Overall: You can try to solve something with sombody, if that person refuses to listen, you can either take it to court or ask somebody nearby, to avoid taking it to court and create hassle.
Officials at WHOA were concerned that Telia had breached the confidentiality of its complaint and they sent an email advising the ISP that “cyberstalking, according to the U.S. Department of Justice is ‘the use of the internet, email, or other electronic communications devices to stalk another person. Stalking generally involves harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly.’”
Telia responded, defending its actions: “We do not give away names of private persons in cases that we investigate. Every user has the right to know what caused the warning that was sent to him. This case has reached an unpleasant level, that is true, but we find it hard to believe that any authority in Sweden will take his complaints seriously.”
WHOA instructed Marcus and Melissa to file reports about Amsteus with their local police departments. But Amsteus wasn’t finished yet. On July 12, he sent another rambling message to WHOA, which read, in part:
Below you will find a short description. Look, this started 10 years ago. And I asked for it to be solved from day one. …
I was an exchange student (the only one on campus, I think) at this small town college and this girl started talking to me over the school network, not like MSN, similar to MSN, but you saw the other one writing on real time letter by letter in real time. Now, this girl (V) is in her last year in high school, so she is using her older sister’s email account at the college to access the system. You spend hours writing on this thing, so we talked and talked, talked on the phone, she asked me to go to a football game with her; we went to a restaurant where she and her sister worked.
At the restaurant I meet her sister (M), the one owning the college email / chat access account; it turned out to be the one I had had a serious crush since before I started talking to V: The kind of thing where you hold eye contact a bit longer than necessary. Anyway I spend more time talking to V, and she tells me very personal things about her past … that makes me really protective of her.
We talk every night over this chat. I started to like her a lot. Then she started to say things like this has to end, I can’t do this anymore for people get hurt around me and I worried my ass it and over her. I told her, the only way you can hurt me is by leaving me alone..I said so truthfully. I wrote her very very private and personal emails. … I don’t know … part of me were maybe suspecting I was talking to more then one person by then. … During this time I sent her some very emotional, private email. Then the same person who had said what do you not know about her was able to quote some of the very personal things I had written her. And it seems these emails where forwarded around campus.
I have no choice but to ask them, try, beg and plead. So what do they do, they say they hate me, that what I say doesn’t count, I don’t matter, I am psycho, I need professional help, shout that I should leave them alone, I should grow up, they complain that I won’t leave them alone, but they refuse to tell me who she called or to solve this.
I have explained how much misery this creates me, how it tears me and my life apart, they know this. I have lost ten years of my life because of this; their argument is that because this much time has passed and I am not over it I am the one who is weird and therefore it should not be solved (!!) … I will loose everything I have over this, my job, everything. For what, why? It didn’t happen yesterday, I have pointed out a billion time … not telling me what happened means that, to me, it is still going on.
Amsteus followed this with an even longer message, and WHOA filed additional complaints. When it appeared Telia had canceled Amsteus’s account, he moved to an internet café in Sweden and resumed sending email to Melissa, as well as filling out comment forms on the WHOA website. WHOA continued to send complaints to Hotmail, Yahoo!, and the internet café.
On July 22, Amsteus sent Melissa another message, which in part said, “What do you need, do I have to sit outside your house and weep? What is it that is not understood?”
The following day, Melissa’s nightmare came true: Amsteus appeared on her doorstep.
“He rang the doorbell … my dog barked like crazy. When I went to see who it was … I had no clue, so I just asked, ‘May I help you?’” Melissa recalled. “Then he said he was looking for Veronica. I could tell from his accent that it was Martin. I simply told him Veronica didn’t live here. Then he asked if her address was 702a or 702b. I repeated, ‘She doesn’t live here.’” To Melissa’s great relief, he got into a car and drove off.
Melissa immediately called her husband, Brian, who was on his way home, to tell him that Amsteus had just left and was probably headed to her sister’s home. Then she called Veronica to let her know what was happening. Armed with a description of the vehicle, Brian caught up with Amsteus and began to tail him. Amsteus passed Veronica’s house and then turned around, apparently aware he was being followed. Brian pulled into Veronica’s driveway, went into the house where his sister-in-law was sitting with her two children, and called the police.
When Amsteus knocked at the door, Veronica ignored him until the police arrived, then opened the door and told him to leave. He didn’t budge until the police ordered him to go.
“You didn’t have to call the police,” Amsteus said to Veronica. “Nobody ever told me to leave you alone or that you didn’t want to talk to me.”
The police waited until Amsteus had left the neighborhood in his rental car and then put out an all-points bulletin to make sure he didn’t return.
The next day, Amsteus emailed Melissa to explain his actions. She forwarded the long, drawn-out message to the police. Veronica’s fiancé, Justin, sent Amsteus a reply:
I am Veronica’s fiancé. Veronica and her kids are MY FAMILY. You going to my girlfriend’s house was not a good idea. Veronica doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. She doesn’t like you, love you, or want to be associated with you. You have upset the balance of her house and family by showing up and scaring the children. Not to mention showing up at her sister’s house and scaring her.
