Victim of Secret Dorm Gay Sex Tape’s Body Found

The body of a New Jersey University freshman who jumped off a bridge last week and committed suicide after his roommate secretly streamed on the Internet a live recording of him having sex with another man was recovered from the Hudson River by authorities yesterday afternoon.

Tyler Clementi, only 18 and an accomplished violinist, had been attending Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, N.J. On Sept. 22, he plunged off the George Washington Bridge in New York City after struggling with the alleged video disclosure.

He posted, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry” to his Facebook page, then tragically did just that.

Police have charged his roommate, Dharun Ravi, with privacy violations and related offenses, for using "the camera to view and transmit a live image." Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan noted it's a fourth-degree crime, "to collect or view images depicting nudity or sexual content of an individual without that person's consent. The crime becomes a third-degree offense if the images are transmitted or distributed." The third-degree offense carries a maximum five years in prison if convicted.

Ravi allegedly activated his camcorder that captured Clementi and an unnamed man from another computer in the Rutger’s dorm room of a friend of Ravi’s, Michelle “Molly” Wei, whose room was across the hall. Wei has also been charged with the same spying offenses.

I believe both, who are also 18, should also be charged with having committed a hate crime, which would bump the fourth-degree offense to a third-degree, negating the need to prove the recording was distributed.

What happened to Clementi should NEVER happen to anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, or behavior. Our society has failed abysmally to keep up with the harmful and criminal uses of technology; we have failed ethically, morally and especially within the criminal justice system.

Reality Shows like Big Brother and their ilk give their subtle and not so subtle imprimatur on inappropriate invasion of privacy, and a host of other bad behaviors suddenly seen as OK, and even hip. Those types of TV shows, as well as the timber of much of the conversation-dialog within U.S. culture right now, in effect dehumanizes our own citizens. Exploitation is funny and very, very cool – whether it’s the voyeurism of celebrities, the neighbors next door, or university roommates. And, if sex is involved, the more the better!

I’m sure Clementi’s tormentors didn’t foresee his death, but they had to know that he would be distraught over their alleged illegal actions, especially since his sexuality and orientation was unknown within their campus community.

Nine out of 10 gay, lesbian and bisexual students are bullied in school, according to a 2007 survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. And they are four times more likely to attempt suicide, according to a 2007 Massachusetts youth risk survey.

Gay activist David Savage said, "What gay and lesbian kids most fear is rejection by their family, rejection at the hands of their friends, judgment from their preachers and their teachers."

A Clementi family lawyer released a statement saying, "Tyler was a fine young man and a distinguished musician. The family is heartbroken beyond words."

Read additional details in the blog below by Kashmir Hill of Forbes, or directly at her website:

Tyler Clementi Turned To A Gay Message Forum For Help Before His Suicide

It’s a tragic technological story heard round the world — a college freshman’s Webcam spying leading to a suicidal jump from the George Washington Bridge. Dharun Ravi, a freshman at Rutgers University, used his Macbook to stream video of his gay roommate having “a sexual encounter” in their room on September 19. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, did not know that he was being watched or taped. Sadly, he apparently did not notice the green light on Ravi’s laptop camera turn on when Ravi activated it from another computer in friend Molly Wei’s room across the hall.

Ravi invited other friends to watch the stream on iChat, and planned a second viewing on September 21st when Clementi again indicated he’d like the room to himself for a few hours, tweeting that day, “Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it’s happening again.” It appears from a gay message forum that Clementi was already on to his roommate by that time.

The New Jersey police have charged Ravi (and Wei) with criminal invasion of privacy, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison according to the New York Times, and a possible $30,000 fine according to the New Jersey criminal code. As my colleague Andy Greenberg points out, some of the same technologies that facilitated Ravi’s invasion of Clementi’s privacy will now help prove his guilt in the case — Ravi’s Twitter feed. Ravi deleted it, but police can get it from Twitter, or Google cache, or one of the Twitter tracking sites like Topsy. As I’ve said before, deletion on the Internet is futile.

Clementi also has a digital trail on the Internet, and it appears that he knew his roommate had filmed him after the first September 19th incident.

A month-old tweet from Ravi indicates he discovered his roommate’s sexuality based on comments Clementi made on a gay message forum. Ravi tweeted on August 22, “Found out my roommate is gay,” and linked to a post he said was Clementi’s on JustUsBoys. It’s the same forum that Clementi appears to have turned to after discovering he’d been spied on. As Gawker noted, a user on the forum by the name of “cit2mo” posted a thread “college roommate spying…..” on September 21 at 7:22 a.m.

[JustUsBoys post show above.]

“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 seen.

so my question is what next?

I could just be more careful next time…make sure to turn the cam away…buttt…I’m kinda pissed at him (rightfully so I think, no?) and idk…if I could…it would be nice to get him in trouble

but idk if I have enough to get him in trouble, i mean…he never saw anything pornographic…he never recorded anything…

I feel like the only thing the school might do is find me another roommate, probably with me moving out…and i’d probably just end up with somebody worse than him….I mean aside from being an asshole from time to time, he’s a pretty decent roommate...

the other thing is I that don’t wanna report him and then end up with nothing happening except him getting pissed at me…”

Other users advised him to report it to the school and make sure his roommate’s computer was closed during future encounters. Cit2mo replied:

“I feel like it was “look at what a fag my roommate is” –other people have commented on his profile with things like “how did you manage to go back in there?” “are you ok?”

“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?

unsettling to say the least….

so I decided to fill out the room change request form….its not guaranteed that you get a change…and i don’t have to switch if I change my mind or work things out over the next week (they won’t start filling requests until next week)…but I figure I might as well as see what they can offer me….”

More users advised him of the illegality of this video voyeurism. A famous case of this, of course, is that of Erin Andrews. The man who made peephole videos of her undressing was ultimately sentenced to 30 months in prison. Cit2mo responds:

“oh yah, on the school website it says recording people where there is an expectation of privacy (bathroom bedroom etc) without the consent of everyone involved could….COULD…..result in being expelled

the only things is…there are too many ‘could’s ….the fact that he didn’t ACTUALLY record me (to my knowledge) and the fact that the school really prolly won’t do much of anything...

but anyway, i’ll be talking to my RA later today for sure...

and yah, revenge never ends well for me, as much as I would love to pour pink paint all over his stuff…..that would just let him win...”

Cit2mo did end up going to the RA after Ravi’s tweet on September 21st:

“so I wanted to have the guy over again.

I texted roomie around 7 asking for the room later tonight and he said it was fine.

when I got back to the room I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward my bed. And he had posted online again….saying….”anyone want a free show just video chat me tonight”…or something similar to that….

soooo after that…..

I ran to the nearest RA and set this thing in motion…..we’ll see what happens……

I haven’t even seen my roommate since sunday when i was asking for the room the first time…and him doing it again just set me off….so talking to him just didn’t seem like an option….

meanwhile I turned off and unplugged his computer, went crazy looking for other hidden cams….and then had a great time.”

Cit2mo’s last posting to the site on the morning of September 22nd indicates that he emailed an RA a paragraph about what had happened. Though he seemed calm and collected in his postings to JustUsBoys, that night, he posted “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry” to his Facebook, and committed suicide.

These digital trails may answer questions that could not be answered otherwise. A big question now is why Clementi’s resident advisor did not get Clementi moved out of that room immediately.

In addition to the criminal charges arising from this, there will be civil lawsuits. Rutgers University may find itself the target of a civil lawsuit. And Clementi’s family and perhaps Clementi’s unnamed romantic partner of September 19 will surely sue Ravi, and perhaps Wei, for invasion of privacy. In a similar case in Kansas, a man was ordered to pay $55,000 after distributing naked photos of his ex-girlfriend via email. The claims were invasion of privacy and infliction of severe emotional distress.

