his poor parents. he was a good kid. bullies killed him.
New York (CNN) -- New Jersey prosecutors said Thursday they are determining whether additional charges, including bias, may be brought against two Rutgers University students accused of invading the privacy of fellow student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his sexual encounter with another man was streamed online.
''The initial focus of this investigation has been to determine who was responsible for remotely activating the camera in the dormitory room of the student and then transmitting the encounter on the Internet,'' Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan said.
''Now that two individuals have been charged with invasion of privacy, we will be making every effort to assess whether bias played a role in the incident, and, if so, we will bring appropriate charges,'' Kaplan said in a statement.
Under New Jersey law, a person is guilty of bias intimidation if he or she commits a crime with the purpose of intimidating someone because of race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or ethnicity; or if the victim or victim's property was selected as a target because of the same factors.
"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."
Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, New Jersey, surreptitiously placed the camera in their dorm room and broadcast video of Clementi's sexual encounter on the internet, the Middlesex County prosecutor's office said. Ravi tried to use the webcam again two days later, on September 21.
"Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again," Ravi is believed to have tweeted.
The next day, Clementi was dead.
Authorities said the 18-year-old freshman committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge, which spans the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York. A law enforcement source told CNN that Clementi's wallet and cell phone were found on the bridge.
The New York City Medical Examiner's office said Thursday that a body recovered a day earlier from the Hudson River is Clementi's. Spokeswoman Grace Burgess said the cause of death was ruled to be suicide by drowning and blunt injuries from the impact of the jump from the bridge.
A mobile status update September 22 on a Facebook page purportedly belonging to Clementi said: "jumping off the gw bridge sorry."
Ravi and his friend Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton, New Jersey, are charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for the September 19 broadcast, according to the prosecutor's office. Two more counts of invasion of privacy were leveled against Ravi for a September 21 attempt to videotape another encounter involving Clementi, the prosecutor's office said.
Both Wei and Ravi surrendered to campus police -- Wei surrendered on Monday and was released on her own recognizance; Ravi surrendered Tuesday and was released on $25,000 bail. Steven Altman, Ravi's attorney, had no comment Thursday. It was not clear if Wei had retained an attorney.
If convicted, the two students could face up to five years in prison.
Clementi's death brought anger from gay rights groups and support for the two accused students.
Paul Callan, a professor of media law at Seton Hall University, said Ravi and Wei could face an additional charge if it turns out that the broadcast of Clementi's encounter was fueled by hatred of gay people.
Details about Clementi's sexual orientation are unclear. Rutgers University student Danielle Birnbohm, who lived next door to Clementi's and Ravi's room in the dorm, told CNN affiliate WPIX that Clementi was gay. "It was obvious," she said.
Ravi apparently tweeted a message on August 22, nine days before classes began at Rutgers. "Found out my roommate is gay?" the tweet, believed to be posted by Ravi, said, according to Topsy, a search engine that allows users to access tweets removed from Twitter. In that same tweet, the writer linked to a thread on JustUsBoys.com.
On another page on JustUsBoys.com, someone posted a thread labeled "college roommate spying."
The user dubbed cit2mo wrote on September 21, a day before Clementi jumped from the bridge, "so the other night i had a guy over. I had talked to my roommate that afternoon and he had said it would be fine w/him. I checked his twitter today. he tweeted that I was using the room (which is obnoxious enough), AND that he went into somebody else's room and remotely turned on his webcam and saw me making out with a guy. given the angle of the webcam I can be confident that that was all he could have."
Cit2mo asked readers what he should do, including whether to get another roommate. Cit2mo also said he didn't want to report his roommate and "then end up with nothing happening except him getting pissed at me...."
In another post, cit2mo wrote about his roommate.
"I guess what he was doing was...he was in another person's room, with other people... and so I feel like it was 'look at what a fag my roommate is' ... and the fact that the people he was with saw my making out with a guy as the scandal whereas i mean come on...he was SPYING ON ME....do they see nothing wrong with this?"
Several people who responded to cit2mo's post expressed outrage and said the webcam was an invasion of privacy. Cit2mo said he might talk with a resident assistant in the dorm.
Cit2mo later responded that he had reported the incident.
"He [the resident assistant] seemed to take it seriously... he asked me to email him a written paragraph about what exactly happened... I emailed it to him, and to two people above him...."
That post came at 6:17 a.m. on the day that Clementi disappeared. It was the last message cit2mo put on the forum.
CNN was unable Thursday to determine whether cit2mo was Clementi, but a laywer for the justusboys.com website said the posts were traced back to Rutgers. A label under cit2mo's name on the forum had been changed from "On the Prowl" to "In Loving Memory" Thursday.
"To me, it looks like that's the guy," said Chad Belville, attorney for Colorado-based BluMedia, which owns justusboys.com.
Belville told CNN the company will keep the posts on the site.
"We don't want to cover up what happened. This is a learning experience. This is what gay men are going through," Belville said. "I hope we can reach out to some other isolated kids who really need some place to go."
