P.E.I. marked its first Cyberbullying Awareness Day on Thursday, a way to honour a teenager who died by suicide after he became the victim of sextortion.
April 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the death of 17-year-old Harry Burke, who was from the Souris area.
Robin Croucher, MLA for Souris-Elmira, proposed the awareness day through a private member’s bill that passed unanimously in the P.E.I. Legislature in March.
“We need to bring the spotlight to [cyberbullying] so that we can hopefully prevent this from happening in the future,” Croucher said Thursday.
Croucher is a good friend of Burke’s family and said his death highlights the risks of cyberbullying and sextortion.
“Even though I have three children — [ages] 17, 19 and 21 — I didn’t realize how serious an issue this was,” Croucher said.
P.E.I. RCMP say they’ve already had a few cases of sextortion this year. In 2023, they reported eight luring incidents and 65 sextortion cases.
