0000260821 00000 n Online he was “Mr. 0000255043 00000 n Rather than condemn the assault, Stickydrama took a couple of guesses as to the victim’s identity (“It’s hard to tell one dumb blonde from another”) before concluding that she “probably won’t even think it’s a big deal.”. “I felt like it’d be a chance for people to get to know me,” Kiki explains. From the safety of her computer, she lashed out, calling her attackers “nasty low-lifes” and “sub-humans.” A 17-year-old, who claimed she lived near Kiki’s hometown, responded with a chilling post: “I will fuckin’ beat the living shit out of you. 0000243060 00000 n She had finally made a connection that she hoped would last, but one that had set off a new, even more unsettling strain of hate mail: “No one compliments you except your rapist 18-year-old boyfriend.” “Rape-enjoying pathetic bitch.” “Your fucking 13 years old, and mr pedifile, I mean mr myspace, should go to jail for dating you. Focusing on top Stickam entertainers like Kiki Kannibal was a sure way to draw traffic to Stickydrama, and at first its treatment of Kiki wasn’t much worse than anyone else’s. Exasperated by the school — and by schools in general, having tried various options for their autistic son — her parents withdrew Kiki after seventh grade to home-school her with her older brother. “I was bullied constantly,” Kiki recalls. “I had this idea of Florida as this paradise,” says mom Cathy, a forthright Midwesterner. 0000591586 00000 n It was much like the thrashing she’d been getting all along, except this site had ads for XXX sites and was far more professional-looking than anything Kiki, now 15, had ever encountered. World's 2nd-oldest person fends off COVID before 117th birthday; ... Jackie told reporter Sabrina Erdely she'd been raped by members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity as part of an initiation ritual. Despite that morning’s shock, she had to run: She was late for the first of two appointments, which summed up her life. 0000251897 00000 n Rolling Stone backs away from U.Va rape story... 02:28 Rolling Stone's managing editor apologized Friday for a story the magazine published last month describing a … ‘No one can believe it’: Birthday plans for hardworking Bronx man turning 23 dashed by his senseless shooting death ... penned by Rolling Stone magazine writer Sabrina Erdely, came out. But Kiki’s new look made her even more of a freak at school, and her tormentors’ words turned to punches. But mostly Stickyhouse became a revolving guest list of boys, for whom Stone posted a casting call of sorts: “I’m over titties, I prefer cocks and assholes. 0000005076 00000 n 0000048465 00000 n State cops told the Ostrengas that Stone could face misdemeanor harassment charges — but that since he was so far away, the family should plead its case to the LAPD. 0000591874 00000 n The Ostrengas urged Kiki to view it as a chance at a more stimulating life path than their own. “We thought it would be fun,” says Cathy. 0000073540 00000 n “He made himself out to be an open, honest kind of guy. In fact, after wreaking so much havoc, it appears that Chris Stone has simply moved on. 64 Rolling Stone rollingstone.com June 10, 2010 rollingstone.com| | Rolling Stone 6 5 how three teenage friends, fueled by sex, drugs and illegal code, pulled off the biggest cybercrime of all time // by sabrina rubin erdely T 0000253628 00000 n '” says Kiki, now 18. Each time she logged on, more friend requests were waiting: first a handful, then dozens, then 25,000 within three months. 0000259585 00000 n 0000613502 00000 n What the Hell Is Going On in Sia’s ‘Music’? The rise, fall and stubborn survival of Kiki Kannibal, a teenage Internet celebrity who discovered that the real world can be a very scary place, The first thing Kiki Ostrenga saw as she ran out the front door of her family’s white ranch house were the neon-green words spray-painted across the front path: “Regal Slut.” She stopped short. to throw a $75,000 birthday party for himself and Stephen at an exclusive New York club (5) . But as the song reaches its climax, Kiki wiggles out of her panties and strips off her shirt, revealing a minidress that, too baggy for her flat chest, droops to expose one pink bra cup. 0000012706 00000 n “I was so on edge and anxious and paranoid.” Already mentally fried over her rape, Danny’s death, everything — she began to fantasize about suicide. 