Chelsea Hillier sentenced to house arrest after ignoring court order to retract defamation of Carleton instructor
Hillier was also ordered to pay nearly $17,000 in legal costs to the former friend, Carleton University contract instructor Esther Post, and to refrain from disparaging Post or the court decision any further. She must also do 120 hours of community service and will serve nine months of probation after her house arrest is complete.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
The two women met in 2008 when Post was Hillier’s instructor at Carleton and they became close friends. Hillier was a guest at Post’s wedding. But the two fell out over Hillier’s increasingly strident views on the COVID-19 pandemic, which echoed those of her father. In November 2021, Hillier posted untrue statements on Twitter that Post had drugged and slept with her students at Carleton. When Hillier refused to remove the tweets, Post sued for defamation.
“That matter should have ended there. Sadly, it did not,” Somji said. “On the same day the decision was released, Ms. Hillier doubled down and posted 10 more defamatory comments about Ms. Post.” Last fall, Hillier had begun living again with her former husband, who had served time in jail for assaulting her. The husband was killed in a car crash in May and Somjii made allowance for Hillier’s mental state in her sentencing.Article content