French Teen Live-streams Suicide on Periscope, After Alleged Rape

Raped by her former boyfriend, teen chooses to end her life while live-streaming it for the world to see.

The station where the suicide took place. (Photo: AP)

French authorities have opened an investigation after a teenager allegedly live-streamed her suicide on the popular app Periscope.

The local prosecutor said on Wednesday that the young woman threw herself under a commuter train in the suburban Egly station, south of Paris, after claiming she had been raped by her former boyfriend. The prosecutor’s statement said the woman was born in 1997.

The teenager, whose name is withheld, sent a text message to a friend of her former boyfriend, few hours before she killed herself on Tuesday, said prosecutor Eric Lallement.

In the text message, she mentions violence and a rape that her companion inflicted on her and claims she is ending her days because of the harm that the young man had done to her

Eric Lallement

On Tuesday, the woman spent more than two hours overall on Periscope, divided in five live sessions. The last one lasted 29 minutes and seems to have been recorded moments before she killed herself, he said.

The teen’s video messages and cellphone have been seized by the police. In her own messages, the woman spoke a lot about her life and her difficult relationship with her former boyfriend, Lallement said.

An autopsy, toxicology and drug tests will be conducted over the next few days.

The video has been removed from Periscope, a cellphone live video-streaming app, but YouTube users posted what they said were excerpts. The suicide scene itself is not visible on YouTube.

Periscope, owned by Twitter, did not publicly comment.

The French case is only the latest one linked to Periscope. Last month in Ohio, a 17-year-old woman was raped by a man with whom she had been drinking and her 18-year-old friend live-streamed the attack on the social media app, prompting a prosecutor to file a rape and kidnapping indictment.