New Jersey: Roommate Charged with Hate Crime In Suicide of Rutgers Student

The roommate of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi (left) was today indicted on hate crime charges stemming from the secret webcasting of Clementi having sex with another man. Clementi leaped from the George Washington Bridge last year after learning about the broadcast.


Dharun Ravi, a former Rutgers University student, was indicted on 15 counts including charges of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation and tampering with evidence by a grand jury in Middlesex County, N.J. Prosecutors allege that not only did Ravi invade Clementi's privacy, but he tried to cover it up. Both Ravi and his alleged accomplice, former Rutgers student Molly Wei, are accused of filming Clementi during a "sexual encounter" in his dorm room with a man and then streaming it live on the Internet. Evidence against Wei has not yet been presented to a grand jury. Prosecutors allege that on Sept. 19 of last year, Ravi filmed Clementi with the purpose of intimidating him because of his sexual orientation. Ravi "disclosed a photograph, film, videotape, recording or other reproduction of the image of [Clementi]...whose intimate parts were exposed," the indictment reads. When Ravi became worried about being charged with a crime, he sent false tweets in an attempt "to mislead a public servant who was engaged in such proceeding or investigation," the indictment reads.



Clementi's parents have released a statement applauding today's charges.

Parents of Student Who Committed Suicide Tell Rutgers University They May Sue

The parents of a Rutgers University freshman who committed suicide after his intimate encounter with another man was secretly captured and streamed live on the Internet have filed notices that they may sue the university.

The freshman, Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22. His roommate and another student have been charged with criminal counts of invading his privacy, and the case has become a national flash point in the debates over gay rights, bullying and personal privacy in the Internet age.
The parents, Joseph and Jane Clementi of Ridgewood, N.J., filed legal notices with the university on Friday, said Paul Mainardi, a lawyer for the family. By law, they must wait six months to file a lawsuit, but they had to give notice within 90 days after the death to preserve their right to sue.
The filings were reported on Wednesday by The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, N.J.

Mr. Mainardi said that the notices did not necessarily signal an intention to sue. “A decision as to whether to file suit against Rutgers University in the future has not been made,” he said.
Tyler Clementi, 18, an accomplished violin player, had been on the Rutgers campus in Piscataway, N.J., for less than a month, prosecutors say, when his roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., used a camera in his computer to live-stream the dormitory-room encounter between Mr. Clementi and another man. Prosecutors say Mr. Ravi sent a Twitter message urging followers to watch.
Mr. Ravi and another Rutgers freshman, Molly Wei, 18, of West Windsor, N.J., were both charged with using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The two students have since withdrawn from the university; their lawyers have said that they denied the accusations.
Prosecutors have said they may press for additional counts that would make the invasion of privacy a hate crime. But on Wednesday, Jim O’Neil, a spokesman for the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office, said only that the investigation was continuing.
One of the legal notices filed last week, a notice of tort claim, contends that Rutgers “failed to put in place and/or implement, and enforce, policies and practices that would have prevented or deterred such acts.” Another notice claims the university broke its agreement with Mr. Clementi to protect him.
E. J. Miranda, a spokesman for Rutgers, said the university shared the family’s sense of loss and understood that they would question whether an institution or other people were to blame. “While the university understands the reaction,” he said, “the university is not responsible for Tyler Clementi’s suicide.”

A day before his death, Mr. Clementi apparently discovered the surveillance and wrote in a blog post that he had complained to a resident adviser.
The tort claim lists as damages his pain and suffering, as well as his family’s loss of his company and support. No dollar amount is given.

Rutgers Suicide Raises Difficult Questions

The following is an article from online that I found about the current suicide of Rutgers Freshman, Tyler Clememti. The article was originally posted on FanHouse and was written by Clay Travis.

Thanks to technology we can do things that our grandparents would have never dreamed of doing. Thanks to that same technology people can also commit crimes that would have once seemed impossible.

