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Originally Posted by Esoteric
That's pretty fucked up. I can't believe there aren't going to be any criminal charges against the people that ultimately caused this girl to commit suicide.
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What would you call it, though? Involuntary manslaughter? Would you call it some sort of criminal mischief or harassment, even though those crimes typically carry fairly minor penalties? I mean, while being an unmistakably cruel manipulation of a young girl's feelings, it's not any sort of specific crime to fuck with someone's emotions. Even if you knew someone had a history of depression, it's not as if they pursued this course of action with the intent to get her to kill herself, though they certainly weren't trying to make her feel good. The girl definitely had to take a few extra steps beyond their prank to get to killing herself. How upset was she about her parent's "lack of support" and perceived apathy towards her feelings? What, exactly, did the ultimate e-mail say that the FBI mysteriously cannot recover from any hard drive? That particular detail is a major red flag to me that all may not be exactly as it appears in this story.
I feel like the family is doing a surprisingly decent thing by trying to turn this into a positive legal change instead of just suing the pants off of everyone involved, but it's a sticky area that the law has traditionally stayed away from. Emotional injury is not one that we're as quick to recognize as physical injury, and absent some pretty clear evidence that they induced or convinced her to kill herself specifically, I'd be hard pressed to believe that charging them with her death is anything but revenge. Their misdeed was manipulating her emotions, albeit in a bizarre and sadistic way, not killing her, regardless of her predisposition towards suicide or depression, which they may not may not have been aware of.
Give all that, the method of recovery that'd be most direct and appropriate is probably a tort action for intentional infliction of emotional distress. While I see their point, I'm not sure I can come up with a good reason to punish them for more than that. Anything else would be a punishment commensurate with the anger their actions caused as opposed to one commensurate with what their actions actually were, which undermines the whole purpose of a judicial system of crime and punishment.
I almost threadjacked this into a post about suicide, but I think I'll save that for a later, more appropriate venue.