Another case that comes to mind involving Webcam spying and schools is the famous case out of Philadelphia, where a high school handed out laptops and then activated cameras remotely without informing the students using them. In that case, prosecutors dropped the criminal charges, finding no criminal intent in the “spying.” Ravi will not likely be so lucky.

~~~~~~~~

We need to understand that the abuse that Clementi suffered by the deliberate, even cavalier exploitation of his privacy could occur to any one of us. Every person has something that is so private, so intimate, so potentially embarrassing that its disclosure without our permission would cause extreme emotional distress.

What are we doing? What the hell are we doing?

— The Curator

Jenny GETS Her Block!!

Memo to celebrities, or those who aspire to be: STOP MAKING SEX TAPES UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE THEM ON THE INTERNET, ALREADY!!

Please, PLEASE, give the public a break. Are you so self-absorbed that you all are unable to learn from the last – what – zillion cases of leaked sex videos? If you can’t keep your pants zipped or your legs crossed, then at least turn off the damned record button. Good fucking grief! Enough already.

The latest saga of blue tapes gone awry, involves Jenny-From-the-Block-Lopez. Yesterday, an LA judge GAVE Jenny her block – a temporary restraining order barring ex-husband Ojani Noa from peddling sexy home videos from their very brief marriage.

The racy reels purportedly include the usual stuff that generally gets leaked: Shots of Lopez, now 40, "fondling herself" over skimpy clothing and getting spanked. The tapes run 11+ HOURS! That’s a hell of lot of masturbating m’dear, even to me, and I LOVE masturbating.

"It's not stuff a mother of two wants out in the public," a source for the singer-actress told The Daily News.

Noa, 34, was in court without a lawyer and claimed after the ruling that it was never his intention to sell the steamy camcorder footage. He said he planned to make a Borat-style mocumentary about his life as a Cuban immigrant.

Lopez has asserted through her attorney that the video footage and proposed film are exploitive and offensive and would damage her career and reputation.

"(Lopez) is destroying my life," Noa whined to the Daily News outside court. "This is another proof of her power and money trying to stop me from moving on with my life."

He swore the home videos were not for sale. Yeah, right!

"I'm not making any money from these videos," he said. "This is about having a closure. It's my story."

He said the videos from their 11-month marriage – including intimate moments shot on their 1997 honeymoon – were used only for “inspiration.”

"It's a movie about my life. They're trying to ruin my life again ... She don't want me to succeed and that's the problem," Noa ranted outside of court.

Noa, who represented himself, claimed the footage included nothing sexual and is used to develop characters, but Lopez continues to allege that the tapes include sexual situations.

"We were watching with writers and directors and producers because we were getting the script down. We were writing about the characters," he said. "They're trying to twist it, that everything is my fault. She's trying to step on my shoes and not let me move on with my life, and it's not fair."

The judge ordered Noa and film partner Ed Meyer to turn over any materials related to the movie and advise third parties – including TMZ.com and the National Enquirer – of the temporary restraining order.

Lopez filed a $10 million lawsuit Friday claiming Noa is violating a confidentiality agreement with his intent to produce and market the movie, "How I Married Jennifer Lopez: the J.Lo and Ojani Noa Story," allegedly based in part on the home videos.

The judge scheduled arguments for Dec. 1. Noa, who supports himself with modeling work, stands to get a "50 point" share of the mocumentary's net earnings, Meyer said.

Lopez has "a very strong probability of success," Judge James Chalfani said citing non-disparagement clauses in the couple's divorce agreement, and a 2005 settlement stemming from an employment dispute over Noa's work at Lopez's restaurant Madre's.

In 2007, she won $545,000 in damages and attorney fees in another lawsuit that blocked Noa from publishing a ghostwritten tell-all book. Lopez claimed Noa demanded $5 million to keep from publishing the book. The proposed book reportedly claimed Lopez cheated on him with her current husband, famed-singer Marc Anthony.

Noa says he plans to challenge the legality of his settlements with the Bronx-born beauty.

"I don't really believe in my (2005) agreement. My lawyer wasn't a real lawyer, he went to jail," Noa told the News. He added that Lopez hired and paid for his lawyer in their divorce.

"I was therefore coerced to settle," he said in a court statement.

Meyer's attorney, Frank Sanes Jr., said the criticism is undeserved.

"Noa has an interesting story that should be told. He has nothing but respect for Jennifer," Sanes said. "The talk about sex tapes is a smoke screen."