0000549763 00000 n She can’t go offline. 0000605398 00000 n 0000244687 00000 n Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely is being sued by University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo for $7.8million over a story about a rape on the University of Virginia which didn't happen. 0000612601 00000 n 0000244887 00000 n But it was a different story in real life, where Danny was moving too fast, and Kiki nervously told him she didn’t want to have sex. The complaint, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, also names Sabrina Rubin Erdely as a defendant. 0000252512 00000 n The effect is a hodgepodge of the grown-up and the infantile: adolescence visualized. Her father had taken a substantial pay cut in order to quickly find a new job in the area. Kiki was hurtling into a twisted online realm, populated not just with trash-talking teens but also with stalkers, hackers, predators and profiteers. For that matter, how far would any of Kiki’s stalkers go to hurt the family? She’s gotten another note from a man who for three years has been sending her messages like “I’m gonna pinch your butt and slap your ass.” Kiki looks amused. So she kept quiet and continued dating him, including submitting to sex. 0000576704 00000 n The Ostrengas also tried getting Stickydrama’s Web host to pull the plug, but Stone countered by arguing that Kiki was a public figure whose image he could use however he wanted — even when it meant posting a user’s Photoshopped picture of her getting fucked by a dog. 0000254927 00000 n His name was Danny Cespedes. 0000009964 00000 n 0000011938 00000 n Fame wasn’t Kiki’s intention when she first logged on in 2006. 0000083787 00000 n Go ahead and call the cops, see what they do. 0000243554 00000 n Danny had jet-black hair, snakebite piercings through his lower lip and a bat tattoo below his navel, just like Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz. 0000247776 00000 n “I didn’t know people were doing things to themselves while they were watching me.”. 0000076931 00000 n Instead, they married young, Cathy became a housewife, and Scott wound up in middle management. “It’s scary,” says Kiki, her words muffled by her braces. “I met a guy who said, ‘I talked to a fake of yours online for two years, and I thought I was talking to you! She also knew investigators were closing in. 0000251684 00000 n 0000605686 00000 n He co-founded the site after watching Stickam’s growing popularity and realizing that enabling commenters to poke fun at Stickam users was a potential gold mine. She boasts a Twitter, a Tumblr, a Buzznet, a YouTube channel, two websites — one of which sells her jewelry and apparel — and an AIM screen name, which she gives out freely. Last summer, Stickydrama speculated that an 11-year-old who posted videos under the handle “Jessi Slaughter” was dating a twentysomething emo singer. 0000260918 00000 n She had yet to understand what a lot of us don’t comprehend: that our virtual lives can take on their own momentum, rippling outward with real-life consequences we can neither predict nor control. And yet, no matter how many times Kiki told him “No” — at least 10 times, by her count — Danny persisted. 0000077056 00000 n Sabrina Rubin Erdely Reporter. But this vandalism of her home was a different level of harassment. 0000250451 00000 n 0000052244 00000 n 0000071202 00000 n 0000550088 00000 n Her parents’ home was splattered with ketchup, chocolate syrup and eggs. 0000401538 00000 n This was more than she could handle. Little wonder, because Stickydrama’s founder was no teenager but a grown man looking to cash in on teen drama. Then she got a MySpace account, and everything changed. Because while Kirsten Ostrenga’s life was falling apart, Kiki Kannibal continued posting as though nothing had happened. “If she shows up at your house,” they said, “call us.”. “If she were my own child I would have taken that fucking computer and Sidekick away a long time ago,” wrote the administrator, presumably Stone. 0000251068 00000 n 0000246326 00000 n 0000007307 00000 n Sabrina Rubin Erdely Reporter. 