Two Florida Students Charged In Connection With A Bullied 12-Year-Old's Suicide

from the and-the-problem-with-existing-laws-is-what? dept

Two alleged cyberbullies have been arrested in Florida, but not because as a result of hastily erected cyberbullying laws. Not that Lakeland could have been blamed for rushing some legislation into existence.

Twelve-year-old Rebecca Sedwick jumped off a tower at an abandoned cement plant after enduring months of bullying by 15 other teens and tweens. Another student, 14-year-old Guadalupe Shaw, posted this message on Facebook shortly after Sedwick's suicide.

Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF [I don't give a (expletive)].

On the strength of that post, Shaw was arrested and is facing charges for "felony aggravated stalking." Another unnamed 12-year-old was picked up and is facing the same charge.

Officials have presumably secured previous posts from the two arrestees aimed at Sedwick that justify the felony charges. This message alone would not qualify as a felony or misdemeanor.

(2) A person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person commits the offense of stalking, a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

(3) A person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person and makes a credible threat to that person commits the offense of aggravated stalking, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

The difference between the two is the existence of a "credible threat." Messages sent to Sedwick from other students included phrases like, "You should die" and "Why don't you go kill yourself," including some sent by Shaw herself.

Witnesses told investigators that Shaw harassed Sedwick by calling her ugly, told her to "drink bleach and die," and suggested that she should kill herself.

Prosecutors hoping to make these charges stick may have trouble turning suggestions into threats, but as stated earlier, there may be more posts that haven't been made public that are actual threats. Even so, the felony charge is Class 3, one step up from a misdemeanor.

Grady Judd, the sheriff whose office performed the arrest, said Shaw brought this on herself.

"She forced this arrest," Judd said of the 14-year-old's alleged decision to post the message. He said investigators don't believe her Facebook account was compromised.

Judd sent detectives to arrest her and a 12-year-old friend at their homes.

They were booked Monday, and the 12-year-old was released to her parents, Judd said.

The 14-year-old made her first court appearance Tuesday and was being kept at a juvenile detention facility.

The comment about Shaw's account being "compromised" is a response to Shaw's parents' claim (and Shaw's herself) that their child's Facebook account was hacked.

But Shaw's parents told ABC News Tuesday that they regularly look at their daughter's account — and would never allow her to write anything so vile."I would check her Facebook every time she would get on it," said Shaw's mom, who wasn't identified.

"If we saw something that was not right, we would've addressed it and it would've ended right then," her dad added.

Shaw’s attorney also said the girl denies stalking Sedwick, a former classmate at Crystal Lake Middle School in Lakeland, and isn’t responsible for the online message.

So, there's that. The claim seems to be a bit unlikely, especially if investigators have collected posts made from the account over a lengthy time period. Even if Shaw didn't make the post that resulted in her arrest, it's going to be a stretch to assert that all negative posts directed at Sedwick from her account were a result of hacking. The latest post was the trigger for law enforcement, but the aggravated stalking charge relates to "repeated" actions. Even so, it's still an obstacle prosecutors will need to surmount.

That the teens are being charged under existing law indicates the "need" for separate cyberbullying laws is overstated. Existing statutes are capable of addressing the most harmful bullying behavior. Cyberbullying laws, at least to date, have tended to replace targeting clearly criminal behavior with targeting unpleasant behavior, not all of which is bullying and very much of which is protected expression.

That the outcome of this will be unsatisfactory for those seeking justice for Sedwick's suicide (most likely no time served for either arrestee) doesn't prove the existing laws don't go far enough. As tragic as Sedwick's suicide was, and as reprehensible as the behavior was that led to it, attempting to prosecute people for someone else's choice is a problematic area that no legislator should be willing to rush into. But so many have, applying heated emotions to a process that tends to result in many harmful unintended consequences if not dealt with rationally.

Filed Under: charges, cyberbullying, florida, guadalupe shaw, rebecca sedwick, stalking, suicide

15 Year Old Student Commits Suicide One Week After Arrest For Streaking During Football Game

from the the-law-is-sometimes-wielded-by-the-most-frightening-bullies dept

We've seen the terrible results of various anti-bullying laws, most of them written in haste and named after the victim. The tragedies are real. The resulting laws are a mess. We've seen it with "Grace's Law," Maryland's anti-bullying law written after a teen was (as it is often stated) bullied into committing suicide by online aggressors. Thanks to the overreaction, Maryland now has a direct line to Facebook to escalate takedown actions aimed at posts deemed to be "without societal value" by school administrators.

