Posted on 09/01/2006 11:27:04 PM PDT by doug from upland
'Star Wars Kid' cuts a deal with his tormentors TU THANH HA
From Friday's Globe and Mail
TROIS-RIVIÈRES, QUE. — As Ghyslain Raza recalled, whenever he walked by his high school's common areas, other students would jump on tables and chant, "Star Wars Kid! Star Wars Kid!"
There would be a commotion as they shouted and poked at him, trying to get a reaction. "It was simply unbearable," he said.
An otherwise ordinary teen in this Quebec small town, Mr. Raza had become a worldwide object of ridicule when schoolmates put on the Internet a video of him clumsily pretending to be a Star Wars character.
Three years later, Mr. Raza and his parents this week reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of three former schoolmates they had sued for $351,000 in damages.
Related to this article Latest Comments Comments are closed for this story The settlement annuls a civil trial set to begin on Monday that would have scrutinized one of the world's first and most-publicized cases of cyber-bullying.
However, documents filed in the case at the Trois-Rivières courthouse give new details about how a mean-spirited high-school prank turned into a global Internet cause célèbre.
Specifics of the settlement remain confidential.
Lawyers for the three schoolmates had suffered a setback after they were not allowed to introduce as evidence a transcript of a phone conversation Mr. Raza had with a blogger, Jishnu Mukerji.
The blogger had posted a transcript of the exchange on the Internet.
Conducted a month after the video and parodies of it began circulating, the conversation has Mr. Raza calling the spoofs "interesting" but not expressing much distress.
However, a judge rejected a bid to table a transcript of the chat and Mr. Mukerji was not available to testify.
The documents include transcripts of examinations under oath of Mr. Raza and of three students accused of circulating the video, Michaël Caron, Jérôme Laflamme and Jean-Michel Rheault.
(Proceedings against a fourth, François Labarre, were dropped after Mr. Raza acknowledged that the allegations against that student were based on hearsay.)
In the transcripts, Mr. Raza said the experience left him unable to attend school.
"It was simply unbearable, totally. It was impossible to attend class," Mr. Raza said.
He said the situation left him feeling drained of energy, and that he let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit.
He said he was diagnosed with depression by a pedopsychiatrist at Montreal's Sainte-Justine Hospital and his lawyers, in their fillings, said they wanted to have a psychiatrist and a psychologist testify, along with producing his medical file.
Under questioning, Mr. Laflamme and Mr. Rheault conceded their role in spreading a video that Mr. Raza, then 15, had made of himself and left on a shelf in the school TV studio.
Mr. Laflamme said he discovered the tape in April of 2003, when he took school equipment to film a varsity football game.
He showed the tape to Mr. Rheault, who made a copy of it.
"I thought it'd be an interesting prank . . . I wanted Ghyslain to know what I knew of him, what I had seen," Mr. Laflamme said.
"All I did was take the cassette, digitize it on the studio computer to pull a joke on Ghyslain. After that, I had nothing to do with it," Mr. Rheault said he later told the school principal after the controversy erupted.
He said that when a school counsellor confronted him about Mr. Raza's misfortunes, he replied, "It's no fun what happened here, but that's the problem with the Internet. Things travel fast."
Mr. Caron, who says he didn't even know the two other pranksters, said in examination that as the tape was being e-mailed among students, he created a website and posted the video on it.
According to court filings, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003.
About a month later, one U.S. Web blog that had posted the video said it had been downloaded 1.1 million times already.
Mr. Raza's lawyer said in a court filing that the video was so widely circulated that one Internet site solely dedicated to the two-minute clip recorded 76 million visits by October, 2004.
Mr. Raza conceded in his examination that he didn't express much anguish when he spoke to Mr. Mukerji in May of 2003 about his sudden fame.
He said he was cautious because "everything I said was textually reported on the Internet. I signalled in more or less subtle fashion my unhappiness."