In a later statement, BluMedia said "Tyler's death brings national attention to the fact that anti-gay bigotry is still alive and well, even in our universities. While Tyler's death has brought focus to the abuse gay men face every day, countless others continue to silently suffer. We hope that this tragedy will open the eyes of any who believe anti-gay bigotry causes no harm."
Rutgers won't comment on the chat forum because of an ongoing investigation, said Gregory Blimling, vice president for student affairs.
Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick said the community was grieving for Clementi.
"I have spoken with Tyler's parents to extend my own and the university's deepest sympathies, and we will continue to respect the family's request for privacy," McCormick said in a statement Thursday. "It is up to us at Rutgers to honor this young man's life by reaffirming, and living up to, our commitment to the values of civility, dignity, compassion,and respect for one another."
The group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays cited several cases of young people it said were victims of hate crimes and severe bullying. "It's time to take a stand for youth, families and inclusive safer school laws and policies," the organization said.
Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay and lesbian civil rights organization Garden State Equality, said he was sickened by this incident.
"There are no words sufficient to express our range of feelings," Goldstein said. "We are outraged at the perpetrators. We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and kind. And we are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others' lives as a sport."
But Raj Ardeshna, 17, a senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North in Plainsboro, N.J., and a former classmate of both defendants, told CNN that the two were "terrific people."
"To know that two intelligent kids could get caught up in something like this is shocking to me," Ardeshna said. "The only rationale I've been able to come up with is that they thought they were being funny -- but I really couldn't tell you.
"Without a doubt they must both be filled with regret and are distraught over what happened to Tyler, and as cliched as it sounds -- they are both good people," Ardeshna said. "And they just turned 18 and they just went to college, and everyone slips up without understanding the consequences."
Kirbi Marquez, a Rutgers student and a classmate of Ravi and Wei in high school, told CNN "had they known the consequences of their actions, they would not have considered doing this."
"I'm sure they're bearing the guilt, they're both sympathetic people and good kids and they didn't mean for any of this to happen," said Marquez.
He said he and others at the high school think they are getting a bad rap when, in fact, the allegations "are not a reflection of our values" while at the school.
Parry Aftab, the founder and executive director of StopCyberBullying.org, said the two must have had an inkling on what might happen.
"These young people had to have known the devastating effects of their actions," Aftab said. "And while they may not have foreseen death -- they had to have known how much pain that this would cause."
Those who knew Clementi described him as quiet and an accomplished musician -- he played violin with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra.
Meanwhile, on Facebook, thousands of people joined memorial pages set up for Clementi, whose apparent tragedy began on the internet and continued to unfold there.
His last words, posted on Facebook about 10 minutes before he died, were brief and to the point: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."
The comment gave no hint of the torment and mortification that lay behind the decision of gifted 18-year-old violinist Tyler Clementi to throw himself off the George Washington bridge last week.
The cruel details began to emerge today when the body of a man believed to be Clementi was dragged out of the Hudson river at the northern end of Manhattan. At the same time, charges were brought against two of his fellow first-year students at Rutgers university in New Jersey. Like him, they are both 18. They have been accused of invading Clementi's privacy.
One was Dharun Ravi, his roommate at college, the other Ravi's friend Molly Wei, who had a room on the same corridor. On the evening of Sunday 19 September, according to the account given by police, Clementi asked his roommate to give him some time alone in the room they shared.
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."
As awful as this is, I don't think there is much that can be done, certainly no punishment that will fit the "crime". Unfortunately, he isn't the only young person who has taken his life because of online bullshit.
I feel sorry for him also, If he hadn't been gay, and hadn't been sucking dicks, and hadn't got caught doing it on camera, he wouldn't have felt the need to kill himself and these other stupid fucking kids wouldn't have ruined their lives.
It seems kinda fucked up to let the real reason all this shit happened go without mention.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Holy fuck! Are you serious? The single one thing that has always impressed me about Mockers was their extreme tolerance of others. Of different races, different lifestyles. Apparently you come up lacking, Dick. The only thing we don't have tolerance for is stupid people.
maybe dick would like a webcam in the privacy of his room, broadcasting whatever he does there. privately.
i don't care if the boy screwed hedgehogs. it was HIS business alone.
that's a sensitive age. he probably was just coming to grips with being gay. he was a brilliant violinist, but now the world has lost his music because of stupid homophobia.
LC, in just about every thread I respond in you call me a stupid mexican, or a beaner or something.
and then you want to lecture me on tolerance? Are you sure you were a LEO? investigation always goes to the root cause it's called "motive", even if that cause still renders guilt there is always a reason for the crime at the core of the prosecutions case.
In this case even they the "prosecutors" will take that "motive" and apply the hate crimes legislation and laws to make sure that these kids pay dearly for their actions.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
LC, in just about every thread I respond in you call me a stupid mexican, or a beaner or something.
i have NEVER said either of those things. to you or anyone. except the Dick thread which was a joke, meant in good humor. i thought you could handle good-natured kidding. evidently not. but you sure like to dish shit.
and don't give me that motive crap. what you said was hateful. period. don't try to deflect it onto me.
Hateful or truthful? that's a distiction that you made on your own.
We have a whole set of regulations, Laws based on legislation based solely on the observation I posted.
obviously the legal aspect of such crimes relies heavily on the conduct of the suicide victim, prior to his jumping.
I'm sure you will keep track of the trial, the evidence will include specific and graphic context of his life style, as well as the actions which the other two took leading to his dispair and subsequent decision to end his own life.
Do you truely believe that the two defendants could have reasonably known that this kid would jump off a building?
As sad and horrible as this case is the defence is and will be based on the above statement.
by the way, your intolerance of my opinion in this thread is interesting.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
I can handle it just fine , what I don't deal with well is hypocracy. you know blacks screaming racism while calling whites crackers or worse, gays calling straights intolerant while calling them intolerant "do you see the irony" in that type of intolerance?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
do you mean hypocrisy? i'm still waiting for you to point out where i ever called you a beaner or 'stupid Mexican'. not debating the merits of a legal case.
hell, i've never even been rude to you when you've done nothing but bitch and complain here.
a vigil was held on the Cape last night for the FIVE gay teens who were tormented by peers and who killed themselves in Sept. alone.
Rutgers will hold one today.
(10-02-2010, 07:29 AM)IMaDick Wrote: I feel sorry for him also, If he hadn't been gay, and hadn't been sucking dicks, and hadn't got caught doing it on camera, he wouldn't have felt the need to kill himself and these other stupid fucking kids wouldn't have ruined their lives.
It seems kinda fucked up to let the real reason all this shit happened go without mention.
What's interesting here is the lack of comment about the cruelty and ignorance casted upon gay people on many levels - enough so to make suicide amongst gay children/teens a standout statistic. I wouldn't expect less from a crusty dumb-fuck like you, though.
A former Rutgers University student was indicted on a hate crime charge on Wednesday after allegedly using a webcam to spy on a male roommate's intimate encounter with another man.
The roommate Tyler Clementi committed suicide shortly afterward in a case that grabbed headlines around the world.
A 15-count indictment was handed out on Wednesday by a Middlesex County grand jury against Dharun Ravi, of Plainsboro, New Jersey, who had already faced invasion of privacy charges along with another student, Molly Wei.
The indictment charges Ravi with bias intimidation, invasion of privacy, witness and evidence tampering, and other charges stemming from the suicide of Tyler Clementi, 18, in September.
Charges against Wei would not be presented to the grand jury 'at this time,' the indictment said.
Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River shortly after Ravi and Wei allegedly used a webcam to spy on his liaison.
Lawyers for Ravi say the webcam stream was viewed on only a single computer and did not show the men having sex.
The indictment says Ravi targeted Clementi and invaded his privacy knowing that he would be intimidated because of his sexual orientation.
The death of Clementi, a promising violinist in his first weeks at college, came amid a string of high-profile suicides of young people who were gay or perceived to be gay.
Partly because of his high-profile death and the circumstances surrounding his suicide, Clementi became a face of the bullying issue.
President Barack Obama and celebrities including talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and sex columnist Dan Savage have spoken publicly about his death and said that young gays and lesbians need to know that life gets better.
Clementi's parents, Jane and Joe Clementi, said they were eager for the case to move forward to 'reinforce the standards of acceptable conduct in our society.'
In a statement they said: 'The grand jury indictment spells out cold and calculated acts against our son Tyler by his former college roommate.
'If these facts are true, as they appear to be, then it is important for our criminal justice system to establish clear accountability under the law.'
Pleading not guilty to 15 charges, Dharun Ravi came face to face with the devastated parents of the student he is accused of driving to commit suicide.
In his first court appearance for the crimes committed against Tyler Clementi, the 19-year-old former Rutgers freshman stared down the couple as they sat through the brief court hearing alongside Tyler's brother.
(10-02-2010, 07:29 AM)IMaDick Wrote: I feel sorry for him also, If he hadn't been gay, and hadn't been sucking dicks, and hadn't got caught doing it on camera, he wouldn't have felt the need to kill himself and these other stupid fucking kids wouldn't have ruined their lives.
It seems kinda fucked up to let the real reason all this shit happened go without mention.
What's interesting here is the lack of comment about the cruelty and ignorance casted upon gay people on many levels - enough so to make suicide amongst gay children/teens a standout statistic. I wouldn't expect less from a crusty dumb-fuck like you, though.
(05-23-2011, 07:32 PM)Lady Cop Wrote: entire article at link below.
he looks like an arrogant prick.
Pleading not guilty to 15 charges, Dharun Ravi came face to face with the devastated parents of the student he is accused of driving to commit suicide.
There by the Grace of God goes IMaDick, Sure bet is he would like to be there to support the defendant, or at least speak in support of the cruelty in Ravi's conduct.
![[Image: Zy3rKpW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Zy3rKpW.png)
