18 Year Old Rutgers Student Commits Suicide

[Caritas]

Prayers for his soul. I'm posting the article as a spoiler because of some mature content.

[url="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/30/students-apparent-suicide-linked-to-webcast-of-sexual-encounter-2/?iref=obnetwork"]My link[/url]

[spoiler]
New Jersey prosecutors said Thursday they are determining whether additional charges, including bias, may be brought against two Rutgers University students accused of invading the privacy of fellow student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his sexual encounter with another man was streamed online.

''The initial focus of this investigation has been to determine who was responsible for remotely activating the camera in the dormitory room of the student and then transmitting the encounter on the Internet,'' Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan said.

''Now that two individuals have been charged with invasion of privacy, we will be making every effort to assess whether bias played a role in the incident, and, if so, we will bring appropriate charges,'' Kaplan said in a statement.

Under New Jersey law, a person is guilty of bias intimidation if he or she commits a crime with the purpose of intimidating someone because of race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or ethnicity; or if the victim or victim's property was selected as a target because of the same factors.

On the evening of September 19, Rutgers student Dharun Ravi is believed to have sent a message by Twitter about his roommate, Clementi.

"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, New Jersey, surreptitiously placed the camera in their dorm room and broadcast video of Clementi's sexual encounter on the internet, the Middlesex County prosecutor's office said. Ravi tried to use the webcam again two days later, on September 21.

"Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again," Ravi is believed to have tweeted.

The next day, Clementi was dead.

Authorities said the 18-year-old freshman committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge, which spans the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York. A law enforcement source told CNN that Clementi's wallet and cell phone were found on the bridge.

The New York City Medical Examiner's office said Thursday that a body recovered a day earlier from the Hudson River is Clementi's. Spokeswoman Grace Burgess said the cause of death was ruled to be suicide by drowning and blunt injuries from the impact of the jump from the bridge.

A mobile status update September 22 on a Facebook page purportedly belonging to Clementi said: "jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Ravi and his friend Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton, New Jersey, are charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for the September 19 broadcast, according to the prosecutor's office. Two more counts of invasion of privacy were leveled against Ravi for a September 21 attempt to videotape another encounter involving Clementi, the prosecutor's office said.

Both Wei and Ravi surrendered to campus police -- Wei surrendered on Monday and was released on her own recognizance; Ravi surrendered Tuesday and was released on $25,000 bail. Steven Altman, Ravi's attorney, had no comment Thursday. It was not clear if Wei had retained an attorney.

If convicted, the two students could face up to five years in prison.

Clementi's death brought anger from gay rights groups and support for the two accused students.

Paul Callan, a professor of media law at Seton Hall University, said Ravi and Wei could face an additional charge if it turns out that the broadcast of Clementi's encounter was fueled by hatred of gay people.

Details about Clementi's sexual orientation are unclear. Rutgers University student Danielle Birnbohm, who lived next door to Clementi's and Ravi's room in the dorm, told CNN affiliate WPIX that Clementi was gay. "It was obvious," she said.

Ravi apparently tweeted a message on August 22, nine days before classes began at Rutgers. "Found out my roommate is gay?" the tweet, believed to be posted by Ravi, said, according to Topsy, a search engine that allows users to access tweets removed from Twitter. In that same tweet, the writer linked to a thread on JustUsBoys.com.

On another page on JustUsBoys.com, someone posted a thread labeled "college roommate spying."

The user dubbed cit2mo wrote on September 21, a day before Clementi jumped from the bridge, "so the other night i had a guy over. I had talked to my roommate that afternoon and he had said it would be fine w/him. I checked his twitter today. he tweeted that I was using the room (which is obnoxious enough), AND that he went into somebody else's room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. given the angle of the webcam I can be confident that that was all he could have."

Cit2mo asked readers what he should do, including whether to get another roommate. Cit2mo also said he didn't want to report his roommate and "then end up with nothing happening except him getting pissed at me...."

In another post, cit2mo wrote about his roommate.

"I guess what he was doing was...he was in another person's room, with other people... and so I feel like it was 'look at what a fag my roommate is' ... and the fact that the people he was with saw my making out with a guy as the scandal whereas i mean come on...he was SPYING ON ME....do they see nothing wrong with this?"

