Suicide illustrates Web’s dangers

Associated Press

PISCATAWAY, N.J.

The shocking suicide of a college student whose sex life was broadcast over the Web illustrates yet again the Internet’s alarming potential as a means of tormenting others and raises questions whether young people in the age of Twitter and Facebook can even distinguish public from private.

Cruel gossip and vengeful acts once confined to the schoolyard or the dorm now can make their way around the world instantly via the Internet, along with photos and live video.

“It’s just a matter of when the next suicide’s going to hit, when the next attack’s going to hit,” said Parry Aftab, a New Jersey lawyer who runs the website WiredSafety.

Last week, Tyler Clementi, a shy, 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman and gifted violist, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate and another classmate reportedly used a webcam to secretly broadcast his dorm-room sexual encounters with another man. The two classmates have been charged with invasion of privacy, with the most serious charges carrying up to five years in prison.

The Associated Press found at least 12 cases in the U.S. since 2003 in which children and young adults between 11 and 18 killed themselves after falling victim to some form of “cyberbullying” — teasing, harassing or intimidating with pictures or words distributed online or via text message.

In Clementi’s case, prosecutors said that his roommate, Dharun Ravi of Plainsboro, N.J., and Molly Wei of Princeton, N.J., both 18-year-old freshmen, transmitted a live image of Clementi having sex Sept. 19 and that Ravi tried to webcast a second encounter Sept. 21, the day before Clementi’s suicide. Lawyers for Ravi and Wei did not return calls.

Luanne Peterpaul, vice chairwoman of the gay- rights group Garden State Equality and a former New Jersey prosecutor, said authorities might be able to pursue the case as a hate crime under state law if they are able to establish that the defendants acted because they believed Clementi was gay.