Disturbing Hay River Facebook page goes dark

A Facebook confessions page about Hay River, N.W.T., is now offline following concerns about anonymous posters and not-so-anonymous commenters outing fellow community members and writing in favour of violence against women.

The disappearance of the page, called Hay River Confessions, comes despite a post late last week — seemingly from the page's anonymous administrator — stating: "We won't be leaving any time soon."

Victoria Deegan, the executive director of the Hay River Family Support Centre, says she's relieved the page appears to be gone.

"I thought it was way over the top," she said. "You would think that a confessions page would be helpful for [people]. But to have sexist, sexually explicit comments, where others are actually jumping on board and stirring up the issue, to me it's really irresponsible."

It's unclear if the administrator, or Facebook, took down the page.

Another confessions page, Fort Smith Confessions, also went dark over the weekend, at the hands of its anonymous administrator.

"I set the page for deletion two weeks ago," the administrator said on Sunday. "It was for entertainment only, but the 'confessions' being received were getting way too personal and quite anti-social.

"I often edited the confessions, but did not enjoy reading the ones that were beginning to come in."

Two other pages dedicated to the territory, N.W.T. Confessions and Yellowknife Confessions, remain on Facebook.