Bullies Thrive

Wherever Authority

Is Weak

By Tim Field

When I first started writing on this blog about my recovery from trauma, PTSD, and the relentless harassment my husband and I faced as building superintendents in Ontario, I promised to be completely transparent. Healing requires looking at the truth—not just the emotional aftermath, but the cold, hard evidence of what actually happened.

Today, I want to take you inside some of the actual paper trail of that chaos. It shows their admission to their nasty actions, though I don’t think they realized it at the time.

I’ve pulled a deeply telling document from my archives, titled “You come to Divisional Court as a witness and admit you filed the N5″, shared below. It consists of a series of tribunal emails from the first week of February 2019 between myself, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) Registrar, and the tenants I have come to know as the Toxic Adult Bullies. The Divisional Court hearing mentioned in this document, was later in the month on February 19, 2019. 

Looking back at these missives with the benefit of therapy, mindfulness, and years of distance, I can see the textbook psychological maneuvers of narcissistic immaturity playing out in real-time.

The Olive Branch Met with a Weapon

In early February 2019, exhausted by the endless legal loops and the fact that these individuals had created seven defamatory websites (859kennedyroad.com, stellareddy.com, davidstrashin.com, sjtomemberkevinlundy.com, sjtomembervandanapatel.com, socialjusticetribunalsontario.ca, and lorriereddy.com) and Facebook posts specifically designed to destroy my personal and professional reputation, I reached out in the spirit of mediation.

As a parent myself, I wrote to the HRTO and the applicants offering to forgo Small Claims Court and allow them to leave the property in peace. I explicitly stated I was doing this “out of consideration and empathy for the children in the household,” hoping to alleviate the stress of a looming eviction for those innocent kids. All I required was that they take down the defamatory websites and sign a statement admitting they had fabricated a wild story about a racist encounter at a restaurant to avoid accountability for refusing building maintenance access.

How did the bully respond?

By trying to extort me into committing perjury.

The “Win-Win” Extortion

The tenant, “K,” wrote back to the entire tribunal with a counter-offer that laid bare their complete disregard for the legal system:

“But let me throw something by you, and the property owners. You come to Divisional Court as a witness and admit you filed the N5’s in bad faith against [A]. I can have the website taken down and the Facebook post removed… That way it is a win, win for everyone.”

When I refused to play their game, the emails devolved into an absolute masterclass in psychological projection.

Shouting at the Mirror

As I’ve written about before, highly toxic individuals cannot handle accountability. When they look in the mirror and see their own malicious actions, their ego flips the narrative and accuses you of doing exactly what they are doing.

Look at what the tenant wrote to the HRTO just days later when he didn’t get his way:

• They accused me of bullying: “This is so overwhelmingly obvious, as her behaviour over the past couple of months has grown even more ignorant and demanding… [she tries to] strong-arm the HRTO.”

• They accused me of being a narcissist: “Stella Reddy being a Narcissist, thinks that everyone, including the HRTO has to address her wants and needs because she says so.”

• They accused me of trying to confuse the system: “It is clear that Stella Reddy is deliberately trying to bog-down the HRTO with all these frivolous emails and regurgitated false claims in an attempt to get the adjudicator confused…”

When I read these words back in 2019, they kept me awake at night, and made me second-guess reality. I was terrified because they were spinning an absolute web of fiction, even claiming I was going to physically assault them in the courthouse lobby!

But today, in 2026, living peacefully in St. John’s, I look at “You come to Divisional Court as a witness and admit you filed the N5“ and I just see a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum because a strong boundary was held.

Why Weak Authority Lets Them Thrive

As the anti-bullying expert Tim Field once noted, “Bullies thrive wherever authority is weak.” This document is living proof of that. Because administrative tribunals move slowly and allow bad actors to submit pages upon pages of regurgitated, defamatory nonsense, these bullies felt completely empowered to use the system as a playground for harassment. They spent the 19 months of the process submitting almost daily missives to the Human Rights Tribunal filled with contradictions, knowing I would also have to get them.

They genuinely believed they could outsmart the lawyers, the property owners, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and me.

But a year after these emails were sent, in January 2020, when it finally came time to face the music at the actual Human Rights hearing, they didn’t show up.

That was the moment the illusion shattered. They were all bark, all projection, and all digital smoke and mirrors. That was the moment I realized I didn’t need to stay in Ontario and fight a broken system anymore. I packed up, came home to Newfoundland, and chose to leave their chaos behind.

I share this raw text today to remind anyone going through a legal or personal nightmare with a toxic person: The narrative they project onto you is a reflection of their own internal sickness, not your truth. Hold your boundaries, protect your peace, and remember that you don’t have to clean a mirror that someone else broke.

Have you ever had someone twist an offer of peace into an excuse to attack you further? How did you break free from the back-and-forth loop? Let’s connect in the comments below.