A 15-year-old girl killed herself after being plagued by rumors that an ex-boyfriend had posted intimate photos of her on social media and incessant bullying from classmates about her hair — and then a photo of her dead body was leaked to a popular messaging app.
Karina Saifer Oliveira, who lived in Brazil, seemed like a typical teenager. Her parents said she was smart and wanted to study law. They said they had no idea that she was thinking of suicide.
“I wouldn’t wish this on any mother,” Karina’s mother, Angela Saifer, 46, said. “We don’t know what was going to happen in our lives. If I’d known…”
The last contact Saifer had with her daughter was a WhatsApp message in the early afternoon of Nov. 7 — the same day she killed herself — asking if it would be all right to go out to work on something for school. That afternoon, she had lunch with her stepfather. Her mother said that aside from being a “little worried” that Karina hadn’t replied to her last message, she didn’t sense that anything was out of the ordinary.
“I asked where she was and she didn’t answer after that. Then I got a little worried, but I thought she’d gone out,” Saifer said.
When her mother got home from her job at a sugar factory, she found her daughter’s body on the back porch.
“Her cell phone was on her bed,” Saifer said. “I called, ‘Karina!’ She didn’t answer. I saw the back door was open. I left my backpack on the table. By the time I got to the back [where the porch is], I’d come upon the scene.”
When she was 14, Karina had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old guy. There’d been gossip that he’d spread intimate photos of her around, like a trophy. Police are looking into whether or not the photos ever actually existed.
