NAPLES -- A funeral has been held for Tiziana Cantone who took her own life out of shame after private videos went viral by hanging herself with a scarf, and four people are now under investigation, authorities said Friday.

 Four people are being investigated for libel in the latest developments of the suicide case of Tiziana Cantone -- those ‘friends’ whom the 31-year old had sent the videos to in the first place in what started out almost as a jokey game, and who she subsequently sued after one then betrayed her trust and sent the video on to someone else.

 This sparked an unstoppable chain reaction that resulted in the private videos going viral online, initially without her knowing. They even ended up on porn sites and provoked a huge number of insults and scorn.

 Cantone was heavily scarred by this experience, which led her to change her surname and relocate first outside of the Province of Naples, then to Mugano with her mother. This was where the Carabinieri police found her dead body.

 The public prosecutor’s office has decided to obtain all of the proceedings of the civil case established by Tiziana, and has opened up a file for all information related to her suicide and what could have provoked it.

 She was a tall brunette with long hair and an intense gaze, with a model’s physique. She worked in her parents’ bar in the Naples Province until she was forced to move away. The weight of this extremely unfortunate series of events became unbearable for her, becoming heavily depressed and leading to this tragic end.

“My daughter did not deserve this, she has never betrayed anyone,” said the deceased’s mother at the end of the funeral service. Alongside the family crowds of people filled up the church of San Giacomo.

“Let us pray for the conversion of those who live in cruelty,” said the priest during the ceremony. At the exit of the church, the coffin was seen off with an applause and with the launch of white Chinese lanterns.

The family of the deceased call out for the “public pillory,” that has been refuelled after her death, to be stopped for once and for all. They now just ask for justice so that they can consider their loved one’s death as not having happened in vain.

 Last year in the court case opened by Tiziana, the judge obliged some social networks like Facebook to remove the video, together with its comments and likes, and to pay her a fee of 320 euros in professional compensation. However, she was then asked to pay legal fees to five of these social networking sites, with fees totalling about 20,000 euros.

  “We need more timely response procedures from all of these different platforms, but it is also necessary for growth of online respect. In this sense we need ever more urgently to invest in digital education in order to promote a culture and a sensibility that fit with the new platforms of expression of the online world,” said Antonello Soro, an representative authority on privacy when considering the tragic suicide case.

 nkd