An American university student who was the victim of several vicious bullying attacks is receiving help from an unlikely source — a notorious community of internet cyber bullies.
At least 20 videos were posted on YouTube showing the student being tormented by a group of his fellow students.
The clips were recorded in the 2008-09 academic year while the student was attending Stockton College in New Jersey.
In the more than 30 minutes of footage the bullies are seen screaming at him, repeatedly shining a flashlight in his face and trashing his dorm room.
They continue to harass the student despite him threatening to call the police several times.
The videos were posted today on the website 4chan, an underground image-based forum frequented by hackers and infamous for launching online smear campaigns against vulnerable targets.
Just last month 4chan users were responsible for attacks on 11-year-old girl Jessi Slaughter, which ended with her being placed under police protection.
But today the internet community rallied for the university bullying victim, starting a campaign to save him from further harassment.
Users could be seen posting names and personal contact information that they believed would lead them to the bullies.
One user suggested sending death threats to the bullies until they are forced to "make a long winded apology on camera and pay him for his troubles".
Another user posted an email template requesting help for the student and urged all users to send it to the college's dean.
A separate effort aimed to make the term "stockton college bullies must die" a top-ranking search term on Google.
At the time of writing it was not clear whether any of their efforts had been successful, but the videos had been removed from YouTube and the original uploader's account suspended.
Other online forums, including the community news site Reddit, also started discussions on how to stop the bullying.
"I am a senior (computer science major) at Stockton College," a Reddit user wrote.
"I will report this to the administration using my student email account and let you know what they say."
UPDATE 18/08/10: The college has now released the following statement.
"The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey is committed to an educational environment free of any forms of harassment or discrimination. The College is aware of the recent Internet posting of videos from 2008-09 academic year. The former student in these videos, at that time, informed the College which took appropriate and immediate action in accordance with its policies. These actions included delivering cease-and-desist orders. No further complaints were received. We are investigating both the original videos and the reposting of these videos for the possibility of further disciplinary and/or legal action."
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