What happens when a teen is "bullied to death" by school administrators?

Christian Adamek, 15, hanged himself Wednesday and died this morning from his injuries, Madison County Coroner Craig Whisenant said today. Adamek's death came less than a week after he was arrested for streaking across the Sparkman High football field during the Senators' Sept. 27 football game against Grissom High School.

Though Sparkman High Principal Michael Campbell declined to comment on Adamek's death today, he told AL.com/Huntsville's news partner, WHNT News 19, on Tuesday that the incident Adamek was accused of could bring the teen major repercussions.

Adamek had been disciplined by the school district, though details of that discipline were not made public, and he faced legal charges. Sparkman High administrators recommended that Adamek have a hearing in the Madison County court system to determine if formal charges would be filed, WHNT reported.

WHNT has memory-holed its coverage, possibly due to the fact that Sparkman High's principal openly discussed Adamek's case during a brief interview. He dodges specifics, but he does drop the names of a few possible charges. (Video available here - also saved from the memory hole.)

Campbell explains minor crime can be a major ordeal. While the principal was not at liberty to discuss the specific disciplinary actions taken by the school, he did confirm the student was not at school Tuesday.

“There’s the legal complications,” says Campbell, “public lewdness and court consequences outside of school with the legal system as well as school consequences that the school system has set up.”

While he was not at liberty to divulge details that lead to the indecent display, Campbell says the incident was much more than a mere prank.

“This situation was totally different, something not related to that at all.”

Now, Principal Campbell's words are unclear. but he hints that there's something more to this than just the streaking event. Or, given the fact that he really shouldn't be talking about a case that covered both by school privacy policies and the shelter of juvenile crime laws, he may just be trying to muddy the water a bit.

Other details have emerged. Adamek was facing expulsion according to his sister. He was arrested and was potentially facing charges for public lewdness and indecent exposure, the latter of which is tied to Alabama's sex offender laws. Long story short, Adamek could have found himself registered as a sex offender as a result of his streaking.

We don't know what other factors played into Adamek's decision to take his own life, but being faced with a future as a "sex offender" couldn't have been pleasant, even if the odds of that happening were extremely slim.

Scott Greenfield asks the obvious question: how will legislators honor Adamek?

When a teenager commits suicide because he felt bullied by others who said mean things about him, there is invariably a law passed to make sure it never happens again. In the pursuit of a perfect world, no child should ever feel so badly as to do himself harm. What law will they pass for Christian Adamek?

There are many things that can be said about the streak, that it was immature and stupid. No doubt someone will cry that it created a sexually hostile environment, as seems to be the cry with all things involving nudity. In response to those who call this a juvenile prank, someone will passionately explain the grave harm this does to the moral fabric of society...

And so the Sparkman High School powers of saving grace decided to drop every bomb they had on Christian Adamek. They’ll show him. He’ll never do anything like that again. And indeed, he won’t.

His fellow students called him a "legend" on Twitter. His school ensured he would greatly regret his childish act. In between, there are many, many unanswered questions, but given the general inability of most school administrators to see immature behavior as anything more than punishable violations, it's completely conceivable that Adamek had the book thrown at him. That he was arrested is indication enough that the school wished to reestablish its power through a show of force.

Did this lead directly to Adamek's suicide? There's no way to know for sure, but it probably was a factor. It's never as simple as it appears. Any suicide tied to social media bullying is more complex than the ultra-thin media coverage that often accompanies it. Suicide is usually related to a culmination of events, not one single incident, but a sudden sense of hopelessness can greatly contribute to the unfortunate decision.

And for those who might point out that Adamek had only a slim chance of being charged with two misdemeanors and placed on Alabama's sex offender registry, let me just point out that the reality of the situation isn't immediately apparent to those trapped inside, not while the machinery is still in motion.

Was Aaron Schwartz really going to go to jail for dozens of years? The odds are that his sentence would have been much lighter than what was being presented by the government's prosecutors. Any amount of prison time is hell to face for most people, but staring into a chasm that has suddenly opened up under your feet and seeing nothing but blackness staring back is seriously debilitating, even for otherwise healthy, happy people.

