Hate Crime Charge For Roommate In Infamous Anti-Gay Bullying Suicide

The roommate of Tyler Clementi — the eighteen-year old Rutgers University student who died by suicide by jumping from the George Washington bridge last year on September 22 — has been charged with a hate crime in a fifteen-count indictment. Dharun Ravi, Clementi’s roommate, is charged with bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and witness and evidence tampering for using a webcam to spy on his roommate, who was reportedly caught in an intimate moment with another man in their dorm room.

READ: “September’s Anti-Gay Bullying Suicides – There Were A Lot More Than 5”

The nineteen-year old Ravi is facing a possible five-year sentence.

The indictment mentions Clementi’s sexual orientation and states that Ravi knew he would be able to intimidate him because of it.

Earlier, Clementi’s parents had asked that Ravi and his alleged accomplice, Molly Wei, not face extreme charges, but in a statement just released, they say, “The grand jury indictment spells out cold and calculated acts against our son Tyler by his former college roommate,” and add, “If these facts are true, as they appear to be, then it is important for our criminal justice system to establish clear accountability under law. We are eager to have the process moved forward for justice in this case.”

On October 4, 2010, despite rain and startling cold weather, at least two thousand people, including then-New York Governor David Paterson, converged upon Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, the heart of New York University’s Greenwich Village campus, to pay homage to teens who were literally bullied to death across the country in September. (Video.)

The Clementi family has created The Tyler Clementi Point Scholarship, “created with the cooperation of Clementi’s parents, Joe and Jane, to honor Tyler’s memory and further the efforts to end the bullying that many LGBT youth face within educational environments,” adding that his “tragic suicide sparked a nationwide discussion on gay bullying, suicide and homophobia, shedding light on a major issue facing the LGBT community. Clementi, from Ridgewood, New Jersey, was a talented violinist, a member of the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and concertmaster of the Bergen Youth Orchestra.”

“Our son Tyler was a kind and gentle young man who enjoyed helping people,” said Joe and Jane Clementi. “This scholarship will help college students and it will raise awareness of young people who are subject to abuse through malicious bullying – and so it will help people in Tyler’s memory.  We are happy to be supportive of Point Foundation and we thank them for establishing this scholarship.”

(image via Twitter account of @DharunRavi1)