Conrad Roy III with his mother, Lynn St. Denis.Photo: Courtesy Lynn St Denis
As a 2017 trial made headlines with criminal charges that accused Michelle Carter of sending texts urging her 18-year-old boyfriend,Conrad Roy III, to kill himself, Conrad’s mother Lynn St. Denis did what she could to protect herself.
“I only went to court when I absolutely had to,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Can you imagine the pain that I felt, having to relive it over and over and over?”
As legal scholars debated the merits of the charge before and afterward, Lynn says she tried to think rationally. “I mean, there were people screaming, ‘She should get 20 years, she should get life, she should die,'” she says of Michelle. “I wasn’t the typical mother screaming on the news channel, ‘I want justice.’ Even if I showed up every day, or I didn’t show up at all, it wouldn’t have mattered. I just knew that it was in God’s hands, and it was in the law’s hands.”
But after the trial, Lynn resolved to change the law.
Unlike 42 other states, Massachusetts has no statute on the books to criminalize suicide coercion. Proposed legislation dubbed “Conrad’s Law” would correct that, and impose a punishment of up to five years for anyone convicted of pressuring another to take their life.
Lynn hopes it acts as a deterrent.
“With this tragedy, my son would want me to help other people, other families,” she says. “If we get the law passed—whenwe do—that’s going to be a win for me, for him. I just want my son to be proud of me.”
Lynn and her new husband, Roland St. Denis, nurtured the idea for Conrad’s Law after the controversy over prosecutors’ decision to charge Michelle with manslaughter. “There should have been a more specific law,” says Roland. “Manslaughter made it incredibly difficult, and that’s why this case got dragged out for as long as it did.”
“The more I heard [Lynn] say, ‘There needs to be a law, I want to get a law passed to prevent others from doing this again,’ for families not to go through what they went through, I just decided to take it upon myself,” he says. “But I asked permission before I did so.”
Finegold cites a second, later incident — the 2019 suicide of Boston College student Alexander Urtula, 22, “after his girlfriend psychologically abused him and reportedly urged him to kill himself as well” — as evidence that “this is something that we think will continue to repeat itself unless we send a very strong message to young people of what is acceptable and what is not,” he says. (In the Urtula case, his girlfriend, Inyoung You, also was charged with involuntary manslaughter, andpleaded guiltyin a deal that spared her prison.)
“Cyberbullying is especially dangerous,” Finegold says. “According to a 2019 study of psychologically hospitalized adolescents, one in 10 surveyed teenagers were hospitalized specifically because of cyberbullying. So this is a serious, serious mental health crisis, and we really do need to raise additional awareness around suicide prevention.”
Conrad’s father, Conrad Roy Jr., also sees merit in the proposal.
“I don’t really want to see anyone struggle,” he says. “I don’t want parents to have to go through this. If the law is out there, it might make somebody think twice about making someone take their life, knowing that it’s against the law. Maybe it might help save one life, or help one family out, and be worth it.”
First proposed in 2019, the legislation stalled during the COVID pandemic. But Lynn hopes the momentum can be regained.
For her, the push continues an effort to honor her son. She talks of maybe writing a book one day, and perhaps aligning with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as an advocate talking to high school students “to share my story and to stress that mental illness is all around us,” she says. “And to encourage helping as opposed to bullying those who are hurting the most.”
Conrad “was just a vulnerable teenager that suffered from social anxiety and depression,” says Lynn, who works as a hospice nurse. “Seeing someone die in their 90s is a little different than someone who at 18 could have been doing so much. I always say I would have taken my life over his. I mean, I lived my life, I had been married, had children, went to school, and traveled. He didn’t get to do what he should have done.”
“He was the kindest soul, selfless, just such an asset to this world,” she says. “I’m so proud that I was able to be his mom for that long. I was always proud of him.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741, or go tosuicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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To read more about how Conrad Roy III’s parents fight to keep his memory alive, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday,or subscribe here.
source: people.com
