Suicide leaves shared guilt behind

Those of us who managed to grow into adulthood without the Internet or Twitter or Facebook tend to have at least some respect for privacy.

For many of our children or grandchildren, that’s a foreign concept. Why wouldn’t you want your friends to know where you are all the time? Why not post those hilarious photos of yourself vamping with puckered lips, cleavage showing?

People participate in a candlelight vigil Sunday for Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi at Brower Commons on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, N.J. Clementi jumped to his death off a bridge a day after two classmates surreptitiously recorded him having sex with a man in his dorm room and broadcast it over the Internet. AP Photo by Reena Rose SibayanPeople participate in a candlelight vigil Sunday for Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi at Brower Commons on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, N.J. Clementi jumped to his death off a bridge a day after two classmates surreptitiously recorded him having sex with a man in his dorm room and broadcast it over the Internet. AP Photo by Reena Rose Sibayan

And, for some, it’s nothing to expose normally hidden body parts into a cell phone camera and send the shot to someone they want to impress, or taunt.

(Oops, how’d THAT get on Facebook?)

So perhaps it wasn’t much of a leap from the commonplace exposure of every-single-thing to every-single-body for a freshman at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., to stream live video of his unsuspecting roommate, Tyler Clementi, engaged in what Clementi assumed to be a private moment with another guy.

“Roommate asked for the room till midnight,” a Sept. 19 Twitter message read, according to the New York Times. “I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

It seems that when Clementi asked his roommate, Dharun Ravi, for privacy, he didn’t realize Ravi could or would see what was happening from another room through a remote-controlled camera on Ravi’s computer in their shared room.

A tipster told authorities a camera had been set up without Clementi’s consent. Ravi told someone in the dorm that when he first dialed into his computer, he only accidentally saw what was happening in the room, the Times reported.

Streaming live

But it doesn’t really matter. Once he peeked into the room and saw his roommate engaged with another man, did he shut off the camera out of respect for Clementi’s privacy? No, he bragged about it in a Tweet. Did he at least keep what he saw to himself?

No, he streamed it live and offered to do it again three days later. On Sept. 22, Ravi invited “anyone with iChat” to join him in a video chat “between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it’s happening again.”

But it didn’t happen again. Around 9 p.m. on that day, Clementi, 18, jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey and New York.

It’s fitting, perhaps, that Clementi went online to declare his plans. “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry,” he wrote on his Facebook page, according to the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.

Police have arrested Ravi and fellow student, Molly Wei, both 18, and charged them with two counts each of invasion of privacy, a quaint-sounding crime that could put them behind bars for up to five years. His lawyer isn’t talking to reporters, an assistant said, and her lawyer didn’t return my call.

Frankly, if the allegations are true, they deserve that much time. Maybe others would learn the value of protecting the privacy of others, if not their own.

But invasion of privacy isn’t the only crime here.

If police and news reports are accurate, and assuming Clementi became aware that classmates were viewing his encounter, the suicide looks like a fatal combination of three factors: his roommate’s learning his secret, the widespread exposure of the secret and shame.

For those first two elements, two people have been charged. But what about the shame?

For people vulnerable to suicide, “the triggering event is often something that is humiliating or shameful or guilt- inducing,” says Lanny Berman, executive director of Washington-based American Association of Suicidology.

A respected businessman knows the feds are preparing to indict him for accounting fraud. A financial adviser sees his Ponzi scheme coming apart. The picture of themselves presented to the world is about to be turned inside out.

Shame and consequences

For gay people, that usually means being outed. That’s why they are more likely to contemplate and attempt suicide than heterosexuals, Berman says.

But that’s true only if they are closeted or shunned.

Those who are out in the open about their sexuality and who feel accepted by their families are no more likely than straight people to peer into the notion of killing themselves, he says.

Social and religious conservatives fear the consequences of society accepting homosexuality. But suicides of closeted gay youth show the deadly consequences of calling it unacceptable.

We don’t know whether Clementi thought of himself as gay or was merely experimenting. But it’s obvious he believed it shameful to be seen engaging in sexual conduct with another man.

And for that crime, the guilt is more diffuse.

How about we shine a little light on that?

Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist.