should pervs be able to post accident photos, should dead people have privacy rights?

from discovery

Nikki Catsouras Crime Scene Photos Haunt Deceased Teen's Family
May 05, 2009

A tragic event that occurred nearly three years ago continues to disturb a family in Orange County, Calif. Despite every effort, they are unable to move past the tragedy because the Internet will not allow them to reach closure. Actually, the World Wide Web itself is not to blame as much as the morbid and insensitive individuals who hide on its darker side.

The events surrounding this story began to unfold on October 31, 2006. On that day, 18-year-old Nikki Catsouras (photo here) fatefully grabbed the keys to her father's Porsche 911 Carrera and walked out the front door of her parents' home. Nikki had been forbidden to drive the sports car, and her judgment on that day will forever remain in question.

As a child, Nikki was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Tests showed the growth to be benign; however, she still had to endure radiation treatment which, doctors warned, could cause her to have difficulty with impulse control - issues which may have contributed to the cocaine-induced psychosis that she suffered in 2005. Despite her hospital stay after that incident, Nikki again experimented with cocaine in October 2006. In response, her parents scheduled an appointment with a brain disorder specialist. Unfortunately, Nikki never made the appointment.

It will never be known whether the accident was the result of teen disobedience or a lack of judgment caused by her brain disorder. Regardless of the reason, Nikki got behind the wheel of her father's car and backed it out of the family's garage. Nikki's mother, Lesli Catsouras, heard the commotion outside and ran out, only to see her daughter speeding down the road. Lesli immediately phoned her husband, Christos, who called 911. During the call, the dispatcher informed him that a black Porsche had been involved in an accident on the 241 toll road in Lake Forest. Christos' heart immediately sank to the pit of his stomach.

According to police, Nikki was traveling at approximately 100 mph when she lost control of the car. She hit a Honda driven by a lone man before tumbling over the median and slamming into a concrete toll booth. The accident was so severe that Nikki was nearly decapitated upon impact (those photos will not be shown here). Her remains were in such a horrific state that the coroner would not allow her family to view her body.

The driver of the Honda was transferred to a hospital with minor injuries. He seeks to recover damages in a pending lawsuit against the Catsouras family.

As tragic as Nikki's death was, it was only the beginning of a long road of suffering that her family would have to endure.

In the weeks that followed the accident, Christos received an e-mail that he assumed was related to his real estate business. However, when he opened it, he was confronted by a gruesome crime scene photo of his daughter and a caption that read, "Whoohoo Daddy! Hey Daddy, I'm still alive."

That e-mail set the stage for a wave of harassment which has targeted each member of Nikki's family. In addition, one particularly sick individual took the time to set up a fake ******* page in Nikki's name in order to poke fun at her death. Within the comment section, one visitor wrote, "What a waste of a Porsche," while another comment read, "That spoiled rich girl deserved it."

The release of the nine crime scene photos was traced to two California Highway Patrol dispatchers - Thomas O'Donnell, 39, and Aaron Reich, 30. In response, the CHP sent a letter of apology to the family and suspended O'Donnell for 25 days without pay. According to newsweek.com, Reich quit his job for unrelated reasons.

The crime scene photos have since gone viral and can be found on thousands of Web sites. Despite the family's best efforts, they have been unable to have them removed from the Internet. With little remaining recourse, they filed a lawsuit against the CHP for negligence, privacy invasion and infliction of emotional harm.

In March 2008, the Catsouras' case was dismissed by a superior court judge who ruled that rights of privacy do not extend to the dead. The court response to the family's appeal is expected on June 1.

In the wake of the case's recent media coverage, Russian cyber criminals attempted to exploit the situation by registering a domain name to distribute malware under the disguise of a "video" of the crime scene. According to trendmicro.com, the site in question has been optimized to appear as the first result in Internet searches for "Nikki Catsouras." The malware contains several variants of worms and viruses. Perhaps the site is actually doing the family a favor by luring those who wish to view the video. After doing so, they will surf away with a PC full of computer viruses.

