Alyssa Funke, a 19-year-old freshman student at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, committed suicide, and now her parents are saying cyberbullying was the major cause of her death. According to reports, Funke drove to her family’s boat with a shotgun and killed herself on April 14. As stated, her suicide is said to motivated by students at her former high school outing her as a porn star .
Alyssa Funke played the role of a “casting couch porn star” in an amateur video. Casting couch porn stars are usually barely eighteen or look significantly younger than they are, and during their “package,” they are interviewed by the cameraman and eventually strip and perform different sexual acts.
At the time of her suicide, Funke was a student who excelled in all subjects and was described as a “straight-A student.” Her video surfaced on the amateur porn site CastingCouch-X earlier in the year, and that’s when Funke was discovered.
Alyssa used the name Stella Ann throughout the video. In her casting couch porn session, Funke as Stella Ann spoke to the camera man about the activities she took part in at high school, being a biology major, and her ultimate goal of becoming an anesthesiologist. When she made the video, Alyssa was 18 years old.
When the video went up, Funke endured nasty messages from students at her former high school via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The messages and general name calling are so obscene that we can’t write about them.
One student thought the jeering of Alyssa Funke was humorous and took a swing by tweeting out:
“Nothing brings a school together like a porn star who graduated last year. I guess you could say news spreads fast here at Stillwater hahah.”
Funke seemed to wear a facade and had a “haters are gonna hate” attitude towards all of the attention.
In her final two tweets before she committed suicide, Alyssa wrote:
FAMOUS for dayzzzzzzz
— alyssa funke (@Funkeetown) April 15, 2014
Pornstar Status. — alyssa funke (@Funkeetown) April 14, 2014
Her last tweet garnered many responses from other Twitter users:
@SheRides_That it’s just further proof that you never know whats rlly going thru someone’s head. She was upset n played like she wasn’t.
— The Chaotic Good M.G (@TCG_MusicGroup) May 22, 2014
@Funkeetown how do you tweet this, then kill yourself? — ?riyon. ? (@SheRides_That) May 22, 2014
@Funkeetown r.i.p but suicide is no way to solve problems. Ppl will talk no matter what. Dead or alive. That’s life.
— Tori B (@_Black_Barb_) May 22, 2014
In the wake of Alyssa’s death, her parents decided to start a fundraising page in an effort to fight cyberbullying in her memory. On the page, her parents wrote:
“Alyssa like so many other teens was a victim of bully and sadly the bullying lead to her death. Social media has revolutionized the way people bully each other now days. Now you can say whatever you want and not have to look the person in the face while doing it.”
Fox 9 investigators learned that although Alyssa did struggle from depression, her parents are adamant that the bullying played a significant role in her death.