Several people who responded to cit2mo's post expressed outrage and said the webcam was an invasion of privacy. Cit2mo said he might talk with a resident assistant in the dorm.

Cit2mo later responded that he had reported the incident.

"He [the resident assistant] seemed to take it seriously... he asked me to email him a written paragraph about what exactly happened... I emailed it to him, and to two people above him...."

That post came at 6:17 a.m. on the day that Clementi disappeared. It was the last message cit2mo put on the forum.

CNN was unable Thursday to determine whether cit2mo was Clementi, but a laywer for the justusboys.com website said the posts were traced back to Rutgers. A label under cit2mo's name on the forum had been changed from "On the Prowl" to "In Loving Memory" Thursday.

"To me, it looks like that's the guy," said Chad Belville, attorney for Colorado-based BluMedia, which owns justusboys.com.

Belville told CNN the company will keep the posts on the site.

"We don't want to cover up what happened. This is a learning experience. This is what gay men are going through," Belville said. "I hope we can reach out to some other isolated kids who really need some place to go."

In a later statement, BluMedia said "Tyler's death brings national attention to the fact that anti-gay bigotry is still alive and well, even in our universities. While Tyler's death has brought focus to the abuse gay men face every day, countless others continue to silently suffer. We hope that this tragedy will open the eyes of any who believe anti-gay bigotry causes no harm."

Rutgers won't comment on the chat forum because of an ongoing investigation, said Gregory Blimling, vice president for student affairs.

Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick said the community was grieving for Clementi.

"I have spoken with Tyler's parents to extend my own and the university's deepest sympathies, and we will continue to respect the family's request for privacy," McCormick said in a statement Thursday. "It is up to us at Rutgers to honor this young man's life by reaffirming, and living up to, our commitment to the values of civility, dignity, compassion,and respect for one another."

The group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays cited several cases of young people it said were victims of hate crimes and severe bullying. "It's time to take a stand for youth, families and inclusive safer school laws and policies," the organization said.

Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay and lesbian civil rights organization Garden State Equality, said he was sickened by this incident.

"There are no words sufficient to express our range of feelings," Goldstein said. "We are outraged at the perpetrators. We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and kind. And we are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others' lives as a sport."

But Raj Ardeshna, 17, a senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North in Plainsboro, N.J., and a former classmate of both defendants, told CNN that the two were "terrific people."

"To know that two intelligent kids could get caught up in something like this is shocking to me," Ardeshna said. "The only rationale I've been able to come up with is that they thought they were being funny -- but I really couldn't tell you.

"Without a doubt they must both be filled with regret and are distraught over what happened to Tyler, and as cliched as it sounds -- they are both good people," Ardeshna said. "And they just turned 18 and they just went to college, and everyone slips up without understanding the consequences."

Kirbi Marquez, a Rutgers student and a classmate of Ravi and Wei in high school, told CNN "had they known the consequences of their actions, they would not have considered doing this."

"I'm sure they're bearing the guilt, they're both sympathetic people and good kids and they didn't mean for any of this to happen," said Marquez.

He said he and others at the high school think they are getting a bad rap when, in fact, the allegations "are not a reflection of our values" while at the school.

Parry Aftab, the founder and executive director of StopCyberBullying.org, said the two must have had an inkling on what might happen.

"These young people had to have known the devastating effects of their actions," Aftab said. "And while they may not have foreseen death -- they had to have known how much pain that this would cause."

Those who knew Clementi described him as quiet and an accomplished musician -- he played violin with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, thousands of people joined memorial pages set up for Clementi, whose apparent tragedy began on the internet and continued to unfold there.
[/spoiler]

[CatherineM]

I'm glad they have something they can charge them with. In lots of places, the police haven't got any weapons to use against cyber bullying.

[Caritas]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1285980406' post='2177432']
I'm glad they have something they can charge them with. In lots of places, the police haven't got any weapons to use against cyber bullying.
[/quote]

Agreed. It's really just sad and rather disturbing all around

[MissScripture]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1285980406' post='2177432']
I'm glad they have something they can charge them with. In lots of places, the police haven't got any weapons to use against cyber bullying.
[/quote]
Question: If they were able to charge this out as a hate crime or whatever, would they be able to use that as a precedence in other cases of cyber bullying that didn't include elements of hate crimes?

