10-01-2010, 08:31 PM
The distraught parents of the Rutgers freshman who committed suicide after his gay hook-up was streamed live on the Internet said today they hope their son's death serves as "a call for compassion."
"Regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity," Tyler Clementi's parents Joe and Jane said in a statement.
Clementi, 18, plunged to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, three days after his roommate Dharun Ravi and his friend, Molly Wei, watched him have sex with another man live from another room with the help of a webcam.
Clementi learned via another Twitter posting that Ravi planned on using the Web cam again two days later during a second hook-up with his older lover.
"I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward me bed," Clementi wrote at 4:38 a.m. on Sept. 22 on JustUsBoys.com, a favorite site of his.
"I ran to the nearest RA and set this thing in motion . . . [Ravi] doing it again just set me off," Clementi wrote. "Meanwhile I turned off and unplugged his computer, went crazy looking for other hidden cams . . . and then had a great time."
Less than 17 hours after that posting, Clementi made the hour drive to Fort Lee, parked his car and walked onto the bridge toward Manhattan.
He used his cellphone to post a Facebook message saying, "jumping off the gw bridge sorry" -- and promptly did just that.
Clementi's suicide sparked a swift investigation that ended with Ravi and Wei, both 18, in handcuffs earlier this week on charges of invading his privacy.
On Thursday, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan and Rutgers Police Chief Rhonda Harris announced, "We will be making every effort to assess whether [anti-gay] bias played a role in the incident, and if so, we will bring appropriate charges."
"Regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity," Tyler Clementi's parents Joe and Jane said in a statement.
Clementi, 18, plunged to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, three days after his roommate Dharun Ravi and his friend, Molly Wei, watched him have sex with another man live from another room with the help of a webcam.
Clementi learned via another Twitter posting that Ravi planned on using the Web cam again two days later during a second hook-up with his older lover.
"I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward me bed," Clementi wrote at 4:38 a.m. on Sept. 22 on JustUsBoys.com, a favorite site of his.
"I ran to the nearest RA and set this thing in motion . . . [Ravi] doing it again just set me off," Clementi wrote. "Meanwhile I turned off and unplugged his computer, went crazy looking for other hidden cams . . . and then had a great time."
Less than 17 hours after that posting, Clementi made the hour drive to Fort Lee, parked his car and walked onto the bridge toward Manhattan.
He used his cellphone to post a Facebook message saying, "jumping off the gw bridge sorry" -- and promptly did just that.
Clementi's suicide sparked a swift investigation that ended with Ravi and Wei, both 18, in handcuffs earlier this week on charges of invading his privacy.
On Thursday, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan and Rutgers Police Chief Rhonda Harris announced, "We will be making every effort to assess whether [anti-gay] bias played a role in the incident, and if so, we will bring appropriate charges."