Gay Encounter Posted on the 'Net, Rutgers Student Jumps off the GWB
 

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09...udent.suicide/

Another article says that the images involved Clementi having sex with another man.

Thoughts? Should the two other students involved receive a heavy punishment? This reminds me of the Myspace mom bullying the teen girl in MO who committed suicide.

I feel for the victim and his family. Humiliation is temporary. Certainly not worth taking one's own life.

They should certainly follow through on the invasion of privacy charge. That goes way beyond a prank, and yes, these kids need to be made into an example. I can't say I've seen things like this happen to anyone I know, but people do post less serious photos or posts that can certainly make their target feel bad and they just do not realize that it's a big deal. It's like they think their corner of the internet is small and insulated. It's not.

It wasn't images. It was a live stream of him having sex with another man...far different and far more invasive.

http://www.switched.com/2010/09/29/r...y-live-stream/

I don't have any words for this.

Exactly. I can assume this young man was not open about his sexuality yet. But, as I always say, the only way two people can keep a secret, is if the other one is dead. It's better to just be who you are, ... but that's much easier said than done obviously. So tragic ... :(

It's not always that simple. There are degrees of humiliation and this one goes above and beyond what most of us will ever have to deal with in our lives and not just because it was a homosexual encounter; some would be just as devastated if they were broadcasted having sex as a heterosexual. We are all different and are impacted by life's challenges differently, which is why we all have to take matters of bullying and such more seriously. Sometimes the outcome of humiliation such as this is indeed permanent unless maybe you are able to re-locate and remove yourself from an environment and if you're a celebrity or well known person, you might not even be able to do that. Not saying it's worth taking your life but just pointing out that it's not that simple, especially without a strong support system.

Not just that.

http://www.switched.com/2010/09/29/r...y-live-stream/

To add to the privacy issues, there is supposedly evidence that may suggest the roommate was motivated out of hate of homosexuals.

I hope they prosecute these two kids - or at least the roommate - to the max possible. I can't imagine ever thinking it was OK to film my roommate having sex with someone, broadcasting it over the Web a couple of times, and tweeting about it a couple of times, too. It was just plain mean, and has potential to cause terrible mental anguish that someone might not ever get over.

I understand the alledged perpetrators would get a maximum sentence of five years if found guilty of the invasion of privacy charges. I propose if they are found guilty that the perpetrators serve their sentences in a maximum security prison. If they are so interested in watching homosexual activity, they ought to experience such activity, up close and personal.

According to news reports the Phi Delta Theta chapter at the university is helping with memorial activities:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/201...lementi_3.html

Excerpt:

. . . Dozens of Rutgers students left flowers and notes at a memorial table at Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus in New Brunswick. Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity that organized the memorial, plans to send the notes and flowers to Clementi’s family.

"We decided we should put something together for people to voice their frustration and condolences," said Jason Dacruz, 20, the fraternity’s president. "We wanted it to be more of a personal thing for Tyler." . . .

I disagree. Everyone has their level of what they can tolerate. It's apparent he reached his. Think about possible fallout of what happened. Can you imagine how that would affect his life? His friends, family knowing this part of his life that was hidden for whatever reason, displayed for all the world to see. People can be very cruel as this was the case. I seriously doubt his life would have gotten any easier unless maybe he moved to another country. It's easy for us to say "suicide is not the answer". For some it's the only answer. I certainly don't recommend it as a solution to anything, speaking from experience.

ETA:
I found reasons valid to me, to live. Unfortunately, this young man did not.

Even if he was "out", taping anyone's sexual activity (gay, straight, solo) and broadcasting it live over the internet without their permission is disgusting. This is just another example of cyber bullying and someone taking their life because of it. When you pick on others, you never know how the person being bullied will handle it. Some people ignore it, some people get revenge, but some do take their life.

Ditto.

Yes. Rape is funny and should be used as a punishment. Because some people deserve it.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Nobody truly knows another person's limits.

And I think Amicus has the right idea about punishing these losers. It's just a shame that there's no way to punish everyone who watched this travesty for more than a few seconds.

Seriously? Rape is now an acceptable punishment? It's not a slipperly slope but a direct downhill drive from that to "she deserved it."

You're right, and I was out of line.

I did see statistics recently, and I'm not going to pretend that I remember the numbers, but of young people going to the prison, an overwhelming account will be raped within the first two days. This held true for men and women. So, sentencing someone to "just" several months or a year isn't doing anyone any favors.

I still cannot state strongly enough that this roommate was supposedly a friend to Clementi, and ended up betraying him to the point of suicide. I cannot think of any type of work where that type of behavior would make him a stand-out candidate for any job.

We discussed this today in class. It's such a tragic thing that Tyler felt he had to take his own life to escape this & it's just disgusting that his roommate would do something like this! I believe that the two involved with the taping should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Doing an action that pushes another person so far that makes them take their own life should receive more than just an "invasion of privacy" charge. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but we were discussing in class that this should also fall under the charge of a hate crime & that's what the debate currently is. It is so alarming & just devastating the number of homosexual students (college, high school, & middle school) that felt this was their only solution in recent weeks.

