The horrific suicide video of a 12-year-old girl has gone viral - and police say there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Katelyn Nicole Davis, of Cedartown Georgia, streamed herself on Facebook live on December 30, saying that she had been sexually abused by a family member. She continued filming as she hanged herself in the front yard of her Cedartown home.
Now the video is being shared online, however, and Polk County authorities say they are powerless to stop it proliferating, Fox 5 reported Wednesday.
Police rushed to Davis's home to save the girl on the evening of her suicide, but she was pronounced dead after being taken to Polk Medical Center’s Emergency Room.
The video - which ends with the girl hanging from the tree for around 20 minutes as the sun sets, while a woman off-camera can be heard calling her name - was then removed from her Facebook page.
In the weeks since her death, however, the Polk County Police Department has been flooded with calls from as far abroad as Britain, alerting them to websites sharing the video.
One was from a California police officer who saw the video on the night of Davis's death.
'We want it down as much as anyone for the family and it may be harmful to other kids,' said Polk County Police Chief Kenny Dodd.
'We contacted some of the sites. They asked if they had to take it down, and by law they don’t.
'But it’s just the common decent thing to do in my opinion.'
Police are investigating her death.
According to Coosa Valley News Wednesday, Davis posted on her blog on December 27 that she had been sexually abused by a relative.
A January 1 capture of a blog purporting to be Davis's, but written under the pseudonym 'Dolly' - a name she used in other social media - lists abuse from a male relative including being hit with a studded belt. She adds he 'tried to rape me.'
It goes on to allege that the man told her to hang herself after she asked him to 'stop being so perverted in front of my younger siblings.'
In a second post the same day, the writer says she is suffering from depression and discusses different methods of committing suicide.
She ends by asking her readers to advise her on how to deal with depression.
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