Intellectual Property Law

Parents of Dead Teen Sue School Over Sexting Images

By Kim Zetter

The parents of a teenage girl who committed suicide last year are suing the girl’s ex-boyfriend and several other former high school classmates who circulated a nude photo of her and harassed her about the image.

The suit was filed in Ohio by Cynthia and Albert Logan who say that the students’ “degrading sexual insults” caused their 18-year-old daughter Jessica, their only child, severe emotional distress, which led her to kill herself in July 2008, a month after graduating from high school.

The suit names Ryan Salyers, Sara Jane Ramsey, Courtney Richardson and Emily Stachler, as well as a minor identified only as A.R. for severe infliction of emotional distress. Salyers is further accused of invading Jessica’s privacy.

It also names the Sycamore Community Schools Board of Education and Montgomery police officer Paul Payne for being negligent in not ending the “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment” of their daughter and for violating her 14th Amendment rights of equal protection and due process of law. It names the Montgomery municipality for failing to ensure that Payne would take steps to halt the harassment.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and aims to force the school district to amend its policies and procedures for responding to harassment claims.

According to the complaint (.pdf), toward the end of her senior year, Jessica sent a digital photo of herself to her boyfriend, Ryan Salyers, which showed her in the nude from her neck down. Shortly thereafter, the two broke up, and Salyers allegedly showed the photo to a handful of other students who in turn distributed it widely throughout Sycamore High School and Loveland High School.

On May 5, Jessica reported the incident to school authorities in the hope of preventing students from sharing the image further and forcing students to delete the image from their phones. The school referred her to police officer Paul Payne, who was assigned to the school as its resource officer.

Payne told her he could ask students to delete the image but could do nothing beyond this, since she was 18. In a previous sexting incident at the school involving a minor, Payne had opened a criminal investigation and spoken with the parents of the students distributing the image.

Payne encouraged Jessica to consent to an interview with a local television reporter doing a story on “sexting.” Jessica appeared on the program anonymously to talk about the harassment she faced as a result of the picture. Her face was blurred and her voice altered, but students knew it was her.

When students discovered that Jessica had reported them to school authorities, they allegedly escalated their harassment, calling her a “whore,” “slut” and “skank.” They also made harassing calls to her phone and sent her derogatory text messages, according to the complaint.

Though it was close to the end of the school year, Jessica’s parents say her grades and attendance suffered. She stopped going to school, and administrators threatened to bar her from graduating.

Her mother, Cynthia, told NBC earlier this year that she had no idea their daughter was being harassed until she started receiving daily letters from the school about her daughter’s truancy. Logan told NBC that she had gone to at least six lawyers with the aim of suing the school.

Her parents say that because the school failed to stop the harassment, Jessica was denied her education. Jessica managed to complete her coursework and on June 1 graduated from Sycamore High School. But the harassment didn’t end. Students bombarded her with objects during the graduation ceremony and at an after party, and continued to harass her by phone and online.

On July 3, she attended a funeral for a close friend who had committed suicide, and that evening she hanged herself in her bedroom.

See also

• Survey: One-Third of Youths Engage in ‘Sexting’
• Sexting Hysteria Falsely Brands Educator as Child Pornographer
• School Pays Educator Falsely Charged in Sexting Probe
• Judge Temporarily Bars Prosecutor From Charging Teens for Child Porn Pics
• ACLU Sues Prosecutor Over Sexting Child Porn Charges
• Child Porn Laws Used Against Kids Who Photograph Themselves

Full post as published by Threat Level on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).