With just over three months to go before the five-year anniversary of ex-Rutgers student Tyler Clementi’s death by suicide, parents Joseph and Jane Clementi spoke to CBS Sunday Morning’s Erin Moriarty about the emotional chasm that continues to engulf them both as well as their latest initiative from the Tyler Clementi Foundation: “Day One.”
According to a report on NorthJersey.com, “In an emotional interview with “CBS Sunday Morning,” Ridgewood residents Joseph and Jane Clementi discussed how hard life has been since the death of their youngest son, who was an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010. Tyler took his life days after learning that his college roommate had used a webcam to secretly live-stream his romantic encounter with a man in a dorm room. His death drew national attention to the issue of online bullying.”
The then-roommate Dharun Ravi was found guilty of invasion of privacy, hindering apprehension, witness tampering, and all four of the bias intimidation counts. Because the prosecution could not – and probably should not have tried to – prove a causal relationship between Ravi’s actions and Clementi’s subsequent suicide and because cyberbullying laws were as new in New Jersey as they were, in many peoples’ views, muddled, Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail, three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, a $10,000 fine, and counseling on cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles. Ravi served 20 days of his 30-day jail term from May 31 to June 19, 2012 at the Middlesex County Adult Corrections Center in North Brunswick, New Jersey.
But for the Clementis, despite Joes’ claims after the trial that “we were looking for justice and accountability, [that we] trusted the Courts and the State of New Jersey to get this right … and they did,” the family has found little peace since then. “The journey has been as if I’ve been in a fog, a really, really deep fog,” Jane told Moriarty. “I would say it only started lifting last year, in the Spring of 2014. And it’s been in that time that I needed to try to pull my life back together, ’cause it was shattered into a million pieces.”
“Day One,” while in no way ever hoping to return the Clementis to some sort of semblance of normality, hopes to prevent others – parents, friends, anyone really – from having to live through the surreal experience of losing a loved one because the pain of being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is greater than ending one’s life. “The Day One campaign’s goal is to make sure no victim is ever tormented like Tyler was.
“It’s premised on the idea that if you stand up on the first day of school, the first day of work or the first day on a sports team and say, ‘You will never treat anyone here differently because of who they love, how they dress or what their body looks like: There will be consequences for that,’ that is powerful,” Clementi Foundation Executive Director Sean Kosofsky said. The Clementi Foundation also is calling on members of the public to be “upstanders,” to actively intervene in or report bullying or harassment when they witness it rather than just being a bystander.
Meanwhile, both the prosecution and the defense plan on appealing the verdict. The case is expected to be reopened sometime this year.