Adamek was likely being presented with the worst case scenario this early in the process. He would have expected some repercussions, but it's unlikely he considered that he'd be arrested, much less facing a possible sex offender status. During that week following his arrest, the worst case scenario would have replayed repeatedly in his mind.

How will the school spin this one? Will Sparkman's administration feel justified that it stood up to one teen and his childish action and saved the school from an unimaginable fate?

So did you show him, Principal Campbell? Are you pleased that your rules served their purpose? When you decided that the “legend,” the laughter, the applause would destroy the decorum of your school, did you consider that the price would be one young man’s life?

Chances are it won't spend much time defending itself. Why should it? It has school policy and criminal law on its side. It did the "right" thing. And either directly or indirectly as a result of the principal's decision to make one student "aware of the consequences," a 15-year-old student is no longer alive.

Filed Under: infractions, overreaction, schools, suicide, throwing the book

Ask.fm Says Most Messages Came From Troubled Teen's Own IP Address While New Cyberbullying Law Is Widely Panned

from the a-problematic-issue-addressed-with-progressively-worse-ideas dept

The recent suicides of two teenagers, Hannah Smith and Retaeh Parsons, have prompted officials to take actions to crack down on cyberbullying. Smith committed suicide after extensive bullying on ask.fm, a social Q&A site that skews heavily towards teen users. Parsons' case is a little more troubling, as it involves an alleged rape and the extensive circulation of pictures of the attack.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron responded to Smith's suicide by calling for a boycott of "vile site" ask.fm, making the same convenient mistake many politicians do -- blaming a website for the actions of a small percentage of users. Fortunately, Cameron didn't call for any further legislation, pointing out that laws dealing with harassment (online and offline) are already on the books in the UK.

Ask.fm responded by stating it would hire more moderators and make more of an effort to track and prevent abuse. It also opened an investigation into the activity on Smith's account and returned with some very interesting findings. According to its investigation, 98% of the messages "aimed" at Hannah Smith's account came from her own IP address. Smith's father has, quite reasonably, asked the site owners to substantiate this claim. He's also asked why they haven't come forward with information on the other 2%.

While ask.fm's claim about where the abusive messages originated seems bizarre, it's not an impossibility.

Scott Freeman, founder of The Cybersmile Foundation, said: "It's very easy to get carried away in this circle of online self-abuse when you're alone in your room. [Children] check it, and keep checking, and it evolves into a kind of self-harm.

"We've seen instances where people have actually lined themselves up for abuse, posting a question like "do you think I'm pretty?" knowing that they'll get torn apart. What we're dealing with now is a completely new concept. It's the hate that's resonating through all of our social media coming through to our youth."

And what happens if the prompts are ignored, or the abusive answers are simply not coming fast enough? Or, as Hazel Robinson theorizes over at the New Statesman, what if the site becomes a vehicle to express self-hatred?

You see, I can think of maybe four or five young people I've encountered on Tumblr who I would (non-judgementally, analytically) suspect have sent themselves anonymous abuse messages in order to express their self-hatred, attack themselves through the abstraction of answering anonymous aggression. It's easy to do – just have an additional browser where you're not signed in to Tumblr and leave your inbox open to anonymous things. Cleaner than a razorblade, its simple to express your self-loathing through an avatar of external hatred.

This isn't to say that Hannah Smith attacked herself, and absent any evidence from ask.fm, there's no reason to believe she did. But the possibility remains, and it's probably not as unlikely as we parents might hope.

Parson's death, on the other hand, has prompted a huge overreaction by Nova Scotia's government, which rushed through a very terrible piece of cyerbullying legislation.The new law puts the power completely in the hands of the accuser, removes any sort of objective standard and levies harsh penalties against the accused without allowing them to defend themselves at any point.

Once again, a tragedy has resulted in legislation that makes things worse for internet users in Nova Scotia (the bill does not address regular bullying), while ignoring the laws already in place to deal with the incident that began the entire cycle.

Fortunately, the reaction to the new law has been overwhelmingly negative. Putting aside the fact that legislators often enjoy a good coattail ride, the responses from elsewhere in Canada seem to indicate no one's interested in subjecting themselves to this legislative disaster.

A National Post editorial points out just how much harm this law is capable of doing.

One might hope that the law will only be used in serious cases, but that's hardly to its credit: Legislators shouldn't be writing laws they don't want enforced. We are talking about fundamental rights and freedoms: Taking away someone's phone or banning him from the Internet represents a serious impediment to education and employment. Access to a lengthy and costly appeals process is a woefully inadequate safeguard against abuses.