In the wake of Rutgers freshman, Tyler Clementi's suicide, reportedly brought on by the taping of his sexual encounter by other college students, it's worth considering how technology has fundamentally altered our conceptions of privacy. One of the two defendants in this case, Dharun Ravi, used Twitter, ichat, and a webcam to secretly videotape his roommate as he engaged in a sexual encounter with another man. Clementi was so distraught over the distribution of these images over the Internet that he leaped to his death from New York City's George Washington Bridge.

In the wake of Clementi's suicide, Ravi and another woman/student, Molly Wei, have been charged with violating New Jersey's invasion of privacy statutes. Those statutes make it a crime "to collect or view images depicting nudity or sexual contact involving another individual without that person's consent." There is also a separate crime should those images be transmitted. In addition to these charges, gay rights groups have called for Ravi and Wei to be charged with hate crimes as well, alleging that their motivation was based upon Clementi's sexuality.

Whether the defendants are also charged with a hate crime will likely depend on if the state of New Jersey can uncover any evidence that their acts were motivated by Clementi's homosexuality. In making this determination, the state will investigate text messages, emails, and sundry other technological clues to uncover the motivations behind the acts. In the meantime, it's worth considering what Clementi's suicide teaches us about the rapidly shifting arena of cyber crime and how many ways in which an individual's privacy can be invaded that weren't even possible 10 years ago.

Where once an individual student would have had a difficult time invading the privacy of another student, now any student in a dorm can be a victim of this crime. Indeed, while the individuals charged in with this crime may be condemned for their acts, surreptitious recording of an individual without that individual's consent is not uncommon. Last year, ESPN's Erin Andrews became a high-profile victim of secret videotaping while she was in her hotel room. What makes the Rutgers crime unique isn't the crime itself, it's the reaction of the victim to the crime.

And that, more than anything else, points to the dangers inherent in invasion of privacy crimes. The defendants in this case are likely to argue that they were unaware that Clementi would react as he did to their secret videotaping and that they considered this nothing more than a prank. Indeed, the actual crime here has been subsumed by Clementi's reaction to the crime. Imagine that rather than being driven to suicide, Clementi merely turns in these students to Rutgers for violating his privacy.

Do we ever hear about the crime? Does it receive any publicity?

Probably not. The students likely receive probation. At most, maybe they're forced to withdraw from school. That's it.

Instead we're all horrified, justifiably so, by Clementi's reaction when his privacy was invaded. And that reaction, more than anything, should serve as a teachable moment for parents, children, and educators. Do students truly realize the severity of the reactions that their modern acts can provoke? Or has technology so pervaded their lives that the severity of the act itself -- broadcasting someone engaged in a sexual act without consent -- been devalued? Indeed, in an age when celebrities hawk sex tapes and become even more famous than they already were, have we all been desensitized to the idea of what privacy means?

That's a broad question without an easy answer. Isn't the out that we are punishing the defendants for the result of their act more than the actual act itself? And if that's the case isn't that backward? Shouldn't we be treating the crime as severe no matter how the defendant reacts? Otherwise how can we demonstrate that even in the age of Facebook an individual right to privacy still exists?

So what can this case teach us? First, that invasion of privacy is a serious crime regardless of what reaction it provokes. Second, you can't predict how anyone is going to deal with cyber-bullying, harassment, or the invasion of his privacy. Many will cope without any issues. Others, as we see with Clementi, may never be able to escape the wrong that was perpetrated against them.

In our civil courts, that is the non-criminal field of law, the thin-skulled plaintiff rule has existed for generations. Pursuant to the thin-skulled plaintiff rule if you behave in a negligent manner that leads to another individual's injury, you are responsible for all the damages that ensue as a result of your act. That's even though you had no clue that the plaintiff in your situation had a thin-skull and was more susceptible to damage than he or she appeared.

The rule is applied in a criminal setting as well, but in our modern era maybe it should receive a new name, the thin-skinned expectation. From this point forward, you should assume that everything you do to invade someone else's privacy could be the precipitating factor that sets them off on a path of destruction. Did the defendants in this case believe that Clementi might commit suicide based upon what they considered to be a prank? Probably not. Should they have? Who knows. Should every student in America think about Clementi in the future when they consider invading another student's privacy for sport.

You bet.

It's the only way any of us can learn a lesson from a tragedy.