Naomi Judd’s family ‘deeply distressed’ by publication of her suicide note
Naomi Judd’s family have condemned the publication of the singer’s suicide note.
Earlier this week, officials from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee released a series of images from the scene where The Judds star died in April 2022 aged 76.
On Thursday night, her daughter, actress Ashley Judd, published a statement on Twitter about the images on behalf of herself, her sister Wynonna, their mother’s husband Larry Strickland and other family members.
“Our family is deeply distressed by the galling, irresponsible publication of and ongoing requests for details and images of our beloved mother and wife’s death by suicide because of the trauma and damage it does to those who view such materials and the contagion risk they pose to those who are vulnerable to self-harm,” the statement reads. “This so-called ‘journalism’ is merely the crudest monetization of a family’s suffering and despair, and a flagrant, cynical disregard for public welfare. It is equally a deep violation of our right to a modicum of decency and privacy in death.”
One of the police photos featured a yellow Post-It note Naomi left behind in her room. In the suicide note, she demanded her daughter and bandmate Wynonna not be invited to her funeral.
Addressing the headlines surrounding the message, the family wrote, “The note that was left came from the complex disease of mental illness and not from her mother’s heart.”
The family concluded, “We hope the public and elected officials now see, with us, the keen importance of strengthening and changing state privacy laws so that police reports in the event of death by suicide are not, in fact, public record. The consequence of the law as it is presently serves only the craven gossip economy and has no public value or good.”
Judd’s family filed a lawsuit to stop the police images from being released publicly, but they dropped the case in December.
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