Sadistic ‘sex cult’ forced teen to live stream own suicide, group leader on trial

Jay Taylor’s bed is empty as the door swings open on the second storey of the 13-year-old’s home in the picturesque maritime city of Gig Harbor, southwest of Seattle.

It’s 6am on January 17, 2022 and the teen should be sleeping.

His parents, Leslie and Colby, are accompanied by a police officer who has woken them for a welfare check.

“We came because of your son,” the officer begins.

Jay’s father interrupts him.

“He did it, didn’t he?”

Every parents’ worst nightmare is about to be confirmed in the most disturbing of circumstances.

Jay had taken his own life outside a convenience store in town 30 minutes earlier. He had done so with a phone propped up in front of him, filming his last moments for an anonymous audience online that had pushed him there.

“Someone killed themselves on camera because of me,” it read. “Let me know if you want the video.”

The group Jay had been speaking with is known as 764, named after the zipcode of the 15-year-old boy who started it a year earlier.

Jay had posted on Discord overnight a message that read: “I’m looking for friends, preferably LGBTQ for crochet buddies. He was, according to his mother, lonely and in the midst of a gender transition but crafts were his escape.

Almost immediately a response came back. He was looped into a live chat with several individuals and within an hour told he should take his own life.

The ringleader, it is alleged, was a 21-year-old German-Iranian medical student residing in Hamburg, Germany, who the FBI identified through his handle “White Tiger”.

The man, known only as Shahriar J because of privacy rules, is now on trial for murder in a case that could have sweeping consequences.

While White Tiger has his day in court — the trial began in January and has not concluded — Jay’s parents are taking on Discord, a platform where they alleged 764 has been allowed to groom and target individuals without consequences.

News.com.au has seen videos of others forced into humiliating acts on Discord by the group, including a girl in tears as she’s told “it’s chopping time” before she cuts her hair and eats it.

Carrie Goldberg, a prominent victims’ rights lawyer and the founder of the Brooklyn-based law firm C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, is representing Jay’s parents in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in February this year.

Ms Goldberg, whose law firm online brands itself as a fighter of “a**holes, pervs, trolls, and big tech”, said in an email this week to subscribers that the case is “especially disturbing”.

“Jay was a trans child who went online seeking community, and instead was introduced to 764, a sadistic child abuse sex cult that was born on and thrives on one and only platform: Discord,” she wrote.

“Discord knew about and did nothing to stop 764 members from using the platform to find new victims to coerce intohorrific acts including self-mutilation, animal mutilation/harm and live-streaming suicide.

“Jay had posted in a Discord server about crafting, seeking new gay or Trans friends, and within hours, he was pushed into livestreaming his own suicide.”

Discord is pushing for the matter to be settled out of court, Ms Goldberg says, because of the fine print Jay accepted in the platform’s Terms and Conditions when he joined, which included a forced arbitration clause.

But Ms Goldberg points out that the “agreement” comes in the form of “small writing under a box that prompts the user to create a username, that says, ‘By registering, you agree to Discord’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.’

“No box to click, no pop-up agreement to scroll through. Discord provided no actual proof of a contract between Jay and Discord, and no receipt of an agreement that Jay would have received,” she said.

“And even if Discord had shown an agreement with Jay existed, Jay was a minor at the time of signing up — by Discord’s own admission, Jay was 10 or 11 years old when he first created an account.”

She says 764 is widely known to be dangerous and to target vulnerable individuals.

“764 is a neo-Nazi child sexual exploitation cult that coerces kids into sending nude images and videos, livestreaming sex performances, and self-mutilation of genitals,” Ms Goldberg wrote.

“As Jay was obeying the suicide instructions given to him by 764 members, he was told to get naked, because it was ‘hotter’.

“In this way, 764’s conduct, which was enabled and facilitated by Discord, was not only murderous but sexually assaultive.”

Jay’s father told local media that 764 is “almost biblical in its definition of evil”.

In September, the head of the FBI, Kash Patel described 764 as “modern-day terrorism in America”.

In Germany, the individual known as White Tiger is accused of grooming children between the ages of 11 and 15 to commit acts of violence on themselves in front of the camera.

The BBC reports that he is charged with more than 200 offences against more than 30 children and teenagers that allegedly took place between 2021 and 2023.

He has been charged with murder over Jay’s suicide death as well as five other attempted murders including that of a Canadian girl who attempted to take her own life.

The defendant is accused of having made recordings of this in order to threaten the children with publication if they did not inflict even more serious self-harm on themselves in front of the camera.

Because some of the alleged offences were committed when Shahriar J was a teenager himself, the trial is taking place behind closed doors.

The BBC reports that lawyers for the 21-year-old have labelled the allegations baseless and fabricated and described the murder charge as “experimental”.

“This construct of so-called indirect perpetration is, as the word suggests, a construct that is factually incorrect and cannot be proven,” she said.

Ms Goldberg says the platform that hosted White Tiger and other members of 764 needs to do the right thing.

“Discord has made a business model of marketing to children and then letting them get abused,” she wrote online.

In court documents seen by news.com.au, lawyers for the Taylor family write: “With full knowledge, Discord made the decision to continue hosting the cult known as 764 and profiting off the pedophilic, satanic, sadistic, neo-Nazi, child exploitation international enterprise that incited violence, self-harm, animal mutilation, sexual abuse, extortion, and suicide.”

News.com.au has reached out to Discord for comment. A spokesperson said the company does not comment on legal matters.