When Cyberbullies Strike: Best Response Techniques
Suzanne Smither
If you’re harassed on the Internet, go to the police immediately and report harassment. If nothing happens, complain of aggravated harassment.
This advice comes from attorney John Sarcone III, Esq, who represented Shirley Koshi, DVM, a cyberbullying victim who took her own life in February 2014. Filing such a complaint, he said, alerts police to contact the person responsible, order him or her to stop, and put the offender on notice that any further online attacks could result in an arrest.
The events leading to Koshi’s death began in the summer of 2013 in New York City when 2 women presented a sick cat they said they had found in a nearby public park. Two weeks later, the cat, Karl, was still recovering from upper respiratory disease when another woman demanded that he be returned to her. That woman, Gwen Jurmark, said she was Karl’s rightful owner because she had adopted him from a shelter years before and paid to have him neutered. Jurmark had then released him into a park where he lived with other cats. Koshi refused to let Karl go back to the park because of his health and, instead, adopted him and took him home. In October of 2013, Jurmark sued Koshi in Bronx Civil Court for Karl’s custody and later led protests outside Koshi’s practice and, with others, launched an aggressive Internet campaign against her.1
On February 16, 2014, police found Koshi dead in her home, apparently of a drug overdose. “I’m told she left a note referencing that the extreme emotional distress she’d been enduring was too much,” Sarcone said, adding that police have the note and are continuing to investigate her death.
Jurmark’s “lawsuit was frivolous, demanding a court order to Dr. Koshi to return the cat,” Sarcone said. After Koshi died, he said, New York City Animal Care and Control picked up the animals in her home, including Karl, and took them to a shelter. He does not know where Karl is today, he said, but believes that Jurmark retrieved him with the intention of returning him to the feral cat colony.
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