The story of a young man harassed online and her stalker, a 64-year-old man who posed for more than a year as a twentysomething woman in love, has ended up twice before the Italian justice, after both ended up committing suicide, although for very different reasons.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Forlí (central north) has opened an investigation to clarify whether the broadcast of a television program triggered the suicide, during the last week, of Roberto Zaccariathe online stalker who became harassed after being persecuted by a journalist from the space “Le Iene” (The hyenas) of Italia 1, a channel of the private Mediaset group, according to local media.
Zaccaria He was located by a team from the program, who recorded him while he tried to escape from the cameras and who issued the images in which he ended up admitting that he had used a false identity to harass danieleaged 24, and who had committed suicide a year earlier, but insisted that it had been “a joke” and that, if the young man “had mental problems, it was not his fault”.
Although the image of the man’s face was “pixelated” by the program, Zaccaria he was recognized by most of his neighbors in Forlimpopoli and the day after the broadcast several posters appeared and were painted with threats: “You bastard, you must die and burn in hell”.
“From the moment the program aired, there was a sense of great shame, which later turned into tragedy”said the mayor of Forlimpopoli, milena garaviniwhen describing the state of mind of the inhabitants due to what happened, in addition to showing their closeness to Zaccaria’s mother and relatives.
According to the family’s lawyer, the program could have committed a crime of “private violence” due to the fact that the images were recorded and broadcast against the will of the sixty-year-old, but also of “incitement to suicide” because “by disclosing to public opinion, the implicit thesis that he had caused Daniele’s death had triggered a public pillory”.
This despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office had filed the accusation as the cause of the suicide in September 2021 of Daniele, whose family went to “Le Iene” to tell that the young man took his own life after receiving more than 8,000 messages from Zaccaria, who For a year, he posed as a 20-year-old girl named Irene who claimed to be in love with him.
According to the parents of danieleZaccaria, who learned of the existence of the virtual relationship between the two only after the suicide from a note left by her son, even talked to her about getting married and having children when she pretended to be Irene. The young man committed suicide after discovering the deception, realizing that the photo of the young woman corresponded to a model.
The relatives denounced Zaccaria before the forces of order, but, after the investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office requested that the case be archived, since it was ruled out that there was a causal link between his behavior and Daniele’s suicide.
“This is something that should not happen again: I think we will have to raise the level of attention and sensitivity even more,” lamented Pier Silvio Berlusconi, CEO of Mediaset, when asked at a recent meeting with the press about the growing audience of the group, whose program “Le Iene” has been the subject of much criticism in the Italian media and social networks.
Commotion in Italy: the tragic story of the suicide of a young man and his stalker after TV report