Italy's Tiziana: Tragedy of a woman destroyed by viral sex videos

[1984hasarrived]

Very sad, but therein lies the power of the interwebs and sharing everything online.

It probably took no more than a few seconds for Tiziana Cantone to begin the sequence of events that led to her suicide.

In April 2015, the 31-year-old from Mugnano, on the outskirts of Naples, sent a series of sex videos to five people via WhatsApp. The recipients included her boyfriend Sergio Di Palo, with whom she had an unstable relationship.

The videos showed her performing sex acts with a number of unidentified men.

 

"She was beautiful but fragile," remembers Teresa Petrosino, a friend for 15 years. "She was with the wrong people at the wrong time."

The videos were soon shared and uploaded to several adult websites. The physical actions on the tapes did not stand out. But a single sentence from Tiziana Cantone did.

"You're making a video?" she asked the man holding the camera. "Bravo!"

The words suggested an uninhibited young woman, who enjoyed being filmed during sex. By accident, the phrase gave viewers licence to watch the video without reservations: if she was so happy to be filmed, she wouldn't mind them watching.

But Italians did more than watch. Users soon turned her comment into a meme-worthy punchline. Her image appeared on t-shirts and parody websites.

No-one seemed to worry what the subject herself might think as she seemed so pleased about it.

But this was a profound misunderstanding.

"People confuse being an uninhibited person with wanting to go viral," says social commentator Selvaggia Lucarelli.

"You can film a video, share it with some people but there's a tacit agreement that you won't share it further."

Legal battle
Tiziana Cantone, a fragile woman, was horrified.

"She and I never actually spoke about the details of the video," says her friend Teresa. "I never saw them, and I never want to see them. You could tell she was suffering a lot. But she was strong."

Ms Cantone decided to fight back. But there was no immediate way to get the videos taken down.

She took the case to court, arguing the tapes were uploaded to public sites without her consent. By this time, she was no longer able to live a normal life.

"She didn't want to go out as people would recognise her. She realised that the virtual world and the real world were the same thing," Teresa explains.

"She understood at some point that the situation would never be resolved; that a potential husband, her potential children could find those videos; that they would never disappear."

Tiziana Cantone retreated to her family home in a quiet street in Mugnano, a working-class suburb of Naples.

It took her mother, Maria Teresa Giglio, weeks to find the strength to tell reporters about her daughter's life.

"My daughter was a good girl but she was also vulnerable," she told the BBC. "She lacked a paternal figure, from birth. She never met her father. This affected her entire life."

Mother and daughter lived together. In happier times, Tiziana listened to Italian singers, read novels and played the piano. But after the intimate videos were shared online, she withdrew.

"Her life was ruined, in front of everyone," says her mother. "People made fun of her, parodies ended up on pornographic websites. She was called shameful names."

In September, a court in Naples ordered the intimate videos to be removed from several websites and search engines. But the court also ordered her to pay €20,000 (£17,200, $21,600) in legal costs.

It was all too much.

On 13 September 2016, Maria Teresa Giglio went to work at the local town hall. Her daughter stayed at home.

Ms Giglio received a phone call at work.

"My sister-in-law called me, and in a calm voice told me to come home; when I got here I saw the police, the ambulance, and I quickly understood," she says, breaking down.

"My sister-in-law tried to pick her up and save her. My neighbours didn't allow me to get out of my car. I almost fainted. They didn't want to let me into this house. I wasn't even able to see her for a last time.

"The day she died, my life ended."

More here

[Mystic Wanderer]

Very sad story.

This should be a lesson to anyone; don't share anything online that could come back to haunt you.  Or, if it's something you would be embarrassed to allow into public, just don't do it in the first place.

[BIAD]

Very sad story.

This should be a lesson to anyone; don't share anything online that could come back to haunt you.
Or, if it's something you would be embarrassed to allow into public, just don't do it in the first place.

Ditto, Mystic.