0000250482 00000 n Cathy’s mind raced. Kiki squirmed away. "Sabrina Erdely - employed writer at Rolling Stone Magazine says she isn't going anywhere despite the news that the UVA Rape Story was completely fabricated. One night in November, Danny was at the Ostrengas’ when he started acting strangely, staggering around as though in a dizzy fog. So, with her parents’ permission, she joined MySpace. 0000077436 00000 n 0000253694 00000 n 0000576522 00000 n 0000044640 00000 n The site stayed up. 0000261438 00000 n When he visited the Ostrenga home soon afterward, he engaged each family member — even Kiki’s autistic big brother, warming Cathy’s heart. He called it “Stickyhouse” — really his own L.A. condo — where he invited teens to live so he could film and blog the resulting drama, the more depraved the better. But from the day she started sixth grade at Sawgrass, Kiki had a hard time fitting in, especially with the Hispanic and black girls who dominated her classroom. 0000010361 00000 n Danny’s family didn’t like his hanging out with Kiki. He fell into a coma. Afterward, Danny was tender, whispering to her in Spanish — Kiki didn’t understand a word — and telling her how much he loved her. Cathy sensed something was seriously wrong with her daughter. 0000059753 00000 n 21st birthday he would inherit a re - ported $65 million ($500 million in today’s dollars), a fortune so vast that Time predicted the boy would rank as “one of the wealth - iest men of the late 20th century.” And yet while Walker abound-ed in riches, he had no stabil-ity. “He was really off, he was drunk or something, and he passed out,” says Kiki. 0000243260 00000 n When Kiki clicked it, she found a site dedicated to jeering at Stickam users — especially her. 0000254501 00000 n One day Kiki logged on to discover this message: “I’ll fucking murder you little girl.”. 0000008984 00000 n The last name Erdely is considered very unique in the world, and no other famous people have this specific name. Sobbing, Kiki ran inside to call the police. 0000071574 00000 n 0000067266 00000 n 0000251356 00000 n ׈a�Se��0a��I�$�)M,�9�ԤL��\(�"K�z���ˍ�x(��� �IwCO���-�K�f�ū�ҤY�i��'ՙ�$�Q�PKU�ÿ�!l j��fk�|��&�E��'*1�'�#�Έ�D��!+RIд�3F�D�fz�h�^fpi�KVƟ�A�w;��MH��8��� K�BG endstream endobj 475 0 obj <>/Metadata 472 0 R/Pages 471 0 R/Type/Catalog>> endobj 476 0 obj <>/ColorSpace<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/ExtGState<>>>/Type/Page>> endobj 477 0 obj [515 0 R] endobj 478 0 obj <> endobj 479 0 obj <>stream 0000245952 00000 n 0000245194 00000 n RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — For the first time since Rolling Stone magazine’s shocking story about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia hit shelves two years ago, the public may hea… And then the Ostrenga house was vandalized, waking the family up to how vulnerable they had become. But the other reason is more existential: If she were to go offline, her link to the world would disappear. Their life is in tatters. 0000246778 00000 n 0000605495 00000 n 0000247080 00000 n 0000072405 00000 n 0000260234 00000 n Cathy was wary but found herself impressed by how polite Danny was, how he never failed to call her “Mrs. 0000010247 00000 n 0000077864 00000 n Jurors listened to a videotaped deposition from the woman known as "Jackie," whose alleged rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house was the focus of a now-retracted Rolling Stone article. 0000251972 00000 n 0000066107 00000 n She wanted to reach out to the world beyond Coral Springs and find misfits like herself. The deal didn’t last long. “I feel like a butterfly in a jar,” she says. “How do you even meet people?” Kiki asks. Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Most Recent Stories. Ultimately, no law-enforcement agency ever came to the rescue. 0000253597 00000 n 0000613860 00000 n “I’m gonna fucking kill her,” wrote a Stickydrama commenter. 0000010946 00000 n “Danny, don’t do that!” Kiki screamed as he swallowed them all, roughly pushed her away and sped off in his car. 0000560768 00000 n Send us a tip using our anonymous form. 0000252587 00000 n 0000248084 00000 n 0000067303 00000 n “It was always, ‘If you don’t do this, you don’t love me,'” Kiki recalls, breaking down in tears. 