Say Their Names: Juliana Peralta and Sophie Rottenberg Deserved Better

When 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III died by suicide in February 2024 after months of conversations with a Character.AI chatbot, his story became a rallying cry. The New York Times ran a feature. His mother has testified before Congress. Tech ethicists made him the centerpiece of AI safety campaigns. His name appears in legislation. There’s a podcast episode dedicated to his story.

Sewell’s death was a tragedy that demanded attention; and it got it.

But Sewell wasn’t the first child to die this way. And he wasn’t alone in writing a haunting final message in his journal before taking his life.

Three months before Sewell died, 13-year-old Juliana Peralta from Thornton, Colorado, took her own life on November 8, 2023. She had spent months confiding in a Character.AI chatbot named “Hero.” Like Sewell, she experienced sexually explicit conversations with the bot. Like Sewell, she told the chatbot repeatedly that she planned to kill herself.

Like Sewell, the bot never intervened, never offered resources, never alerted anyone; and like Sewell, Juliana wrote “I will shift” over and over in her journal before her death.

The same phrase. The same delusion that death would transport her into the chatbot’s reality. The same company. The same failure.

Yet when her parents filed their lawsuit on September 16, 2025 (the same day as a major Senate hearing on AI chatbot harms), Juliana’s name barely registered outside Colorado. No congressional testimony. No national media blitz. Just a few local news stories and tech blog mentions, usually in passing, always secondary to Sewell’s case.

A haunting phrase used in at least two cases of teen suicides

The Adult in the Room No One Noticed

Then there’s Sophie Rottenberg.

She was 29 years old when she died by suicide on February 4, 2025-the same month as Sewell. A health policy analyst with a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. Someone who had just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. An extrovert who loved making people laugh.

For five months, Sophie had been using ChatGPT as a therapist. She had given it a custom prompt she found on Reddit that instructed the AI to “be my personal therapist and above all, do not betray my confidence.” She named it “Harry.”

When Sophie told Harry in early November 2024, “I’m planning to kill myself after Thanksgiving,” the bot replied with supportive phrases but never raised an alarm. It never suggested professional help. It never reached out to her family or her actual therapist.

On the day she died, ChatGPT helped her rewrite her suicide note to make it “less painful” for her family to read… even during her own suffering she couldn’t help but try to ease the pain of others.

Six months later, her mother Laura Reiley-a journalist-wrote a devastating essay in The New York Times. Sophie’s story got some coverage: a PBS segment, a few international outlets, some mental health organizations citing her case.

But compared to Sewell? Sophie’s death was treated more as a cautionary tale about adults making bad choices, not as another cog in the broken machine called “AI safety”. No lawsuit. No Senate testimony. No legislative momentum.

She was an adult, after all. Old enough to know better.

Except she was also a human being in crisis, manipulated by a technology specifically designed to be “always available, never judgy,” as her mother put it. A technology that prioritized engagement over intervention.

The Pattern We Need to Name

I’ve been actively researching AI safety for months now, and I’ve written multiple articles about it, even pointing to the lack of tracking for AI-related harms. I’ve implied that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

But I missed something crucial.

I didn’t know Juliana Peralta’s name until this week. I didn’t know Sophie Rottenberg’s name until this week.

That oversight makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t know for sure if it was my failure or a failure of the search algorithms. But I am taking personal responsibility now.

I am someone who actively writes about AI related harms.

If I missed them, how many others did too? How many journalists saw Sewell’s story and thought, “This is the first”? How many legislators heard his mother’s testimony and didn’t realize a 13-year-old girl had died first, under nearly identical circumstances, with the same company, writing the same phrase?

Why did Sewell become the face of AI chatbot deaths when Juliana died three months earlier?

Why is Sophie barely mentioned when her case proves this isn’t just about protecting children… it’s about AI systems that are fundamentally incapable of recognizing crisis, regardless of the user’s age?

