Seattle Police Investigating Bizarre Youtube Harassment Case

Seattle Police have opened a child pornography investigation linked to a long-running Youtube feud between three teenagers.

According to an SPD search warrant affidavit, on January 6th, police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The father of a 16-year-old boy sent in a tip complaining to police that:

A 19-year-old boy has been harassing my son for over a year. He has posted explicitly sexual videos splicing in my son’s face in the picture. This has all been done with Youtube [.] He also has an accomplice.

My son has special needs and has not used good judgment in this situation. However, this person needs to be stopped.

My son…has not bee able to communicate and is filled with rage and anger towards this 19-year-old man. He continues to post more and more sexually explicit material with my son’s face in it as recently as…1-4-09.

The affidavit says that a year ago, the 16-year-old boy posted a video of himself doing “goofy” things—one video on the 16-year-old’s page is titled “the best fart videos from the web”—on Youtube. At some point, two boys, 17 and 19 years old, began sending him harassing messages over Youtube.

Eventually, the affidavit says, the 17 and 19-year-old boys began impersonating the 16-year-old on Youtube and created a series of videos and pictures depicting the 16-year-old “with a cartoon penis drawn [over his] face” as well as a video “originally created by [the 16-year-old] that someone has copied…and inserted crude remarks and cartoon penises” on. Other videos featured “penises either in [the 16-year-old’s] hand or…going in and out of [his] mouth” as well as “an animation of Richard Simmons engaging in anal intercourse with the cartoon body and [16-year-old boy’s] face.”

In response to the videos, the 16-year-old boy began a year-long flame war on one of the older boys’ Youtube pages.

Here’s a bit of the year-long conversation, sics throughout:

16-year-old: I can’t believe your telling me to go stab myself and that I have no life or friends dude like in the mirror! im not the one whos making fake accounts just to make it look like other people hate my videos thats really pethetic and i have plenty of friends! and for you to say -go stab yourself-……i would never say that to a human bean bottom line. you have issues dude.

16-year-old: [xxxxxx] made my life a wreck by making fun of me first when you get publicly humiliated you will understand too.

19-year-old: load of shit you toutube friends don’t count any one can just ask a bunch of random people to be your fried so please go kill your self

16-year-old: im not killing myself just because some stupid emo with fake accounts told me too!

19-year-old: You need to die you are devolving the huan race. we need to go forward not backwards that’s why people with down syndrome (you encase you can’t figure that part out) should not be aloud to put stupid dumb ass videos on the internet

16-year-old: OK i know we had our differences but i want to be your friend so how bout it fart mate

SPD is working with Youtube to track down the boys who produced the videos. I’ve got a call in to the prosecutor’s office to see if any charges have been filed. All but one of the Youtube pages have been taken down.