts online and including a link to a website.

Todd told the court that Amanda was a "free spirit" who didn't always like to follow her mother's rules, including restrictions on computer and internet use, so the teenager ended up spending more time at her father's house.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Joseph Saulnier, Todd disagreed that it was "impossible" to keep Amanda from going online, but she often went beyond the parameters that were set.

Todd testified on the opening day of the trial that she had received a Facebook message with a link to a pornography website displaying her daughter's image a few days before Christmas in 2010, and the family had reported it to police.

Sometime after that, Todd said she suggested that Amanda stay off social media.

She initially refused, Todd said, but with her father's agreement they convinced Amanda to avoid it for a couple of months before gradually allowing her to "re-enter her Facebook world" in late spring 2011.

In the Crown's opening statement, Kenworthy said Amanda had been the victim of a "persistent campaign" of online "sextortion" from late 2009 to February 2012.

She said the "sextortionist" used more than 20 fake usernames to contact the teen, threatening to share photos showing her with her hand in her underwear and exposing her breasts, unless she performed sexual acts in front of a web camera.

The prosecutor told the jury that the Crown expected to present evidence and call witnesses to show that the numerous accounts allegedly used to harass Amanda were operated by Coban, who was arrested by Dutch police in January 2014.

Dutch officers searched Coban's home and seized a desktop computer, a laptop and hard drives, and Kenworthy said the Crown also expects that a B.C. RCMP officer will testify that he found material linked to Amanda on the devices.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2022.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2022