You've heard of Tyler Clementi by now. The gay college kid who killed himself after his roommate Dharun Ravi and his friend Molly Wei secretly recorded him having sex with another guy and broadcasted it over the internet. This humiliated Tyler so bad that he committed suicide by jumping off a bridge to his death. Do you think those 2 should face some kind of a murder or manslaughter charge? I totally do.

They should be charged with whatever charges are associated with invasion of privacy and I can see a civil suit coming on top of criminal charges, but he chose to end his own life. They may have his blood on their hands theoretically, but theory shouldn't be enough to charge someone with murder. They didn't technically kill him and shouldn't be charged with his death any more than his own parents who clearly didn't raise him to enough self-pride to be able to withstand humiliation.

Legally, looks like the only thing they can be charged with is whatever is associated with invasion of privacy. The prosecutor would charge them with some degree of murder if he could but the last thing I read was that there weren’t sufficient legal grounds to file those charges.

Yeah, I think Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei are a couple of scumbags and should do the 5 years (I think that’s the max for the charges they could face), be kicked out of school and be working to pay off the huge settlement they should owe in a civil suit for the rest of their lives but as femme fatale said, they didn’t push him off the bridge. I won’t be surprised that a lot of people won’t be satisfied that they won’t catch a murder charge but then work to have the law changed.

With the exception of terminal illness, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I say that without the intention of putting any blame on Tyler Clementi. His story and that of every other child or young man or woman who took that path because they were being bullied for being different breaks my heart. Being different doesn’t always being gay either. Did anyone hear about this case? As a father, this actually made me cry.

Quote :

MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.

It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died by his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.

Now two families -- including the Vidovics -- are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.

If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket -- and laughed.

"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.

"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.

At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.

Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.

"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."

Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.

She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.

When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.

Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.

"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."

femme fatale wrote:

They should be charged with whatever charges are associated with invasion of privacy and I can see a civil suit coming on top of criminal charges, but he chose to end his own life. They may have his blood on their hands theoretically, but theory shouldn't be enough to charge someone with murder. They didn't technically kill him and shouldn't be charged with his death any more than his own parents who clearly didn't raise him to enough self-pride to be able to withstand humiliation.

I agree with this. What they did was wrong and they should be charged accordingly. But they did not choose to kill him, the guy who did it made the choice to end his own life and there shouldn't be charges because HE is the one who made the decision. We can't start having murder charges for driving somebody to suicide. I am sure we wouldn't call it suicide if they had driven Tyler to shoot them instead, so we shouldn't call it murder cause they drove him to kill himself. He chose to do it in the end.

I find it annoying that Tyler Clementi is almost being treated like the Matthew Shepherd of his generation. I'm also tired of hearing this latest sensationalized term "bullied to death." No one can be bullied to death. Bullying doesn't attack your nervous system and shut down your organs.

Ravi and Wei pulled a loathsome prank and should be charged with invasion of privacy, getting whatever the stiffest sentence that entails (I imagine they'll each get a reduced sentenced, that is depending on how much socio-political pressure is heaped onto the courts from outside sources), but they did not kill him. For Clementi to commit suicide over this, he was already on the proverbial ledge before this stunt happened. His mindset wasn't rational. Anything could have been his final straw.

JM130ELM wrote:

I find it annoying that Tyler Clementi is almost being treated like the Matthew Shepherd of his generation. I'm also tired of hearing this latest sensationalized term "bullied to death." No one can be bullied to death. Bullying doesn't attack your nervous system and shut down your organs.

Well in theory it can if the bullies get violent, which is often known to happen and had this been the case, then the story would be different. I am least of all one to minimize the dangers of bullying.

We just gotta keep things in perspective I think. Charge people with what they did. You're responsible for your own choices, not somebody else's.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:

Well in theory it can if the bullies get violent, which is often known to happen and had this been the case, then the story would be different. I am least of all one to minimize the dangers of bullying.

We just gotta keep things in perspective I think. Charge people with what they did. You're responsible for your own choices, not somebody else's.

If the harassment turns into a violent assault that becomes fatal, then it's murder (or manslaughter.) But the term "Bullied to Death" is being used <from what I'm seeing> to describe kids who're taunted to the point of suicide. Which, IMO, is over-dramatizing. Especially in a case like this where Clementi wasn't even being technically bullied. He was humiliated and mocked. The media however is using him as a poster child for schoolyard bullying, which isn't even an accurate portrayal of the events leading up to his death.

They should definetly do some jail time like 5-10. Invasion of Privacy dosen't carry a heavy weight as far as the law is concerned but it was criminal mischief too.

JM130ELM wrote:

If the harassment turns into a violent assault that becomes fatal, then it's murder (or manslaughter.) But the term "Bullied to Death" is being used to describe kids who're taunted to the point of suicide. Which, IMO, is over-dramatizing. Especially in a case like this where Clementi wasn't even being technically bullied. He was humiliated and mocked. The media however is using him as a poster child for schoolyard bullying, which isn't even an accurate portrayal of the events leading up to his death.

Well, schoolyard bullying I'd lay most blame on the teachers for.

But I agree, they're trying to use this kid to forward a campaign. Unfortunately I am not sure it's bullying as a whole that they are interesting in targeting.

The best any prosecutor could get would be manslaughter...and I don't think this is a hate crime, but if the prosecutor manages to have them charged with it, sabes que, that's fine with me too because these two jerkoffs definitely need to serve time in jail. They need a good long time to see what it's like having THEIR privacy violated, people watching them all the time, when they shower, when they're on the toilet, everything.

Supernova wrote:

The best any prosecutor could get would be manslaughter...and I don't think this is a hate crime, but if the prosecutor manages to have them charged with it, sabes que, that's fine with me too because these two jerkoffs definitely need to serve time in jail. They need a good long time to see what it's like having THEIR privacy violated, people watching them all the time, when they shower, when they're on the toilet, everything.

I agree 110% with this!

Look at what this guy has to say about bullies. He's abrasive, but IA with him for the most part.

As big of a pair of assholes these two jerks are and while his blood is forever on their hands, unfortunately no I don't think they should be charged with murder. But the end result of their invasion/conspiracy should be compel the judge the impose the stiffest sentence on them that he can for what they are guilty of. I hope they get the maximum in prison time. They should also be expelled from school and be dealt major civil fines. What they did was awful, but unfortunately not technically murder.

I think they should be charged with Invasion of Privacy!