[sixpence]

this was terrible.... and it is so nice my current university is in the news for THIS
and no i did not know any of them...

[MissScripture]

[quote name='sixpence' timestamp='1286141835' post='2177679']
this was terrible.... and it is so nice my current university is in the news for THIS
and no i did not know any of them...
[/quote]
You go to Rutgers? So does my brother! (He's a grad student, so he wouldn't have known any of these folks, either)

[CatherineM]

[quote name='MissScripture' timestamp='1286138836' post='2177663']
Question: If they were able to charge this out as a hate crime or whatever, would they be able to use that as a precedence in other cases of cyber bullying that didn't include elements of hate crimes?
[/quote]
The actual violation was the concealed camera. I guess no actual charges for putting it on the internet.

[rizz_loves_jesus]

This breaks my heart

Edited October 4, 2010 by rizz_loves_jesus

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1286143300' post='2177685']
The actual violation was the concealed camera. I guess no actual charges for putting it on the internet.
[/quote]
This would depend on the state. In PA you can record any video you want, audio is illegal.

[cappie]

Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children and Suggestions for Pastoral Ministers

A Statement of the Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family

[url="http://www.nccbuscc.org/laity/always.shtml"]http://www.nccbuscc.org/laity/always.shtml[/url]


What is a Catholic response to gay suicide? Author: James Martin, S.J. [url="http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=3363"]http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=3363[/url]

[sixpence]

[quote name='MissScripture' timestamp='[url="http://xisbn.worldcat.org:80/liblook/resolve.htm?res_id=http://www.iris.rutgers.edu&rft.isbn=1286142776&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book"]1286142776[/url]' post='2177682']
You go to Rutgers? So does my brother! (He's a grad student, so he wouldn't have known any of these folks, either)
[/quote]

Does your brother happen to go the the rutgers catholic grad group on mondays? I am joining in next week!

[OraProMe]

This is so sad. I wish I could have helped him.

It's sad he thought this was the only way.

[MithLuin]

I know...suicides are so...lonely. And isolated. And you just want to know, 'if only...' If only someone could have reached out, could have let him know he was not alone, that there was another way through this.

[HopefulBride]

So very sad, I pray that he finds peace.

[Lil Red]

he put the message on his facebook before he jumped off the bridge. sad that no one reached out to him.

[dominicansoul]

[quote name='Lil Red' timestamp='1286390122' post='2178195']
he put the message on his facebook before he jumped off the bridge. sad that no one reached out to him.
[/quote]
this was his cry for help.

A priest friend told me once that he attempted suicide in his years before finding God. He said he was walking to a place where he planned to jump, and if no one smiled at him he was going to go through with it, if someone did smile, he would think about it and not do it...fortunately for him, someone did smile at him. It sounds so trivial, but he really believed there was no more kindness in the world...and I can't fathom being in such a dark place as that...

[CatherineM]

I remember reading a study of people who jumped of bridges or buildings, yet survived. Almost 100% of them regretted jumping after they jumped but before they hit. I hope that can count as reconciliation for those who haven't survived.

[yoda]

No one was reaching out to him because they were probably all too busy being jerks. This is sad. I cant believe that people could do that to someone.

[Caritas]

Let's continue to pray for the soul of the man who died, for those who violated his privacy and dignity, and for all those in the depths of depression who feel there is no way out.

[Ed Normile]

What a shame the loss of a young life to suicide. I wonder how many others have been affected this way? The thing that struck me as odd was the twitter the victim posted how his roomate turned a camera from another dorms room to film him making out with a guy? I wonder why he did not close the door to make out, would have been much more private for him and his buddy. I guess they may pass a law about this stuff, I wonder if it will include restrictions on sites like I seen written on a bathroom wall in an ohio conveneince store,, actually it was three sites, something like - my ex grilfriend private sex tapes, and college drunk sex and passed out chicks sex. I remember they were close to this wording and seemed to say we have videos to watch of people performing sex acts for the camera that we are broadcasting without their knowledge.

ed