Mr. Raza -- who appears on the video as a chubby, ungainly young man -- recalled how other students got on tables and chanted taunts at him. "There was about 100 people in those halls. It was total chaos . . . Any opportunity was good enough to shout 'Star Wars!' "
He said in one class, where a document was shown through a projector, other students scrolled the text, mimicking the opening of the movie, as they sang the Star Wars theme.
And whenever he was in a public place, he said, strangers would call to him.
"Hey! It's Ghyslain Raza! Star Wars Kid, hey!"
He left the school and eventually, got a private tutor.
No one would comment yesterday about the settlement, including whether it included monetary compensation.
However, previous proceedings in the case had included discussions about whether the families of the three defendants had liability insurance.
The families of the three defendants have varying financial situations, court documents suggest. Mr. Caron's court filings include a letter from an insurer refusing to provide liability insurance coverage, whereas Mr. Laflamme says in his examination that his father had savings of $500,000 from an inheritance.
http://www.screamingpickle.com/humor/legends/StarWarsKid/
I've been scr*wed! I was called much worst than this when I was a child, and I received no compensation from my tormentors.
Should have asked the kids permission first...of course anything is unbearable for $300 G's
The kid could have been rich.
He could have taken lessons, lost some weight, and worked for Master Replicas that makes light saber replicas or made more films improving his skills. People pay big money for the kind of national attention he had.
Seriously. He had a phenom going there and dropped the ball. Ok, he is a kid and got his feelings hurt. But making lemonade from lemons was a lesson clearly not taught nor learned. Too bad.
The key is in the second to the last paragraph.
Is there insurance money to be claimed. Everything else is fluff.
He said the situation left him feeling drained of energy, and that he let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit.
Geeze... If they had things like digital video cameras and YouTube when I was a kid, Some of the silly stuff I did, much worse than this kid, would have embarassed / immortalized me to millions. The few still living that have seen some of the old 8mm family films of my antics still remark upon them.
Who can I sue... Hmmm.
Lay off the poutine.
This is so not fair, I could have been a millionaire.
ping
I don't understand why God doesn't get on with the business of destroying mankind. We clearly deserve it.
"The kid could have been rich."
I thought the same thing. He should have milked the 15 minutes of fame for all it was worth. Plus the ability to laugh at yourself is a good lesson to learn. When I was in HS, my friends and I purposely made films that made fun of ourselves just to entertain the school. They were often shown before convocations and everyone loved them.
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.
Hmmmmm... you'll see much clumsier performances at nearly any beginners Kendo class.
He's a beefy kid and he handles that broomstick quite well. And unlike alot of fighters, he moves his feet and covers the ground. I shouldn't want to try to take his weapon off him, unarmed: not for all the tea in China.
A pity some of his tormentors and bullies didn't try: they'd be seeing stars and nursing bruises and fractures for a few weeks, and they'd firmly resolve to pick on somebody else.
I *hate* bullies.
Goodonya Star Wars Kid. Take up Kendo or Escrima or Arnis, or even the Nunchukas: you got the basic moves right. Now refine 'em with some proper training.
*DieHard*
I think FReepers could do this kid a real favor by dropping a note to "Screaming Pickle" and asking them nicely to drop this part of their site.
Yeah, it's funny but it's bullying and it's not right.
Happy to lead by example: I've sent them my e-mail.
"I don't understand why God doesn't get on with the business of destroying mankind. We clearly deserve it."
Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.
People should recognize the pain that comes, not from teasing, but from non-stop harrassment. When young people today leave school the bullies can still reach them on their cellphone, e-mail, AIM etc.
RIP Ryan
I dunno, ~US$400,000 isn't so bad.
THey gave Larry the Cable guy a movie. This kid is a 100 times more talented via that performance and should of milked it for all its worth.
He could of milked this 15 minutes for all it was worth.
Instead, he jumps on the victimhood bandwagon being driven by ambulance chasing lawyers that make a mockery of western civilizations justice systems.
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