The Toronto Star's editorial isn't much kinder.

Well-intentioned though it is, it unwisely defines cyberbullying in overly broad terms as “any electronic communication . . . that is intended or ought reasonably be expected to cause fear, intimidation, humiliation, distress or other damage or harm to another person's health, emotional well-being, self-esteem or reputation.” The Star gets letters to the editor every day whose very point is to cause humiliation and distress to people with whom the writers disagree, if not to undermine their self-esteem and reputation. Are all of these people cyberbullies? There's something called free speech in this country. The new law crowds it.

Nova Scotia's law is so unpopular finding positive editorials is nearly impossible. National Post columnist Chris Selley expresses as much towards the end of a recent article:

And Sun Media's Anthony Furey joins a growing consensus of reasonable commentators in deploring Nova Scotia's absurd new anti-cyber-bullying law. (If anyone's seen a column or editorial supporting it, we'd love a heads up.)

Well, here's one.

The "Editorial Staff" at the Moose Jaw Times Herald has offered its support of Nova Scotia's law in one of the weakest editorials I've ever read. Fortunately, it's also very short. The editorial doesn't address any of the issues inherent with the bill, spending most of its time telling us how tragic suicide is and that bullying, especially cyberbullying, is bad and needs to stop.

When it's done spoon-feeding readers the obvious, it wraps up its non-argument with this.

It's time the governments of Canada go to bat for their youth, and place legal barriers into the mix, as [Wayne] MacKay suggests. Such legislation could help prevent further suicides in the same ilk as Parsons, Todd, and Hubley.

The Wayne MacKay quoted here is a law professor at Dalhousie University and is heading up a push for this legislation to be enacted across Canada. One would think a law professor would know the difference between good laws and bad laws and not actively pursue enacting such a problematic piece of legislation. (Then again, we have a president with a background in constitutional law, and that clearly hasn't resulted in constitutional rights being protected.)

The op-ed is finally put out of its misery by the final sentence, an insipid cluster of words that can barely muster the enthusiasm to get to the ending punctuation.

It certainly couldn't hurt.

Yeah, actually it could. For several examples, see nearly every other editorial written about the new cyberbullying bill. Anything recommended by the half-hearted phrase "It certainly couldn't hurt" is something obviously devoid of positive attributes. When you have to resort to using negative statements in order to "praise" something, it's time to reconsider your support.

Filed Under: cyberbullying, hannah smith, retaeh parsons, suicide
Companies: ask.fm

UK Prime Minister Calls ask.fm A 'Vile Site,' Blames It For The Behavior Of Some Vile Users

from the a-bigger-target-is-always-easier-to-hit dept

Another tragedy in the UK and Prime Minister David Cameron has moved swiftly to ensure the moment doesn't pass without comment. As is Cameron's standard m.o., he has sent his mouth ahead as an advance party, allowing his intellect and reasoning to arrive at their leisure.

The impetus for Cameron's latest blast is the suicide of a 14-year-old girl who was apparently bullied by other users of teen-heavy social site, ask.fm. And like his earlier attacks on various web entities, triggered by the kidnapping and murder of a 5-year-old girl, Cameron blames the acts of individuals on third parties.

Internet users should boycott "vile" websites that allow cyberbullying to help prevent more deaths of young people, the prime minister has said.

David Cameron asked parents to boycott sites that granted bullies unmoderated access to young people and said those who posted abuse online were not above the law.

Calling for a boycott isn't the issue. This is a perfectly acceptable response, although slightly less so when the head of a nation does it, which adds a hint of censorship to the proceedings. No, it's the fact that Cameron believes the sites themselves (no others are named at this point) are "vile," mistaking (perhaps purposely) that ask.fm, in and of itself, is neutral at worst. It's the users, and then only a small subset of them, that are "vile."

There are many sites on the web that normal people would consider "vile," like theYNC.com or, for that matter, LiveLeak, which shows plenty of uncensored videos depicting very graphic violence. A social media site that allows users to ask questions and receive answers from nearly anyone is prone to be abused by trolls and sociopaths, but the site itself is not "vile."

Cameron added more to that, some of it even reasonable.

He urged website operators to act responsibly to protect children from bullies, following the death of 14-year-old Hannah Smith, who killed herself on Friday after receiving abuse on Ask.fm.

