A B.C. man has been awarded $35,000 in damages after his ex-girlfriend posted several intimate images of him on social media in what a tribunal described as a “targeted campaign to harass and torment” him. A couple anonymized as BW and SS were in a relationship for four years before breaking up, according to the Civil Resolution Tribunal decision issued last month. After that, SS began to “harass” BW by posting intimate images of him on various social media accounts that were fake and meant to impersonate him or people he knew. In a previous, related dispute, tribunal member Jeffrey Drozdiak found eight of the images met the definition of intimate—all of them showing the man’s face and some showing his genitals—and issued a protection order requiring SS to destroy all the images and make every reasonable effort to make them unavailable to others. Drozdiak found the respondent continued sharing the images and breached the protection order 14 times between March and September of this year. How do limitations apply to online images? The tribunal member said the claim raises a “novel issue” about how the Limitation Act applies to images posted online. Normally, applicants to the Civil Resolution Tribunal, including for intimate images-related damages, must make their claims within two years of an incident. In this case, one of the images the man claimed damages for was discovered by him in January 2024, and he made the claim in April 2026, meaning that image would be excluded from the decision. However, he provided proof that the image was still on the internet as of December 2025. Drozdiak decided that the statute of limitations for intimate images cases should work like a nuisance claim, where an applicant can prove they suffered “fresh damage” from a continuing problem, or that the other party’s actions created a new nuisance each day. “I find an image shared online creates ‘fresh damage’ every day it remains online. Each day, the limitation period starts again until the image is taken down. However, an applicant can only claim damages for the two-year period immediately before they started their claim,” the decision reads. ‘Ruining his life’ In intimate images cases, the applicant doesn’t need to provide evidence they suffered harm, because, without consent, “it is well known that sharing a person’s intimate images is harmful.” In addition, B.C.’s Intimate Images Protection Act makes sharing such images illegal and actionable without proof of damage. Discussing the harm BW suffered specifically, Drozdiak accepted his submission that the spreading of the pictures is “ruining his life and his business.” BW also said SS sent two images to his current partner and told them “she will never stop, and her goal was to break them up and never let another woman get close to him.” The man also told the tribunal his ex left laughing reactions on all the posts on his business social media using a fake account that had a naked image of him as the profile picture. “The respondent’s ongoing conduct demonstrates that she has no concerns about how her actions affect the applicant. Her motivation appears to be revenge for the applicant ending the relationship. I find this ongoing, intentional conduct favours a significant damages award,” the decision reads. Drozdiak also considered the respondent’s breach of the of the protection order and her evading of being served CRT disputes aggravating factors, with the applicant saying she is “treating this process as a joke.” The applicant asked for $35,000, and the tribunal granted it, broken down as $30,000 in compensatory damages and $5,000 in aggravated damages. SS must also pay BW $444.20 to compensate him for hiring a process server.
