Prosecutors investigate woman's sex tape suicide

Italian prosecutors in Naples have opened a criminal investigation after the suicide of a 31-year-old woman who had fought unsuccessfully to have a video showing her having sex expunged from the internet.

Chief prosecutor Francesco Greco said Friday that the investigation into possible charges of instigating suicide was being coordinated with another based on a defamation complaint that Tiziana Cantone brought against four individuals last October.

The complaint remained open at the time of her death on Tuesday.

According to media reports, Cantone shot video of herself performing a sex act on a man as an act of revenge against her ex-boyfriend.  It was sent privately to a small group of people, but it quickly went viral and she became the target of insults and jokes. Her attempts to have the video removed from a series of platforms failed.

“They destroyed my daughter, my life and the lives of an entire family. Although in that cellar where she took her own life Tiziana was alone, morally to pull the noose around the neck were the ex-boyfriend, and those who took advantage,” Cantone’s mother, Maria Teresa Gigolo, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Cantone had previously legally changed her name to get away from the notoriety of the video.  It has been copied and uploaded thousands of times.