There's nothing wrong with asking websites to provide more moderation but government officials asking/demanding this sort of compliance need to be aware that not every site will have the financial or technical ability to monitor incoming content with an efficiency that will please any aggreived parties. In fact, no site, no matter how well-funded can hope to achieve this. Abuse can and will slip through the cracks.

Even a behemoth like Facebook is unable to control every instance of offensive behavior that occurs under its purview. This is just part of the territory. If you provide a service for millions of users, abuse is inevitable. This is because you're serving human beings, some of whom are truly amoral.

Calling the site "vile" simply shifts all of the blame (in a very official manner) to ask.fm, something Cameron really has no business doing. But this is how he handles the web -- it's the biggest target's fault. Child porn is the fault of search engines. Abusive behavior is the fault of ask.fm.

Even if ask.fm's moderation efforts were the very least it could do, it's ridiculous to think it should be responsible for abusive messages sent by its users. It should make a real effort to moderate more of its users' messages, but at some point it will hit a wall in effectiveness, especially considering how popular the service is. Pushing it to do more than it can capably handle will only result in overreactions that will curtail its usefulness for its members.

Cameron's call for a boycott is already having an effect. Many advertisers are pulling out of the site. Someone may want to ask Cameron how ask.fm is supposed to better police its users when its revenue streams are swiftly drying up and its user base is being warned away by the Prime Minster himself.

If it continues in this fashion, chances are ask.fm will just go under. People who buy into Cameron's projection of user behavior as the behavior of the site itself will be happy. People who think the site offered nothing but bullying will feel they've won a battle. But those abusive users, who won't be affected by boycotts, outrage or a sudden lack of revenue will just go elsewhere and abuse other people. After all, they're not on the radar. Only the hosts are.

Cameron points out there are laws against the sort of bullying behavior that reportedly occurred on ask.fm and that "just because it happened on the internet," those behind the bullying shouldn't expect to be above those laws. Good points, but they're points Cameron's ignoring. There are laws in place against this behavior, but those have to be deployed against the offending users, something Cameron talks about, but doesn't seem very inclined to actually pursue.

Attacking the nameplate out front is easy and usually results in some very visible, if skin deep, changes by the entities being attacked. And why not? The attack itself is only skin deep. It's easier than dealing with the underlying issues or asking people to take personal responsibility for themselves or their children. It's also easier than explaining to someone post-tragedy that terrible people inhabit the world and it's impossible to prevent all of them from ever harming others.

This is Cameron hanging the web in effigy, nothing more. Any perceived effects will only last until the crowd wanders away.

Filed Under: david cameron, free speech, liability, secondary liability, suicide, uk

Italian Prosecutor Wants To Bring Criminal Charges Against Facebook For Not Stopping A Suicide

from the not-this-again dept

You may recall a few years ago, an absolutely ridiculous case in Italy, in which a criminal complaint was filed against Google executives, because some bratty kids made fun of a boy with Down's Syndrome and posted the video to Google Video. Eventually, some of the execs were found guilty. It looks like there may be a repeat of this, as an Italian prosecutor is talking about bringing criminal charges against Facebook because it failed to remove some mean messages that some believe led a teenaged girl to commit suicide.

"In the case of Carolina, it appears some of her friends, some of her relatives, asked for the removal of some of this strong content, and it wasn't removed -- and this played a role in her decision to commit suicide," he said.

This is ridiculous on multiple levels. As we dealt with back in the Lori Drew case, when you go around blaming people with criminal charges after someone commits suicide, you're encouraging more suicide, because you're telling people that if they kill themselves, there will suddenly be real punishment for those who bullied them. But the decision to commit suicide is an individual's choice. This is not to defend bullying, but you open up a very dangerous path when you start suggesting criminal charges against someone based on someone else's actions.

But, the even bigger issue is the focus on Facebook -- which was merely the service being used for communication. If the harassment of the teen had come via the telephone, would Italian prosecutors be looking to bring criminal charges against Telecom Italia? If the harassment had happened on the playground, would the prosecutors be looking to bring criminal charges against the school? Of course not. But, for whatever reason, in this digital era, people seem to think it makes sense to blame the technology service that someone used.

This is why we think secondary liability protections like Section 230 of the CDA are so important. This is why we think it's horrifically dangerous that here in the US, state attorneys general are looking to obliterate such secondary liability protection -- allowing them to file similarly ridiculous lawsuits against third party service providers.

