Alyssa Funke, a 19-year-old college freshman at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, was doing great in school, but committed suicide last month. It came shortly after her old classmates students discovered a “Casting Couch” pornography video that she did when she was 18 and her parents believe that the subsequent cyberbullying lead to her suicide.
Funke began getting harassed on Facebook and Twitter just days after the video surfaced, reports Fox 9 in Minnesota. She was mostly bullied by her old Stillwater High School classmates. While she identifies herself as being from Minnesota in the video, she calls herself “Stella Ann” before she has sex with a stranger on a couch.
Some of the messages she received were nasty, including one that read, “Nothing brings a school together like a porn star who graduated last year. I guess you could say news spreads fast here at Stillwater hahah.” At first, Funke used Twitter to brush off the insults. According to Gawker, her last tweets read, “Famous for dayzzzzzzz," and "Pornstar Status."
However, she bought a 12-gauge shotgun and went to a boat landing. There, she killed herself on April 14.
The Washington County Sheriff's Office is currently investigating her death and their detectives say that the reports of online bullying are not enough to charge anyone with criminal harassment. Her UW-River Falls classmates do believe that the bullying did drive her to commit suicide, as do her parents.
Her parents didn’t speak with Fox 9 on camera, but they did say that she suffered from depression for years. They also started a fundraising campaign, notes The Daily Dot to combat cyberbullying. However, it failed to get notice online and only raised $165.
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