Leave her alone. Leave her family alone. If anybody in the neighborhood sees you they will call the police. There is a retired state trooper living beside Veronica and a Detective that lives across the street from her and me. I am also in law enforcement. If you continue to email, harass, or show up where Veronica is or the places she is at, then legal action will be taken. I am asking you again, man to man, adult to adult, have no further contact with Veronica or her family. I don’t know what you think you had with Veronica. Veronica states that she was 16 when she met you and that there was never anything there. Some people in law enforcement would view this behavior from you as obsessive. I hope you read this carefully and move on.
Amsteus said he was willing to meet Justin to talk about it man to man, but Justin refused to respond. So Amsteus emailed Melissa instead and threatened to send letters to everyone in her neighborhood as well as Veronica’s to tell them all about the situation.
By July 29, the police had launched an official investigation and found that Amsteus had flown from Sweden to Atlanta, rented a car, and then driven to North Carolina. They were keeping an eye on his hotel. The same day, Melissa’s father received a 14-page letter via certified mail from Amsteus, which he passed on to the police. The police advised Veronica to move out of her house until Amsteus returned to Sweden. She and her children went to stay with her parents while the investigation continued.
In August 2008, Amsteus returned to Sweden, and within a month, he started to email Melissa again. Melissa refused to respond and reported the messages to the police. In what had become a predictable routine by now, every time Yahoo! and Hotmail closed one of Amsteus’s email accounts, he would open a new one and continue writing Melissa.
Since early 2009, Melissa has had a new email account and only gives the address to people she knows and tr
usts. This has seemed to work. Until fairly recently, she was receiving the occasional Facebook message from Amsteus, which she would quickly delete, blocking him from further contact.
To the best of WHOA’s knowledge, Amsteus has made no further trips to the U.S., and his emails to Melissa and her family have ceased.
One can only hope that he is out of their lives for good.
Virtually Bullied to Death
On January 14, 2010, 12-year-old Lauren Prince came home from school as usual and went to see what her older sister was doing. As Lauren entered her apartment building, she stopped and stared. What she saw in the hallway took her breath away: Her sister, Phoebe, still dressed in her school clothes, was hanging in the stairwell. Wrapped around Phoebe’s neck was the scarf Lauren had given her for Christmas just a few weeks ago.
Six months earlier, in the summer of 2009, Phoebe Prince and her family moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts. Phoebe was now a vibrant 15-year-old with a contagious laugh and a captivating smile. Her mother, Annie O’Brien Prince, had left County Clare, Ireland, to start a new life with her family in America, bringing with her two of her daughters, Lauren and Phoebe. Annie’s husband, Jeremy Prince, remained in Ireland with the couple’s three other children in order to sell the house. Annie had some relatives in South Hadley, a town with a growing Irish population, and she considered the community to be a home away from home. She and Jeremy looked forward to reuniting their close-knit family as soon as possible.
Phoebe was excited when she started her freshman year at South Hadley High School in September 2009. With her striking good looks and lilting Irish accent, it didn’t take her long to win the hearts of just about everyone at school, especially the boys. By December, she was dating Sean Mulveyhill, 17, a star football player and one of the most popular boys in school. Many of the girls were openly jealous of Phoebe, and several began taunting her in the school hallways, calling her an “Irish whore.” Though Phoebe did her best to take the high road and ignore the insults, it wasn’t easy.
Mulveyhill and Phoebe dated for a short time before he got back together with his former girlfriend, Kayla Narey. A few weeks later, Phoebe started dating another football player, 18-year-old Austin Renaud, who was involved at the time with Flannery Mullins, age 16. Upset by all the attention Phoebe was getting, Narey and Mullins teamed up with some mutual friends to teach the new girl a lesson.
The bullying was subtle at first, but it soon escalated. Messages claiming that Phoebe was out to steal everyone’s boyfriends began appearing on Facebook, along with a comment that she should just kill herself. Phoebe was roughed up in the hallways, shoved into lockers, and pushed around in the girls’ restroom. As she walked to and from her classes, some of the girls whispered insults; others simply pointed an accusing finger at her without saying a word. Text messages on Phoebe’s cell phone wielded more insults, and a photo of her was posted on a school wall accompanied by an obscene comment. By the time faculty removed the photo, Phoebe had already seen it and the damage was done. On one occasion, a teacher found Phoebe crying, and though she tried to talk to her, she remembers the girl as inconsolable.
Phoebe endured brutal insults, from “I hate stupid sluts” echoing in the hallway to “Why don’t you just open up your legs?” shouted in the school auditorium during assembly. One girl yelled at Phoebe in the school cafeteria, calling her a “ho” and accusing her of stealing Mulveyhill away from Narey. Mulveyhill joined in, further fueling the verbal abuse Phoebe was experiencing both online and off.