0000605429 00000 n Still crying, Kiki clambered into the family car. Kiki looked at one girl’s MySpace page and found a comment from Danny: “You have really soft lips hehehhe.”, Ultimately, Kiki says, she discovered that she had been the fourth of 18 young girls Danny had pursued, including a 12-year-old; he usually sought them out via MySpace, just as he’d found Kiki. “Let’s start a I hate Kiki club ’cause she’s ugly!” proposed one girl. 0000077361 00000 n 0000072780 00000 n Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Most Recent Stories. Over the next few weeks, she received e-mails from a string of girls, ages 13 to 15, telling her that Danny had seduced and then swiftly dumped them, too. 0000059683 00000 n 0000007582 00000 n Insulated from the chatter, Kiki felt calmer. January 8th is the combined marking of Elvis Presley’s birthday and the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson and French Pirate Jean Lafitte defeated the British in the final battle of the War of 1812. 0000550301 00000 n Roboto” dressed in an oversize top and a hoodie with kitty ears. She was just a lonely 13-year-old whose days at Sawgrass Springs Middle School had become a bullying hell. Around that same time, a visitor appeared in Kiki’s Stickam chat room and posted a link: Stickydrama.com. Stone wouldn’t comment for this article, but Stickam videos reveal him to be a fluid, articulate speaker — even when his self-applied caption labels him as “Drunk.” His intelligence comes through in his online postings; as he edifies his public on the origins of democracy or on proper grammar usage, he seems to view himself as a cultivated smut peddler, more Hugh Hefner than Larry Flynt. Lourdes Cespedes would call Cathy and scream, “He looks like a fucking faggot!” She insisted that the two kids stop seeing each other. He would often return home wearing Kiki-applied eyeliner, nail polish and hair highlights, upsetting his mother. 0000009586 00000 n He and Kiki began chatting online. 0000612017 00000 n This past February, after months of silence, Stone lashed out with a pair of tweets that devastated the Ostrengas: first posting a twitpic of Danny Cespedes’ death certificate, and then the first page of Kiki’s sexual-assault police report. Fake Craigslist ads promoted her sexual services. Seated at a cafe near her current home outside Orlando — she prefers I don’t reveal the precise location — she’s stick-thin in a black minidress, a heavy quartz-skull necklace and a skull ring; despite her tough-girl accessories, she comes across as tentative and frail, hugging her studded purse for comfort. Tears streamed down Kiki’s face. The child had been under the age of 12. But no one ever connects.”. Trans Women and Danger: More Tales From the Front Lines. He told them his dad was no longer in his life. Flattered, Kiki accepted everyone. She found it in Stickam.com, a then-new site where teen users stream themselves live while IM’ing with viewers. She didn’t realize the Web can be a portal for people’s cruelest impulses, or that it allows those forces to assemble into a mob. 0000012417 00000 n 0000253810 00000 n Danny, crying hysterically, responded by pulling out a handful of pills: Excedrin, weight-loss pills, painkillers. 0000245575 00000 n 0000122962 00000 n “Someone in my neighborhood would write me, saying, ‘I see you walking your dog,’ and describe my dog,” says Kiki, who stopped leaving the house alone. 0000247498 00000 n 0000614042 00000 n Cathy was 18 when she met Scott; he was fronting a rock band with big dreams; she was putting herself through college, her sights set on law school. “They would call me a white ho and a white bitch.” Her parents complained to the school but were disappointed by what they saw as a lack of response. Harmless,” says Cathy. Cathy and Scott suggested to Kiki that it was time to leave MySpace, but Kiki protested: “If you take me off the Internet, the bullies will win.” Pushed out of school, she was determined not to back down again. 0000520160 00000 n 0000253885 00000 n The Ostrengas called the police, but the cops did nothing. Days later, the Ostrengas packed up and moved, leaving their house an empty shell. And across the garage door, big as a billboard, was scrawled the word “SLUT.”, Photos: Teen Internet Celebrity Kiki Kannibal. 