Audrie Pott Suicide

At London's Daily Mail, "'I swear to god if you still have those pics I'll kill you': The pleading Facebook messages teen sent days before she killed herself 'after classmates sexually assaulted her and spread images of attack'."

And at Rolling Stone, "Sexting, Shame and Suicide: A shocking tale of sexual assault in the Digital Age":

Saratoga High School, with its country-club-worthy­quad, Olympic-size swimming pool and plush tennis courts, is one of those affluent California schools American teens recognize from movies and TV. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the school is home to high-achieving children of parents working at Apple, eBay, Netflix and other tech corporations headquartered within 50 miles. If the Saratoga Falcons did not regularly field a winning football team, there's consolation in the fact that each graduating class has propelled dozens of kids into Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley.

The summer before her death, Audrie had started to change, moving away from the kids she'd hung out with since middle school. She had started to drink a little and had dated a slightly older guy. When she drank, the self-consciousness that had afflicted her since junior high melted away. She loosened up. Sometimes, she loosened up a lot.

On Labor Day weekend of the new school year, Audrie's friend, let's call her "Sara" (many of the kids' names in this story have been changed to protect their identities), said her parents were away, leaving their white cottage-style house with its long green lawn in her care. Sara – 15, pretty, slim and blond – and Audrie had become close that summer and were exploring a new realm of boys, bottles and small parties, preferably at parent-free houses, that the Saratoga kids call "kickbacks."

That Sunday, Sara told her parents that she was going to be sleeping over at Audrie's, and Audrie told her mother that she'd be sleeping over at Sara's. When Sheila drove Audrie to Sara's, she assumed the girls would be spending the evening in their jammies in front of the television, or giggling over ice cream and Facebook. But Sara had already texted around a dozen friends to drop in for her kickback.

Eventually, 11 kids showed up, many of them to sip vodka and Gatorade cocktails. They all belonged to their class's popular clique, the girls dressed as provocatively as possible, even by the loose standards of California high schools. "See-through shorts and thongs pulled up, shorts pulled down," recalls an older girl. "That's what the 'cool girls' wore." The boys they hung out with favored a uniform locally dubbed "swagfag" – snapback hat, PacSun tank tops, knee-length chino shorts and Vans.

A few kids had brought some bottles of liquor – rum stolen from Safeway, vodka bought for them by an adult at a liquor store. They eventually guzzled a bottle of tequila that Sara's parents kept in their own cabinet. The mixer of choice was Gatorade, or downed straight. Audrie drank hardest of all....

Just reading that you can tell it's going to end badly.

But continue reading.