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TORONTO, October 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The shocking video of a man roundhouse kicking a pro-life woman during last Sunday’s Life Chain in Canada has gone viral since first being published on LifeSiteNews on Tuesday. Mainstream outlets originally declined to touch the story.
Marie-Claire Bissonnette was kicked by a so-far unidentified man at the corner of Bloor and Keele in Toronto after she began filming him defacing private property of pro-lifers at the event. The man had been scribbling messages on signs and on the backs of participants at the Life Chain with markers.
After he kicked Bissonnette, the assailant claimed he was trying to knock the phone out of her hand. He then tore off the yellow ribbon pinned to her jacket that identified her as an event organizer, and ran away, Bissonnette relates in her account.
LifeSiteNews published her story Tuesday and the video has gone viral.
READ: I’m a pro-life woman. This man just roundhouse-kicked me in public for my beliefs
The video shows the assailant’s windup and kick. Viewers can hear the audible thud of his kick, the crack of the phone hitting the pavement as the image goes out of kilter and Bissonnette’s voice repeatedly stating: “Someone call the police!”
The clip has received some 410,000 views at last count, and has climbed to Number 8 on YouTube. It was also trending Wednesday on Toronto Reddit, and has been posted on conservative and liberal sites, including Louder With Crowder, Newsweek, Daily Hive, LifeNews, BlogTO, Twitchy, and RedState, and noted on Facebook by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.
Campaign Life Coalition youth coordinator, Bissonnette has laid a complaint with Toronto police against the assailant. A distinct benefit of the clip going viral is that it exponentially increases the chances to identify the assailant.
Bissonnette had been given some clues as to the man’s identity earlier.
“Someone messaged me yesterday some guy’s Facebook profile that looks exactly like this guy, so I’ll be handing that into the police,” she told LifeSiteNews.
“I was glad that it was caught on camera the way it was,” she added. “Because it shows him clearly and he should be ashamed of himself, and I’m glad it’s going around everywhere.”
Bissonnette had initially sent an account of the incident and the 46-second video to columnists at the Toronto Sun and the National Post, as well as to the CBC, but there seemed to be little interest.
“I was hoping for a reaction but I knew that a lot of pro-life people had not been given equal coverage,” she told LifeSiteNews.
Since the video’s meteoric rise in popularity, however, Bissonnette has been interviewed by Global News and Newsweek, and has been contacted by a UK reporter, Blaze Media and National Review.
She was surprised the video is trending “because it’s on the wrong side of political correctness.”
As to why it’s gone viral, Bissonnette speculated that “it’s probably trending on both sides for two reasons. One is that pro-lifers might be shocked and upset and would want to spread the message and would want to expose him.”
The other reason is that “pro-choicers would celebrate his actions, and that somebody’s taken the initiative to do something they wanted to do,” she said.
“Hopefully, not the majority but some people would want to do that.”
Indeed, “people have been arguing about it on Reddit,” and “a stranger made a side comment in a Facebook message he sent me that there’s been a lot of back and forth, and people trying to defend” her assailant on social media, she told LifeSiteNews.
“I’m not surprised,” added Bissonnette. “It’s disgusting, but it shows that there are more out there.”