0000254310 00000 n Just then, a gust of wind blew some paperwork out of an officer’s hand. 0000071277 00000 n For all of Kiki’s digital exposure, she feels like no one knows the real Kiki: the one who’s taking courses at a community college and working at a retail store for extra cash; the one who spends her nights with her family hunched around Grandma’s dining-room table, gluing Swarovski crystals onto jewelry to fill orders for her struggling company; the one who has unhealthy online relationships with the older men she finds herself drawn to. Kiki’s parents acknowledge that they wish they had made different decisions along the way. 0000071649 00000 n 0000157743 00000 n 0000073465 00000 n One clue was when he showed up with a batch of new tattoos: Kiki’s face on his shoulder, “Kiki” across his stomach, and on his ankle, a Hello Kitty holding a balloon with the name “Kirsten.” The Ostrengas were alarmed, but Cathy had heard enough about Danny’s chaotic home life to make her feel sorry for him. “Did he do anything to you?” Kiki didn’t answer. 0000006027 00000 n 0000072330 00000 n 0000065543 00000 n 0000061797 00000 n Her parents, unsure of what to do, decided to let him sleep it off on the couch. 0000053378 00000 n © Copyright 2021 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. 0000260203 00000 n 0000255118 00000 n 0000612698 00000 n One reason is practical: Kiki has a business to run. Someone posted Kiki’s grandmother’s address and phone number, and Kiki’s stalkers went into immediate overdrive. Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time: The fast times & hard fall of three teenage friends with a knack for illegal code. 0000251099 00000 n Her mother and 11-year-old sister stepped outside, and their faces froze in horror. 0000260416 00000 n 0000519969 00000 n She dwindled down to a skeletal 72 pounds. They found him at the Aventura Mall, surrounded by a group of young girls, with cocaine stashed in his shoe and pills in his backpack. 0000244311 00000 n This article appears in the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. 0000070825 00000 n “Oh, my God,” Kiki whispered. 0000073160 00000 n 0000612632 00000 n 0000613214 00000 n Not by a long shot. And they’ll take from me. When she finally logged back on, it was with the faint hope that the tempest had died down. So Stone prodded Kiki with invitations — like a sympathetic e-mail telling her what a terrible mother she had, and that to escape her clutches she ought to come live with him. ‘Oh, my god, I just checked my e-mail and there’s that creepy pedophile!” Kiki screams, holding up her iPhone in its Hello Kitty case. But a month after Danny told Kiki they’d be together forever, he moved to North Carolina. She didn’t know that her life was about to become an extreme parable about connection and celebrity in the digital age — that the next four years would be fraught with danger, threats to her family, and a violent death. 0000260852 00000 n The Ostrengas have filed for bankruptcy — a chain of financial events they say never would have happened if they hadn’t had to hastily abandon their home. I did so much wrong,” Cathy confesses through tears. And Kiki’s public has responded in kind, expressing both its love and loathing without boundaries. For now, however, content providers like Stone are nearly untouchable. The Coral Springs house never sold and is now in foreclosure. The plan seemed OK to Kiki. As her mom backed the car out of the driveway, Kiki took one last look at their house, where her father stood before the graffiti-ridden garage, raising one hand in a cheerless goodbye. 0000067420 00000 n Meanwhile, she would launch her own company to make and sell jewelry, and learn real-life business skills. So that was encouragement to do more.” She became a Lolita-ish teenage diarist, whispering to the camera, winking, showing too much skin and lingerie — wielding her sexuality like a clumsy weapon, still innocent as to the effects of its power. 0000591617 00000 n 0000250664 00000 n But fame had come with a backlash she could never have anticipated. With spiky dark hair, an eternal five o’clock shadow and a charming smile, Stone looks like a metrosexual version of Girls Gone Wild impresario Joe Francis. 0000007280 00000 n “Like, how do you connect with people? Send Us Your Birthday. 0000072705 00000 n 0000401720 00000 n 0000519546 00000 n In that moment of confusion, Danny suddenly hurled himself over the four-foot railing. 0000073085 00000 n Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Most Recent Stories. 