Can "hate crime" be attached to a non-violent* crime?

*I realize that the outcome was tragic, but the act itself wasn't violent.

That's actually what we were talking about in class.

I just copied this from the FBI website:

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

It doesn't specify that the crime must be a violent act, just that perpetrator targets a victim because of (in this case) sexual orientation. From what our professor said, (again- I'm not sure if this is true so please correct me if you know otherwise) the roommate did in fact know that Tyler was homosexual. Do you think that the roommate would have still made the video & streamed it live if he had been having sex with a girl instead?

Interesting.

From the reports I've read, the roommate did know he was a homosexual. Of course, we'll never know what he would have done if his roommate was heterosexual, but I have heard of other cases in which people (mostly young women) have committed suicide after "sexting" pictures and videos surfaced.

IIRC, the perpetrators were charged with having child pornography, but I don't recall whether or not "hate crime" was attached.

Only the roommate will know that for sure but, honestly, if he's sick enough to do this then I think the answer is yes. Roommate may have just been an @$$ bordering on pathological and he could very well be twisted enough to destroy someone's life regardless of orientation. The fact that the guy was gay could have just been another thing to pick at, not the sole motivator for the crime.

My problem is not with calling the video streaming a hate crime, it may have been. My problem is with this:
Several articles have listed the boy's suicide itself as the hate crime. I disagree. The roommate and the girl did something absolutely vile, twisted, and WRONG and they should be punished harshly for what they did. It's totally heartbreaking and I hope they get the book thrown at them. But only for what THEY did. Even if he felt like he had no other choice, the boy chose suicide as a way to deal with his humiliation and no one else is responsible for his choice. Just the same as whatever may have happened between those two (whether the boy pissed his roommate off or ever did anything to him), the boy could never be responsible for "provoking" his roommate to do something so heinous. I believe I said the same thing about the Irish teen who hung herself after being bullied at school.

ETA: From the last reports I've heard, the boy found in the water hadn't even been identified as Clementi's and he is still considered "missing." Has that changed?

This is a very general desdription. Whether an offense actually qualifies as a hate crime will depend on the specific laws of the state where the offense occurred.

Thank you, Mystic Cat for the clarification. The Chief Justice has spoken! I guess this is why the Feds are waiting for NJ to decide how to classify this case to proceed. Sad, any way you look at this. Clementi chose to end his life, but as we've seen in a plethora of cases over this year, not everyone is psychologically capable of withstanding bullying. In every case, it never ceases to amaze me how these people forget to live by the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I'm not even religious, but this is an amazingly useful tenet.

I should have clarified that there is also a federal hate crime law that might apply in this case -- the Matthew Shepard Act. The FBI's description seems to be a description of that law.

Still, always worth remembering that there is no one definition of hate crime. The relevant definitions here will be the federal definition and New Jersey's.

Surely you all didn't need Chief Justice MysticCat to tell you that. His work is never done.

Going to do my devil's advocate thing here...

Whether the hate crimes laws fit this bill remains to be seen. Most are looking at the outcome here, which was horrible, but probably not really a foreseeable consequence of what was allegedly done. I'm hoping the prosecutors charge these two with something that is appropriate--not just something to respond to the masses wanting blood.

ETA: My understanding of most hate crimes statutes is that they are predicated on the defendant being motivated in whole or in part by the fact that the victim falls into a protected class of persons. So before we'd know whether the hate crime fit, we'd have to know what actually motivated this activity.

College kids do some pretty stupid impulsive things. This could very well just be a case of semi-ordinary college hijinks gone horribly wrong. There are a lot of calls for condemnation prior to all of the facts coming in.

Thanks for the clarification. This is what I was getting at in my earlier post.

I hope the other person who was videotaped is doing okay.

I'd be interested in seeing those statistics.

Numbers vary pretty wildly from what I'm finding online. You have a major reporting problem involved as well as a difficulty with people accepting a definition of rape that includes coercion as well as force.

Sounds familiar, no?

a google of rape in prison brings up sites with numbers that vary from 20% to 1-2%.

Also, I'm sure the rest of us will be more than thankful of you for jumping on the Google grenade that is "prison rape"

Don't click Safe Search off?

That seems like no fun at all.

Well if someone could explain to me why an image search for Little Mermaid Saudi Arabia turns up hard core porn, I might turn it back off.

I just wanted to see how they'd edited the front cover of the VHS/DVD!

Even on "Moderate" I've had some goofy porn show up for relatively innocuous searches. It's like a fun game that you can't play in a library. Or really ever.

I saw the stats in some newspaper, within the past month, and I'm going to try to find them. The article was about younger people new to the penal system, and how parents who think that 6 months in prison will do their kid good are so out of line. In the meantime, this book and this one seem to have the same sort of information.

I searched "contractions" and got porn WITH the safe search on. I just wanted to look up some grammar rules.

Porn or pictures of giving birth?