Longtime Practice Cast Into Spotlight By Md. Teen's Death
By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006
The "choking game" has been around for years, resurfacing every generation or so, traveling by word of mouth among kids looking for a thrill. Now, the death of a Frederick County teenager has added to fears that the practice, sped along by the Internet, has become more common and deadly.
William C. Bowen Jr., a computer-savvy high school student who was involved in his church and working toward his Eagle Scout badge, died of accidental asphyxiation March 14 after wrapping a terry-cloth sash around his neck, law enforcement officials confirmed last week.
Bowen, 15, appeared to have been engaged in a variant of the choking game, authorities said. That variant, known as autoerotic asphyxiation, involves masturbation while cutting off the air supply to the brain. He had devised a safety release for the ligature around his neck, but it failed to work, said Cpl. Jennifer Bailey, spokeswoman for the Frederick County Sheriff's Office.
Bowen was a sophomore at Urbana High School in Frederick County, and his death has reverberated through the community.
The school sent a flier to parents listing telltale signs of the choking game, noting that even untroubled students have engaged in it, with some thinking of it as a safer way than drugs or alcohol to experiment with a mind-altering sensation. His parents, Carol and William C. Bowen, have appointed their minister to speak for them and urged other parents to be vigilant.
"The important thing this family is stressing is that they do not want to see another family go through this," said the Rev. Matt Poole of FaithPoint United Methodist Church.
There is scant research on the practice, but medical and forensic experts estimate that 250 to 1,000 young people die in the United States each year from some variant of the choking game. Many are reported as suicides. One university researcher has estimated that nearly a third of adolescent hangings could be attributed to some form of the practice.
"What's different with the game is kids are playing it alone, and it's being played with ligatures," said Julie Rosenbluth, a project director at the American Council for Drug Education in New York. "But just like drugs, they're finding out about it from other kids and from the Internet."
Also known as blackout, gasper, space monkey and suffocation roulette, the practice is most prevalent among adolescent and young adult males. References to the behavior -- and its supposed power for heightening sexual experience -- go back to the 1600s. The object is to cut off the blood supply to the brain, creating a lightheaded, giddy feeling.
Usually, the game is done in groups at parties, sports events or even in gym classes. In its most common form, young people bend over or squat down while hyperventilating, stand up and then hold their breath as someone else pushes on their chests until they lose consciousness.
Less frequently, a ligature of some sort -- a belt, necktie or rope -- is used to cut off the air supply. Rarer still, some people experiment with ligatures while they are alone, sometimes combining it with masturbation.
"It is very difficult to get at the extent of the problem because people are very reluctant, both from the medical end and the family end, to acknowledge that this practice is taking place," said R. Carl Westerfield, former dean of education at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex. "It's in the closet."
Since March 2005, a 9-year-old girl in North Dakota, a 13-year-old boy in Paradise, Calif., and a 13-year-old boy in Appleton, Wis., have died while playing the choking game. On Feb. 7, an 11-year-old boy in White House, Tenn., died after playing the game in his bedroom with a Cub Scout kerchief, and a 13-year-old boy is believed to have died of the game last month in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. On Friday, a spokeswoman for West Virginia University said a student playing the choking game apparently had hanged himself by accident in his dorm room.
After a 14-year-old boy died Feb. 24 in Whitefield, N.H., the state's chief medical examiner, Thomas A. Andrew, issued a public health alert. Web sites such as http://www.deadlygameschildrenplay.com and http://www.stop-the-choking-game.com have sprung up with memorials to the victims and advice for parents.
Some who lost their children, such as the mother of Kyle McCarthy, 13, have also spoken out.
"Kyle was just a wonderful, wonderful little boy. He was kind of like Beaver Cleaver," said Susan McCarthy, 45, a medical office employee.
McCarthy, of Appleton, was returning home from picking apples with her mother and two of her children Oct. 9 when she saw flashing red lights on her street. Then, she said, she realized it was her house. That afternoon, after going deer hunting with his father, Kyle McCarthy had accidentally hanged himself in their basement. Later, the family found belts, Hawaiian leis and ropes with sophisticated knots in them that he had been experimenting with since an older boy had shown him how that summer, McCarthy said.
"Last night, we were looking through photo albums and films just to see him alive again," McCarthy said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I still believe, somehow inside, it's a dream, and it didn't really happen. But of course, it's not a dream."
Westerfield, who co-authored a survey of the research into autoerotic asphyxiation, said experimenting with suffocation falls on a continuum of risky behaviors from simply passing out to using ligatures while masturbating. But there is scant research about the practice, particularly where it intersects with sexuality, he said.
Andrew P. Jenkins, a professor at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., estimates that the phenomenon might account for as many as 31 percent of all adolescent hangings. Given its shocking nature, however, the deaths are probably underreported as suicides, and families, police and emergency medical workers have been known -- purposely or inadvertently -- to sanitize the scene, Jenkins says.
Bill Bowen, the Frederick County teenager, was born in Wheaton and was known as a bright young man who belonged to several clubs at school and loved to ride an all-terrain vehicle, his minister and friends said.
"When I first met him, he was telling me about a rocket he was building," said 10th-grader Sean Cummings, 16, of Monrovia.
Jack Fagan, 15, a ninth-grader, said he used to pal around with Bowen in sixth grade. "He had this club on his own, and it was basically about 'Star Trek.' They had these little badges, and how many badges you had told you how high up you were in the group," he said, adding that he had lost touch with Bowen but still saw him from time to time. "He didn't seem like the kind of kid to do this."
But several students at Urbana High said playing the choking game, especially in its less extreme form without ligatures, has been common.
Melissa Pritchard, 17, a senior at Urbana, said she attended a party last year at which girls and boys filmed one another passing out.
"It was just because it was funny," said Pritchard, of Monrovia. "Now that I look back, it's not funny."
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