0000261850 00000 n She wondered if this would go down as the strangest day of her young life. What Danny didn’t say was why his father had left: He’d been deported to his native Peru after being convicted of sexual battery of a minor. 0000006129 00000 n The issue is available now in the online archive. 0000244386 00000 n “I felt used.”. They met on Kiki’s 14th birthday… The more aggressively the Ostrengas went after Stickydrama, the more personal Stone’s quest to demonize Kiki and her family became: “We really are going to destroy your reputation,” Stickydrama promised in one post. %PDF-1.5 %���� Kiki wishes she could do so much over too. Terrified, the Ostrengas held a kitchen-table meeting. He also warned her not to tell her parents, saying, “If your mom found out, we wouldn’t be together.” Kiki was awash in shame; she felt betrayed and deeply violated by what Danny had just done to her. Sabrina Rubin Erdely's Most Recent Stories. This past Christmas, one fan wrote to ask if she could crash with Kiki: “So I could breathe and reboot.” Days later, Kiki got a different request: “So if I wanted to send you a homemade bomb that will explode and kill you when you open it, where would I send it to?”. 0000259616 00000 n She became a favored target of hackers, who hijacked her Stickam page and broadcast themselves; her phone was hacked, and her voicemails were posted online. 0000613311 00000 n She knew that his 29-year-old sister, Rosa, had been convicted of armed robbery and had just emerged from prison after eight years. 0000519872 00000 n Each time Kiki logged on, she found her page spammed with messages from teens. 0000048711 00000 n At a show of the metalcore band the Devil Wears Prada, Kiki was swarmed by guys in their twenties who pleaded to take her photo — but as the camera clicked, one man punched her in the head. We want to hear from you! 0000144303 00000 n Sabrina Salerno Surname: Salerno Friday, March 15, 1968 Sabrina Salerno is the most famous person named Sabrina. 0000259258 00000 n trailer <<6069582865D14F30B15D981000AD93CF>]>> startxref 0 %%EOF 712 0 obj <>stream 0000251781 00000 n 0000560223 00000 n 0000061727 00000 n “Sometimes instead of fighting the bad guys, you end up fighting amongst yourselves,” Cathy says. 0000560586 00000 n And yet, seeing no other option, she continues marching onward, a child of the digital age, programmed to look only toward the future, still optimistic, somehow, about what she’ll find there. But her two worlds had veered into each another and were now spinning way beyond her control. In the middle of the night, Danny crawled into Kiki’s bed. 0000605064 00000 n The merciless cyberbullying that followed was so overwhelming that police placed Jessi into protective custody, making headlines because of her youth. 0000243629 00000 n 0000059571 00000 n (Kiki would accomplish this by age 15.) “I didn’t see it as real people, more like as a number.”, She soon discovered that not all of her new “friends” were all that friendly. He had at least one steady resident, the bleached-blond Amor Hilton, who vamped about for Stone’s online audience. “If you had your daughter’s best interests at heart, you would put an end to the ‘Kiki Kannibal’ fame that is obviously so unhealthy at her age.”. As it happens, Ramos delivered those remarks soon after the publication of Sabrina Erdely's 9,000-word story in Rolling Stone vividly describing the alleged gang rape of a freshman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity party. The more he groped and pressured her, the more juvenile Kiki felt for denying him. “I asked the detective, ‘Are we going to end up being killed? 0000254426 00000 n Then, incredibly, tens of thousands. “I wasn’t in a position to negotiate,” says Scott. On October 19th, 2007, police finally arrested Danny on seven felony counts of statutory rape. Written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, "One Town's War on Gay Teens" chronicles the development of the district's controversial sexual orientation curriculum policy while weaving in … They met on Kiki’s 14th birthday, in September 2006, with Kiki’s mom in tow, even though Danny had assured Cathy by phone, “I just want to be friends with your daughter.” He presented Kiki with a crystal Hello Kitty necklace.
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