Annie complained to school officials in early January, but they did nothing. On January 14, Phoebe asked for permission to leave school early because, as she told one of her friends, she had been threatened with being beaten up after school. Faculty denied her request.
When Phoebe came home from school that day, something snapped. The 911 call from Phoebe’s family was made at 4:40 PM. According to South Hadley police chief David J. Labrie, “They discovered a teenage girl who appeared to have taken her own life.”
As a dozen police cars pulled up to the house in South Hadley, Annie was crying hysterically. At the time, no one outside the school could imagine such a tragic end for a vibrant young woman with a bright future ahead of her.
On January 22, 2010, this obituary appeared in The Republican newspaper:
Phoebe Nora Mary Prince
1994–2010 SOUTH HADLEY
Our beloved daughter Phoebe Nora Mary Prince died tragically on Thursday, January 14, 2010. Phoebe was gifted with exceptional beauty—but that is not important. She was gifted with a sharp and creative brain—but that is not important. She had impressive artistic talent—but that is not important. What her family and friends from both sides of the Atlantic grieve in is the loss of the incandescent enthusiasm of a life blossoming. Phoebe was born in Bedford, England, on Thursday, 24 November, 1994. At the age of two she moved to County Clare, Ireland, where she enjoyed life with an energy only the young possess. At age 14 the family moved to South Hadley, MA, so that Phoebe could experience America and be near family, especially her Uncle John, Auntie Eileen, and cousins Brendan and Molly. Here she touched many lives with her Irish mannerisms and sense of humor. Phoebe will forever live in the hearts of her many friends here in America and Ireland, in particular her dearest friend Cliodhna, from Doolin, County Clare. Phoebe leaves behind her mother Anne Obrien Prince, father Jeremy Prince, sisters Lauren, Tessa and Bridget and brother Simon. Private services and Mass were held January 18 in South Hadley. Additional services will be held in Ireland. A memorial scholarship will be created in Phoebe’s name. At this time the family asks that any donations be sent to the Phoebe Prince Scholarship Fund at Peoples Bank, 494 Newton Street, South Hadley, MA 01075. “Go gcoinni Dia i mbos a laimhe thu” (“Appointments to God in his hands”).
The school posted a notice on its website explaining that a freshman student had taken her life. While no reason for the suicide was given, a number of students were well aware of the tragic circumstances, and someone posted the word “accomplished” on Facebook the night of Phoebe’s death. When another student posted that the comment was in poor taste, she was told, “[Y]ou’d better watch your back.”
Talk centered around Phoebe for weeks. A student named Sharon Velazquez, 16, was overheard saying she “wasn’t the only person that caused Prince’s death and that she didn’t care that she was dead.” Yet another student posted a message about Phoebe on Facebook: “She brought it on herself.” Similar posts appeared on other profiles and webpages but were quickly removed.
Gus Sayer, then-superintendent of South Hadley Public Schools, went on record as saying, “Bullying is not tolerated at this school,” though he would later admit that bullying played a big part in Phoebe’s suicide.
One week after Phoebe’s death, then-principal Dan Smith sent a letter to parents explaining that the bullying Phoebe endured had been relationship-related. He claimed that staff took action and “both counseled and provided consequences as the situations required.”
“These disagreements centered on relationship-dating issues, a rather common event among high school students,” Smith wrote. “Because of the aforementioned disagreements, some students (to be confirmed through investigations) made mean-spirited comments to Phoebe in school and on the way home from school, but also through texting and social networking websites. This insidious, harassing behavior knows no bounds. The key is how each of us deals with that anger—finding ways to resolve or accept differences of opinion instead of engaging in the insidious behavior of demeaning others.”
Many parents in the small community of 17,000 found Smith’s letter to be too little too late. Town and school meetings took place; townspeople and parents were angry. Accusing fingers were pointed in every direction, and once the media was involved, Phoebe’s suicide soon became fodder for international headlines. Celebrities including Bill Cosby and Khloe Kardashian shared their thoughts publicly.
In an interview on Larry King
Live on CNN, Cosby said, “I don’t know if ‘shocked’ is the word as … as much as I just did not believe. I don’t believe that you can take a job as a teacher, as a superintendent, as a principal and … and not recognize, when you’re being told by parents (about bullying).”
“The difference is that today these kids are given so many different outlets to bully,” Kardashian wrote on her website. “When I was a child and being teased, we didn’t have Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace, so bullying only went on during school hours. Now kids go to school and are tortured, and they come home and still have to deal with it online—there’s no escape.”
In response to the public outcry, Facebook took action, initiating a 24-hour police hotline, an education and awareness campaign, and a redesigned abuse reporting system, as well as changes to its privacy settings. Many people have urged Facebook to add a panic button for teens to push to report bullies, and the company responded in 2012 by changing the way bullying posts or profiles are reported. Teens can now click on “This post is a problem” and answer a series of simple questions to properly address the situation. There are also links teens can click on if they feel suicidal, which lead to a Facebook suicide hotline and professionals who can help.
True Crime Online Page 10