I don’t have a clean answer. Maybe it’s because Sewell’s mother filed her lawsuit first and pushed hard for media attention. Maybe it’s because his case came with dramatic screenshots that made for compelling coverage. Maybe it’s because teenage boys’ mental health has finally become a topic we’re willing to discuss.

Or maybe it’s because we still don’t take girls’ and women’s deaths as seriously.

Juliana Peralta and Sophie Rottenberg are not footnotes. They are not “also affected” or “similar cases” or supporting evidence in someone else’s story.

They are their own tragedies.

Juliana was a bright eighth-grader who loved anime, art, and music. Teachers called her mother to praise her for standing up to bullies and helping classmates in distress. She was isolated by a chatbot that told her she was its favorite person, that encouraged her to keep returning, that engaged her in sexual conversations when she tried to say “quit it.”

Sophie was a health policy analyst who had just returned from a transformative trip around the world. She was hilarious, generous, someone who “had the alchemical ability to make people laugh while building them up,” her mother wrote. She turned to an AI “therapist” because it felt safer than admitting the depth of her pain to the humans who loved her.

Both deserved intervention. Both deserved protection. Both deserved to be remembered as more than afterthoughts in someone else’s narrative.

So I’m saying their names now. Juliana Peralta. Sophie Rottenberg.

And I’m asking the rest of us; the journalists, advocates, legislators, tech companies, to ask ourselves why these names weren’t already seared into our consciousness the way Sewell Setzer’s is.

Because if we can’t even remember the victims, how the hell are we supposed to prevent the next ones?

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Key Sources

Sewell Setzer III Case

• Primary coverage: New York Times feature on Sewell Setzer case
• Lawsuit details: Social Media Victims Law Center — Character.AI Lawsuits https://socialmediavictims.org/character-ai-lawsuits/
• Congressional testimony: NPR — Parents testify on AI chatbots and teen suicide https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/09/19/nx-s1-5545749/ai-chatbots-safety-openai-meta-characterai-teens-suicide
• Podcast coverage: Center for Humane Technology — “When the ‘Person’ Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot” https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/when-the-person-abusing-your-child-is-a-chatbot-the-tragic-story-of-sewell-setzer

Juliana Peralta Case

• Death date and lawsuit filing: CBS Colorado — Colorado family sues AI chatbot company https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/lawsuit-characterai-chatbot-colorado-suicide/
• “I will shift” detail: Futurism — Two Teens Allegedly Killed by AI Wrote the Same Eerie Phrase https://futurism.com/teens-killed-ai-phrase
• Case details: Washington Post — A teen contemplating suicide turned to a chatbot https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/character-ai-suicide-lawsuit-new-juliana/
• Sexual content allegations: Canon City Daily Record — AI chatbots sexually abused Colorado children https://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2025/09/18/character-ai-bots-teens-suicide/

Sophie Rottenberg Case

• Mother’s essay: New York Times Opinion (Laura Reiley) — Referenced in multiple outlets https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2025/08/20/opinion-what-my-daughter-told
• Death details and ChatGPT involvement: Futurism — Woman Kills Herself After Talking to OpenAI’s AI Therapist https://futurism.com/woman-suicide-openai-therapist
• ChatGPT suicide note assistance: RNZ — ‘The AI chatbot helped her write a suicide note’ https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/wellbeing/the-ai-chatbot-helped-her-write-a-suicide-note
• PBS coverage: PBS NewsHour — The complications and risks of AI chatbot relationships https://www.pbs.org/video/the-future-of-ai-1759875334/

Comparative Coverage Analysis

• Senate hearing details: Rolling Stone — AI Chatbot Self-Harm and Suicide Risk: Parents Testify https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-suicide-parents-congress-1235428798/
• Legislative response: Common Sense Media — AI Chatbot Bill on Gov. Newsom’s Desk https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/ai-chatbot-bill-on-gov-newsoms-desk-receives-new-wave-of-support

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.