Student Who Suspected Hidden Camera Forcibly Committed by School — But She Was Right

Chinemerem Eze, an international student attending Brooklyn College, has filed a lawsuit against the school claiming that in December 2008 she was wrongfully diagnosed with psychiatric problems and forcibly committed to a hospital by staff her school. Finally released after two weeks, Eze was then told by the University that she could not take her exams for that semester. She lost her scholarships and was consequently forced to leave the school.

The real kicker of the story is that Eze was committed after she told the College she was concerned that someone was covertly videotaping her — which now seems to be true. From the Courthouse News Service posting:

[Eze] suspected that she was being defamed on the Internet by her ex-roommates, and that her landlord at the time had installed a hidden camera in her bedroom […] later confirmed, as a hidden camera was subsequently discovered in her bedroom.”

So in addition to wrongful imprisonment, losing scholarships, and having to leave school, it now seems that her s0-called paranoid suspicions were horribly justified.

Forbes is reporting that Brooklyn University has no comment on the case, leaving Eze’s side of the story as the only publicly available one, doing little to diminish the severity of the allegations. What makes these claims particularly chilling is that Eze was imprisoned and neglected by the people she went to for help over fears that may have seemed farfetched in 2008, but are all too real after stories like that of Tyler Clementi. Both are sobering reminders of the dangers faced in our tech-savy society.

(Courthouse News Service via Forbes)