Meanwhile, Nikki's parents and siblings have all enrolled in therapy so that they might eventually be able to come to terms with the situation or at least begin travelling the road to closure.

Morbid curiosity is one thing, but to turn Nikki Catsouras' death into a twisted Internet phenomenon is another. The incredible cruelty that the Catsouras family has suffered as a result of this chain of events is inexcusable. The individuals who are responsible should be charged with harassment. Their lack of empathy leaves me utterly speechless.

Whoever these people who posted all of that shit were, are just pathetic sons of bitches.
Just a bunch of inadequate people, doing retarded things because it causes shock value.

The interweb is a fucked up place.
The fact that those people e-mailed Nikkis family just goes to show how cruel and moronic people can be.


What her family has to go through sucks so bad, but i think efforts of trying to get her pictures removed will never work.
A lot of creepsters out there thrive on that shit.


What a sad story.
I hope her family eventually gets some peace of mind.

well let's think here..........you got a porsche, you got a daughter with a lot of problems, (it's irrelevant what causes them), and you leave the keyes where the kid can get them...............far as I'm concerned whoever left the keys laying around should be responsible for her death.

But anyway, I like industrial accident photo's, car accident's don't really interest me, but work accident photo's actually make me think.

Totally.

Dead people don't need privacy rights for anything. This is talking about the relatives' needs and wants; pretending that they speak for the dead is empty emotional appeal. Besides, it is absurd for them to demand that the whole world adhere to a set of behavioural conditions so that they can have their 'closure'. Closure is about your personal memory of an individual and who they were to you; what others are doing shouldn't make a difference.

http://blogs.discovery.com/criminal_...ne-photos.html

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"There are many people in this world who are titillated by gore and death," Brown said. "They gain some perverse feeling of power, a sense of triumph, to see others brutally killed, to see the mutilation of the body, the destruction of another human being. When that person is attractive, well-healed, and successful, the thrill is even stronger. It is a "Ha-Ha, look what happened to you!" triumph for the individual who feels he himself has not received enough attention or glory in his life. In his own mind, he would enjoy tearing apart people, taking them all down off their perches, showing them who has the power to control life and death. But, since they are too chicken to become serial killers, they live through gore sites and slasher movies."

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That guy doesn't get it. He sees the pattern, but he's far too busy filling in the blanks in ways that'll justify his personal indignation to learn anything from it.

I kind of don't want to be worried about Police violating victims' privacy when they are supposed to be helping.

I also think it is one thing to want to view gore photos and quite another to repeatedly email a man photos of his dead daughter.

Lastly, teenagers do stupid death-defying things all the time, with or without cocaine or brain tumors deregulating impulse control. There is no way for any parent to fully protect their teenager. Most times teens survive stupid teen tricks. The fact that this girl's family called 911 the moment they realized she had the car indicates that they were actually putting quite a bit of effort into protecting her. Sometimes you just can't stop another person from destroying him or herself.

Medical problems aside, it sounds like she was kind of a spoiled cokehead who would have done herself in somehow sooner or later.

That said, the police should never be releasing accident photos. Punishment for that should be exceedingly severe. Distribution of sensitive material related to their job function is a huge betrayal of their commission, and the punishment should reflect that.

However, the Internet is filled with sickos, and it's almost impossible to keep things like this from spreading one they get out.

the thing about what the guys did ......this isnt the first time confidential material of that nature has been leaked onto the internet. rotten.com is full of pretty much nothing but exam photos and morgue photos submitter by what is assumed to be people who work at those place sor friends who are given the photos as souveniers. and there's really no way to get rid of something once it'se been put on the internet, i mean, there's still videos of budd dwyer's little press conference circulating the net and that happened back in 1987.

i think honestly though, if i was in the father's shoes, i would'nt have gone and sued the guys for posting them but rather just found out where they lived and kicked their ass royally and posted pics of them crying like a baby in the back a car trunk tied up in duct tape. paybacks a bitch.

because yeah, posting the pics is one thign but going around and harrassing the family after what happened is a whole different ball of wax and i can't believe the judge threw out the case. maybe they just werent focused on what to sue or whoto sue over more appropriately. they shuold have been suing the two guys instead of their department and over harrassment to them rather defamation of their daughter.