Filed Under: italy, secondary liability, suicide
Companies: facebook, google

From Lori Drew To Dharun Ravi, Punishing People Based On Others' Suicides Is A Mistake

from the giving-the-wrong-message dept

A few years back, we covered the Lori Drew case, involving charges brought against a woman who stupidly set up a fake user account on MySpace to try to find out what was going on with a girl the woman's daughter had some issues with. The "fake account" was of a boy who the real 13-year-old girl became very friendly with. At some point, the "boy" turned on the girl, said some nasty things to her -- including "the world would be better off without" her -- and cut off communications. The girl committed suicide soon after. Lots and lots of people wanted Lori Drew brought up on charges for the girl's death. While we found Drew's actions to be incredibly immature and ridiculous, we were much more concerned with efforts to pin the suicide on her. Of course, the law wouldn't allow such a thing, so prosecutors trumped up some charges, involving a claim that she committed a felony by not following MySpace's terms of service. She was found guilty of a misdemeanor (not felony) charge -- which was then dropped by the judge, who wasn't comfortable with the ruling.

Of course, this did lead to a flurry of attempts to pass "cyberbullying" laws -- which try to make it a crime of some sort to be a jerk online. This is problematic for a variety of reasons, especially since it raises significant First Amendment issues, in part because "being a jerk" is extremely subjective. But the worst part is that much of what is considered to be "jerky" behavior is determined after the other party commits suicide. This is extremely problematic -- because whether or not your actions are seen as criminal depends almost entirely on how someone else reacts to them. If they shake off your actions, then you're fine. If they commit suicide, you get punished. Thus, the incentive then is actually for kids to seriously hurt themselves, if someone acts in a mean way towards them, as that increases the likelihood of the bully getting punished. That doesn't sound like a good incentive system.

I'm thinking about all of this after hearing about the guilty verdict against Dharun Ravi -- the Rutgers student who surreptitiously filmed his roommate engaged in a sexual encounter with another male. That roommate, Tyler Clementi, later killed himself, once he found out about it being filmed. Like the Lori Drew case, much of the prosecution focused on the dead teenager -- and you can understand why. It's a horrible (and horrifying) story. But, again, the reaction is much more based on the end results, rather than the initial action. No doubt, what Ravi did was despicable, but is it really criminal? Law professor Paul Butler has an excellent opinion piece explaining why this is an overreaction. He notes that Ravi was clearly immature and did an obnoxious thing in invading his roommate's privacy, but the desire to see him locked up (and apparently there's a good chance he'll be deported to India, despite not having lived there since he was 2 years old) is almost entirely because of Clementi's tragic death:

Let's be honest. A lot of people want a pound of flesh from Ravi because they blame him for Clementi's death. Tyler's reaction was tragic, and it was idiosyncratic.... No judge in the country would have allowed a homicide prosecution, because, legally speaking, Ravi did not cause the death, nor was it reasonably foreseeable. Of the millions of people who are bullied or who suffer invasions of privacy, few kill themselves.

[....]

For his stupidity, Ravi should be shamed by his fellow students and kicked out of his dorm, but he should not be sent to prison for years and then banished from the United States.

As Butler notes, the rush to the criminal justice system, and the focus on blaming Ravi, takes us away from a more reasonable place in thinking about how to deal with these things:

The problem with broad laws like New Jersey's is that they come too close to punishing people for what they think. Bigotry, including homophobia, is morally condemnable, but in a free country, it should not be a punishable offense....

[....]

Ravi did not invent homophobia, but he is being scapegoated for it. Bias against gay people is, sadly, embedded in American culture. Until last year people were being kicked out of the military because they were homosexuals. None of the four leading presidential candidates -- President Obama, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich -- thinks that gay people should be allowed to get married. A better way to honor the life of Clementi would be for everyone to get off their high horse about a 20-year-old kid and instead think about how we can promote civil rights in our own lives.

Though a national conversation about civility and respect would have been better, as usual for social problems, we looked to the criminal justice system. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. We are an extraordinarily punitive people.

