fake online friend leads to teens suicide

[slynn14]

This is down right cruel, I can't believe parents would go to this extreme.
I guess you can blame the girls parents as well, don't you check what your kids are doing online?


any thoughts?


http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/int....ap/index.html

[Tangerine]

the link isnt working for me. it says page not found.

[KTScarlettOkity]

Here are a few links to the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/int....ap/index.html

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009199374

[Robyn]

This story is unreal. It is hard to believe that an adult mother would be so cruel by making a fake profile in order to hurt another teen enough for her to commit suicide. It seems like there will soon be a new law against that type stupid behavior. I can see it already.

[AlsoKnownAs]

An Adult involved, I would be looking at Lawyers and a lawsuit. 'She' should have known with the 'girls' problems what could be the outcome. 3 ganging up on one. AKA

[One2Snoop]

A very sad story. For Megan.



It's very difficult to keep tabs on what my kids are doing online. We used to have monitoring software but it became so tedious to keep up. I've found as mine have gotten older the rumor's fly fast and there's usually a parent on top of it fairly quickly.
Unreal that adults were involved in this. Shame on them.

[Liam1306]

Missouri Revised Statutes

Chapter 568
Offenses Against the Family
Section 568.060

Abuse of a child, penalty.
568.060. 1. A person commits the crime of abuse of a child if such person:

(1) Knowingly inflicts cruel and inhuman punishment upon a child less than seventeen years old; or

(2) Photographs or films a child less than eighteen years old engaging in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an act or who causes or knowingly permits a child to engage in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an act for the purpose of photographing or filming the act.

2. As used in this section "prohibited sexual act" means any of the following, whether performed or engaged in either with any other person or alone: sexual or anal intercourse, masturbation, bestiality, sadism, masochism, fetishism, fellatio, cunnilingus, any other sexual activity or nudity, if such nudity is to be depicted for the purpose of sexual stimulation or gratification of any individual who may view such depiction.

3. Abuse of a child is a class C felony, unless:

(1) In the course thereof the person inflicts serious emotional injury on the child, or the offense is committed as part of a ritual or ceremony in which case the crime is a class B felony; or

(2) A child dies as a result of injuries sustained from conduct chargeable pursuant to the provisions of this section, in which case the crime is a class A felony.

4. As used in this section, the word "fetishism" means a condition in which erotic feelings are excited by an object or body part whose presence is psychologically necessary for sexual stimulation or gratification.

"The headnotes, footnotes, annotations and index of the Missouri Revised Statutes, are used by permission of the Joint Committee on Legislative Research, the copyright holder

I mean I am no attorney, but it looks like a violation to me?

[slynn14]

I am not sure what kind of charges can be brought on the mother that started the hoax, I am sure there will be legal action taken, just wonder how far it will go.

[Shelley420]

Originally Posted by slynn14

I am not sure what kind of charges can be brought on the mother that started the hoax, I am sure there will be legal action taken, just wonder how far it will go.

I agree. These people definitely have responsibility in this. How sad that a girl would kill herself over a cyber friend (real or not). My oldest child is only 11, but if the kids are online they are in the loungeroom so I can see what they are doing. I would never let my kids lock themselves away in their rooms with a computer, or TV for that matter. I want them out here interacting with the rest of the family (where I can stickybeak at what they are really up to).

[gacountry]

This is so sad but not the first case like this we have read about. A person especially a young person has to be so careful what and who they believe. I am so afraid our easy communication with on line friends has caused many a broken heart and maybe even deaths. And it lets some adults, sad to say, pretend to be young and harm children. I love my internet but watch my Granddaughter like a hawk when she is online.
Love your kids, keep an eye on them and love them some more.

[samanthajane13]

There has to be some way of going after this psychotic family. Malicious something...some sort of harrassment...emotional abuse...whatever.

And they have no remorse...

My heart goes out to Megan and her family.

RIP-little one...

[KTScarlettOkity]

I would venture to guess that if criminal charges wouldn't stick, perhaps a civil wrongful death suit should be filed by the victims parents.

[Liam1306]

Nothing anyone may ever wish upon these legally culpable and interfering parents, will ever compare with with the embarassment that their own daughter must, and will feel for the rest of her life.

Sincere hopes that their own daughter has been/is being counseled by the appropriate state agencies - even if she can rationalize, or justify her own parents' actions.

[LatrobeGirl]

Just one more reason I no longer have internet access at home....only at my office. My kids don't need it....my oldest daughter got "addicted" a few years ago when she was 15 (now she's 20)...her grades plummeted and she was sneaking around, getting online after we went to bed....I caught her twice online at 3 am....we told her if she got online anymore when we weren't awake or at home to monitor her, the internet was done. She did it again just a few days later....so I took the modem out of the computer. She acted like I had taken her OXYGEN. She was awful, a real nightmare to live with, for about 5 weeks....and then calmed down and told me later that it probably saved her life that we shut it down. She admitted that she had been completely addicted to it.