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Originally Posted by Amelia G

I also think it is one thing to want to view gore photos and quite another to repeatedly email a man photos of his dead daughter.

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Yeah, this doesn't seem to be a privacy issues, that's just harassment.

You know, I am not even that crazy about the mug shots that end up on the web.

The police have access to places the rest of us don't. If I ran around trying to get photos of an accident scene, the response would be unpleasant. They have to let the police photo the scene.

Those guys should have been nailed hard for mishandling evidence.

before I even finished reading the subject title..i already knew it was about this girl. I remember the pictures when they were first release, i actually didn't save them and that's RARE for me...i save like EVERY gore picture I run into.

Anyways, in my opinion, if she was a member of my family I would NOT want those pictures to be released to ANYONE, i wouldn't want anyone besides the coroner and workers that were there to see anything, and I especially wouldnt want to see it, not anyone in my family, so I think that's wrong and just 25 days suspension? tha'ts not even a slap on the hand compared to what the family has to endure over his "funny" little action, what a douchebag, ...actually douchebags, i forgot there were two of them.

also, this story doesnt say, but the younger sister had to drop out of school, regular school and get home schooled because she was getting harassed at school, someone printed those pictures of her sister (and they were very graphic and very grusome, very very very disturbing, she had no face and almost no head) and they put the pictures in her locker with really mean notes on them..

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Originally Posted by Raza

Totally.

Dead people don't need privacy rights for anything. This is talking about the relatives' needs and wants; pretending that they speak for the dead is empty emotional appeal. Besides, it is absurd for them to demand that the whole world adhere to a set of behavioural conditions so that they can have their 'closure'. Closure is about your personal memory of an individual and who they were to you; what others are doing shouldn't make a difference.

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i disagree with this..halfway

i think dead people deserve some privacy.. and when i pass and whoever in my family is still living I would want them to speak for me if they really know it was something that i wanted said or done or whatever...but only if that, not that "i think this i what he would have wanted" only "this is what he would have wanted" if i had said it before ..

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

well let's think here..........you got a porsche, you got a daughter with a lot of problems, (it's irrelevant what causes them), and you leave the keyes where the kid can get them...............far as I'm concerned whoever left the keys laying around should be responsible for her death.

But anyway, I like industrial accident photo's, car accident's don't really interest me, but work accident photo's actually make me think.

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That's the cause to the effect. But that's not the issue here, it happened so-- the cause now is the cops posting the pictures and the effect is the harrasing going on..... DOUCHEBAG COPS...i dont hope for this to happen to anyone but karma is a bitch and i hope these two cops or chps or whatever that leaked these pictures get some emotional distress like they caused this family. This should have NEVER happened to this family, the death, sure, fine, it happens even to the best and richest ones of us, but the leaking of the photos..........oh hell no! They crossed the boundaries and apparently THEY are above the law..bleh

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Originally Posted by Thistle Harlequin

before I even finished reading the subject title..i already knew it was about this girl. I remember the pictures when they were first release, i actually didn't save them and that's RARE for me...i save like EVERY gore picture I run into.

Anyways, in my opinion, if she was a member of my family I would NOT want those pictures to be released to ANYONE, i wouldn't want anyone besides the coroner and workers that were there to see anything, and I especially wouldnt want to see it, not anyone in my family, so I think that's wrong and just 25 days suspension? tha'ts not even a slap on the hand compared to what the family has to endure over his "funny" little action, what a douchebag, ...actually douchebags, i forgot there were two of them.

also, this story doesnt say, but the younger sister had to drop out of school, regular school and get home schooled because she was getting harassed at school, someone printed those pictures of her sister (and they were very graphic and very grusome, very very very disturbing, she had no face and almost no head) and they put the pictures in her locker with really mean notes on them..

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Wow, her poor sister. I mean, maybe those girls were just like the worst people ever before this tragedy, but I just can't imagine taping up pics of someone's dead sibling to their locker.