Indeed, as tragic as Clementi's death is, it did inspire thousands of people to act in a positive manner against homophobia by launching the It Gets Better project -- a very powerful way that tons of people have gathered to try to pass along the message to bullied teens (mainly from the LGBT community) that things do, in fact, get better. That response is a way of trying to deal with the actual problems. Going after Ravi with these charges just seems like a punitive action based on what Clementi did after Ravi's clearly childish and obnoxious actions. It certainly can be difficult to separate out what Ravi did from what Clementi did later, but in a society based on law, that's what we're supposed to do. Being a jerk should get you shunned, but not put in prison.

Filed Under: cyberbullying, dharun ravi, free speech, lori drew, suicide, tyler clementi

Is It Illegal To Tell People How To Commit Suicide Online?

from the first-amendment? dept

Well, here's a tricky First Amendment issue. Apparently, a guy in Minnesota has been arrested and charged with "assisting suicide" because he spent an awful lot of time on various "suicide" websites, telling people how to commit suicide, and sometimes even agreeing to "suicide pacts" with people. At least two of the people he spoke to did, in fact, commit suicide. Now, it's hard not to be sickened by this guy's actions. He almost certainly needs help. But is telling people how to commit suicide illegal? That gets tricky pretty fast. There are state laws against assisted suicide, but those are generally targeting people helping others commit suicide directly -- in person. Also, it's not clear that Minnesota's state law on this applies when the two suicides both took place not just out of Minnesota, but outside the US (one in Canada, one in the UK).

But, really, the bigger question is the First Amendment question. It seems as though Minnesota's assisted suicide law is really quite broad. The key provisions:

Subdivision 1.Aiding suicide.
Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.

Subd. 2.Aiding attempted suicide.
Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another who attempts but fails to take the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than seven years or to payment of a fine of not more than $14,000, or both.

That "advises" part seems especially broad. Again, this is a tricky situation no matter what. It's certainly difficult to defend this guy and his actions. But, there are larger issues here, concerning freedom of expression and a potentially overly broad law.

Filed Under: assisted suicide, free speech, suicide

And You Thought Your Job Was Stressful: France Telecom Employees Keep Committing Suicide

from the yikes dept

People commit suicide. It happens. But, when a company has had 24 employees commit suicide in 18 months, with many blaming stress from the company as a reason, it makes you pay attention. Apparently, that's the situation at France Telecom, where the 24th suicide in the last 18 months took place earlier this week. The company says that it's going to look into how it handles human resources, which seems like a decent idea at this point. In the meantime, if you're prone to not dealing well with stress, perhaps cross France Telecom off your list of desired employers.

Filed Under: france, suicide
Companies: france telecom

The Google Trends Suicide Watch

from the well,-that's-depressing dept

Jeremy Wagstaff has done a fascinating (if morbid) little analysis using Google Trends to track the popularity of the search phrase "commit suicide painlessly." Perhaps not too surprisingly, it appears to track the economy. That is, it was relatively flat for a while, but spiked in October 2008 through March 2009 -- though, it's since come back down. As he notes, this isn't exactly a small blip -- it was over an extended period of time. He digs down a bit in the data, which suggests that while the US is a lot less suicidal these days, things are still a bit on edge over in the UK (you guys doing ok?). What would be interesting now would be to correlate that data with actual suicides. Oddly, Wagstaff notes that a similar boost is not seen in just the basic search of "how to commit suicide." That makes me wonder if the "commit suicide painlessly" search is suffering from a small sample size problem. Still, it's yet another fun little "economic indicator" found from public data, similar to the post we had recently on analyzing job trends via Facebook status. While the data might not mean much yet, the fact that there is so much more data so easily accessible is really powerful.

Filed Under: suicide, trends
Companies: google trends

Reminder: Not Everyone Online Is A Jerk

from the nice-to-know dept

Following the incredibly tragic story of Abraham Biggs' live broadcasting his suicide, plenty of "web 2.0" critics such as Andrew Keen jumped on the chance to blast the "anomie, cruelty and narcissism that characterises much of the web." Of course, if you think social networks are evil, you're going to interpret events that way, but, of course, as has been pointed out before, communication tools don't discriminate over who can use them -- so of course there are some awful people who use them, just as there are many good people. Communication tools don't change that. And, for every tragic Abraham Biggs story out there, it seems likely that there are many, many stories like Ayelet Waldman, who talks about how her online community of friends saved her from committing suicide. Of course, those stories don't get nearly as much attention, so folks like Keen can pretend they don't exist and that social networking communication tools are mainly used for shallow, meaningless conversations.

Filed Under: abraham biggs, andrew keen, ayelet waldman, community, social networks, suicide