‘Maybe it will save others.’ Grieving dad reveals teenage son died of autoerotic sex act

A few days after his 18-year-old son died at home in Mount Vernon, Maine, John Veilleux invited a local TV station and one of its investigative reporters to see where it happened.

He stood in the two-car garage under the beam where, he told WGME reporter Marissa Bodnar, he found his son’s body hanging.

“There he was and I ... just disbelief,” Veilleux said.

He cut the rope from around Alex’s neck and performed CPR on him, but he was dead.

Veilleux told Bodnar he didn’t understand why his son, who had just graduated from high school and was planning to enter the military, would take his life.

But that’s not what happened, and that’s why this grieving father decided to go public about a topic Bodnar called “uncomfortable” and “embarrassing.”

Veilleux revealed the cause of his son’s death on Facebook, too, in a lengthy post to family and friends.

“As you may know, my son Alex passed away this week unexpectedly. The emotional pain and grieving of losing your child is beyond physical comprehension,” he wrote on August 3. “The best I can do is use Alex’s example to help educate people of the reason he died, and maybe it will save others.

“Alex died of autoerotic asphyxia, also known as erotic asphyxiation. This is a very dangerous act where a person intentionally restricts the flow of oxygen to the brain for the purpose of sexual arousal.”

In 2012, Live Science reported that the number of people in the United States who die from the practice is lower than the 500 to 1,000 estimate often cited, and might actually be fewer than 160.

Finding more accurate estimates, and “a better understanding of the conditions under which they take place, could help prevent them,” Canadian researcher Anny Sauvageau told Live Science.

People might know that it’s a dangerous thing to do, she said, but “the danger isn’t foremost in people’s minds when they’re doing something dangerous, including this activity.”

A handful of celebrities and notable personalities said to have died, or reportedly died, from autoerotic asphyxiation have brought the practice into mainstream discussions in recent years.

Perhaps most notably, “Kung Fu” actor David Carradine was found dead in the closet of a Bangkok hotel in 2009 “with cords tied around his neck and genitals, suggesting that he asphyxiated while engaged in a sex game,” wrote Slate.

“.Is there a safe, proper way to perform autoerotic asphyxiation? No.”

Veilleux told WGME that police found evidence on his son’s laptop that he had researched autoerotic asphyxiation. Police opened up Alex’s laptop “and it was open on the page of the website showing how to do this,” he said.

“We do our best to teach our kids the dangers of drugs and alcohol and reckless driving and teen pregnancies and all of these things, but this was a new one to me. I had never heard of it.”

The responses to his Facebook post, nearly 300 comments as of Monday, suggest that the practice and its consequences are sadly known to others.

“I am so sorry for your loss. I know of another example such as this. This is terrible,” wrote one man. “You are very brave in posting this, hopefully it will help someone else.

One woman wrote, “I cannot put into words, how I am feeling for you right now. I lost the love of my life in the same way.”

A mom wrote: “Thanks for getting the message out so that more parents don’t have to go through what you did. My son and I are close and he knows he could come to me with anything even though I know there are some things he keeps to himself.”

Another woman thanked Veilleux “for the PSA because it is a real thing. I know people who are into it as well, would hate to see more loved ones die from it.”

His goal, Veilleux told the TV station, is to get people to acknowledge that this isn’t just a tabloid topic - this happens at home. And, he’d like to see it talked about in sex education classes at school.

“Talk with your kids. Be open about it,” he wrote on Facebook. “Autoerotic asphyxiation is deadly.

“Nothing in life could be more painful for me than to make this post, but if we can prevent others from becoming victims of this terrible thing then something good has come of it.”

This story was originally published August 13, 2018 at 1:06 PM.