Court Imprisons Man for Cyberbullying a Minor Into Suicide

A Spanish court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison after he was found guilty of encouraging a minor to end their own life by sending threatening and harassing messages on WhatsApp.

The Provincial Court of Castellón has sentenced the man to ten years in prison after he was convicted of homicide by a jury in July over his threats and harassment toward a 17-year-old in December of 2016, leading the minor to take his own life.

The court found the man had contacted the minor with 117 messages on the messaging platform WhatsApp in the span of just three hours, with much of the messaging being threats and intimidating content, the newspaper El Mundo reports.

During the exchange of messages, the minor told the man that if he continued to bully him then he would end his own life and despite this, the man continued sending the minor threats. The court found that the man knew there was a high probability the boy would kill himself but continued in his behaviour regardless.

Eventually, the 17-year-old did end his own life by jumping from his apartment building into the internal courtyard, being killed immediately by the fall.

Along with the ten-year sentence, which may be appealed, the court demanded the man pay 173,000 (£150,333/$172.948) euros to the family of the victim.

Cyberbullying suicide cases are relatively rare but the number of children who claim to have been the victims of cyberbullying in the United States, for example, was put as high as 37 per cent by a 2019 study.

Earlier this year in April, the parents of a boy who was driven to suicide due to cyberbullying over his vaccination status launched a lawsuit in Chicago against administrators at their son’s former school, along with the parents of the alleged bullies.

According to the lawsuit, 15-year-old Nate Bronstein had been vaccinated against the Chinese coronavirus but a rumour he was not vaccinated spread, with another pupil urging him to end his own life on the social media platform Snapchat.

The 15-year-old was found hanging from a noose in the shower within a month of the incident.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.