Suicide of Amanda Todd

Amanda Michelle Todd (November 27, 1996 – October 10, 2012) was a 15-year-old Canadian student and victim of cyberbullying who hanged herself at her home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.

A month before her death, Todd posted a video on YouTube in which she used a series of flashcards to tell her experience of being blackmailed into exposing her breasts via webcam, and of being bullied and physically assaulted.

The video went viral after her death, resulting in international media attention.

The original video has had more than 15 million views as of May 2023, although mirrored copies of the video had received tens of millions of additional views shortly after her death; additionally, a YouTube video by React has a video of teens reacting to Todd's video which has garnered 44.7 million views as of May 2023, and various videos from news agencies around the world regarding the case have registered countless millions more.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia Coroners Service launched investigations into the suicide.

In response to her death, then-Premier of British Columbia Christy Clark, made an online statement of condolence and suggested a national discussion on criminalizing cyberbullying.

A motion was also introduced in the Canadian House of Commons to propose a study of the scope of bullying in Canada and for more funding and support for anti-bullying organizations.

Todd's mother, Carol, established the Amanda Todd Trust, receiving donations to support anti-bullying awareness education and programs for young people with mental health problems.

A Dutch-Turkish man, Aydin Coban, who was already imprisoned for sexual blackmail in the Netherlands, was extradited to Canada to face trial on charges of harassing and sexually extorting Todd before her suicide.

On August 5, 2022, the jury found Coban guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on October 14, 2022.

During the video, Todd writes that when she was in 7th grade (2009–10), around the same time she moved in with her father, she used video chat to meet new people over the Internet and received compliments on her looks.

After a stranger repeatedly asked her for over a year to bare her breasts, Todd did so on a webcam stream, and the person saved frames using screen capturing.

He later blackmailed her by threatening to give the topless photo to her friends unless she gave him a "show".

She also was featured briefly on the Daily Capper on BlogTV, a pedophile-run news show utilizing animation of the character Dora Smarmy from the HBO Family series Crashbox that tracked children who were groomed into flashing or sex acts on camera and encouraged their continued exploitation.

An episode of Daily Capper a month after Todd's death claimed to oppose her abusers and reveal evidence that incriminates them.

Todd wrote that during the 2010 Christmas break, police informed her that the photo was circulating on the Internet.

She wrote that she experienced anxiety, depression, and panic disorder due to having been sexually exploited online and cyberbullied.

Her family moved to a new home, where Todd said she began using alcohol and other drugs.

A year later, Todd's blackmailer reappeared, creating a Facebook profile that used the topless photo as its profile image and contacting classmates at her new school.

Again, Todd was teased, eventually changing schools for a second time.

She wrote that she began chatting to "an old guy friend" who contacted her.

The friend invited Todd to his house, where they had sex while his girlfriend was on vacation.

The following week, the boy's girlfriend and a group of about 15 others confronted Todd at school, shouting insults, with the boy's girlfriend punching her; Todd fell to the ground, then lay in a ditch, where her father found her.

After the attack, Todd attempted suicide by drinking bleach, but survived after being rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.

"It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actually die", Todd commented in her video.

After returning home, Todd discovered abusive messages about her suicide attempt posted to Facebook.

At the time of her death, Todd was a 10th grade student at CABE Secondary in Coquitlam, a school that caters to students who have experienced social and behaviour issues in previous educational settings.

A preliminary investigation by British Columbia Coroners Service showed that Todd's death was a suicide.

The cause of death was reported in some media as hanging, but the exact cause of death had not been released.

On September 7, 2012, Todd posted a 9-minute YouTube video titled My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self-harm, which showed her using a series of flashcards to tell of her experiences being bullied.

The video went viral after her death on October 10, 2012, receiving over 1,600,000 views by October 13, 2012, with news websites from around the world linking to it.

In March 2012, her family moved to another city to start afresh, but Todd was unable to escape the past.

According to her mother, "Every time she moved schools he would go undercover and become a Facebook friend. What the guy did was he went online to the kids who went to [the new school] and said that he was going to be a new student — that he was starting school the following week and that he wanted some friends and could they friend him on Facebook. He eventually gathered people's names and sent Todd's video to her new school", including students, teachers and parents.

Six months later, further messages and abuse were still being posted to social networking sites.

With Todd's mental state worsening, she began to engage in self-mutilation and cutting.

Despite taking her prescribed antidepressants and receiving counseling, she overdosed and was hospitalized for two days.

Todd was taunted by other students at her school for her low grades, a consequence of a language-based learning disability, and for the time she spent in the hospital to treat her severe depression.

"It didn't really help that after she got out of the hospital recently some kids started calling her 'psycho' and saying she had been in the crazy hospital," her mother said.

"She went to the hospital, she had therapy, she had counseling, she was on a good track. On the day she gets out, that happens. I shake my head and I think, 'Are kids really that nasty, do they really not think, what if it was them?'"

On October 10, 2012, at about 6:00 PM (PDT), Todd's body was found hanging at her home.