My ten-year old begs me to get the internet at home....but I think not. TV and her DS games take up enough of her time....I see no reason for her to get online. I let her come to my office and play on it about once a week. That's enough.

Middle school is tough enough on kids....and now they are bullying each other via internet. Some mothers have always gotten too involved with the crud that their daughters get into with other girls....it's like these mothers have never grown up!

This story is an extreme.....I feel badly for Meghan's parents. I bet they wish they had cut off the internet access.

[LatrobeGirl]

I don't know how to post links, so I just copied and pasted this story from wired.com here:
Cyberbullying Suicide Stokes the Internet Fury Machine
By Kim Zetter 11.21.07 | 3:30 PM
Sarah Wells makes an unlikely cyber-vigilante. But the middle-aged mother in Virginia was outraged when she read a Saint Charles Journal article on Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl driven to suicide by relentless online bullying. The fact that the bullying appeared to be instigated by the mother of one of Megan's friends through a fake MySpace account enraged Wells all the more.
When Wells learned that the woman had filed a police report against the dead girl's father -- who had destroyed the woman's foosball table in anger and grief -- she resolved to take matters into her own hands. The newspaper account didn't identify the perpetrator of the deadly hoax by name, but included enough detail to track her down through online property-tax records. With a few minutes of sleuthing, Wells identified the woman as Lori Drew, of O'Fallon, Missouri. After confirming it with someone in the O'Fallon area who she says was "in a position to know," she posted the name to her blog.
"It was outrageous enough what she had done, but dragging (Megan's father) into the courts, calling the police and bringing the charges against the family whose daughter had suffered a great deal because of her ... for her to do that, it was like, OK, it's coming back to you," Wells says.
Experts say the firestorm that followed illustrates what happens when the social imperative to punish those in a community who violate social norms plays out over the internet. The impulse is human nature, say experts, and few can imagine an offense more egregious than a trusted adult preying on the emotions of a vulnerable child. Shunning wrongdoers, especially in the absence of legal redress, helps maintain order and preserve a community's moral sense of right -- think church excommunications and the Amish tradition of Meidung.
But the drive for social shaming -- to right a wrong and restore social balance -- can run amok and create paradoxical consequences, especially on the internet where people instigate mobs in ways they wouldn't do offline.
"Internet shaming is done by people who want actually to enforce norms and to make people and society more orderly," says Daniel Solove, professor of law at George Washington University and author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet. "The problem is that internet shaming actually destroys social control and makes things more anarchic, and it becomes very hard to regulate and stop it."
Wells published only Lori Drew's name, but her readers and other bloggers followed by finding and posting her husband's name, the family's address and phone number, a cellphone number, the name of the family's advertising company, and the names and phone numbers of clients with whom they worked.
As Megan's story raced across the internet and was picked up by national media, more people joined in the cause, including Wired News readers.
Many were outraged that Drew, a middle-aged woman with a teen daughter of her own, fabricated the MySpace identity of a 16-year-old named "Josh Evans" to woo the emotionally fragile Megan, in order to learn what the girl was saying about her own daughter. Once Megan was lured in, "Josh" turned on her, heaping verbal abuse until the teen went over the edge.
In retaliation, readers called Drew's advertising clients to urge them to withdraw their business from her. But it wasn't long before there were death threats, a brick through a window and calls to set the Drews' house on fire. Police have reportedly increased patrols to guard the family against attack. A peaceful protest is scheduled to occur on the family's street this weekend.
Solove isn't surprised. He points to a story two years ago about a man whose camera phone was stolen from his unlocked car. The apparent thief took pictures of himself and friends, which automatically uploaded to the camera owner's Sprint web account.
The owner discovered the thief's name and posted it online with the photos. Netizens superimposed the thief's picture onto pornographic images and posted racist remarks about him. After a Wired News story revealed that the alleged thief was 16 and that his mother claimed she'd bought the camera from a street seller, Solove says the owner regretted the fury he'd unleashed and asked the online mob to back off. Instead, the mob turned on him.
Wells says she doesn't condone calls for violence and has removed any that appeared on her blog. There are many who agree that the punishment fits the crime in this case. But online vigilantes have been known to react just as strongly to lesser grievances.
Two years ago a college girl in South Korea was harassed after her tiny dog defecated on the floor of a subway car, and she ignored passengers' requests to clean it up. Someone on the train snapped her photo and posted it online. She was quickly dubbed Dog Poop Girl, and within days a cyberposse had discovered her name and was digging up information about her and her family. The public humiliation reportedly led her to withdraw from her university, and the pictures of her and the feces are still online today.
Wells acknowledges that such a case can make it seem as if the internet is "a perpetual outrage machine," where people are simply looking for the next injustice to get worked up about. But she feels the reaction to Dog Poop Girl was unique to Korean culture and wouldn't have caused the same stir here, although Americans were as amused by the story as others around the world. Still, she thinks the circumstances of Megan's story dictated the depth of the reaction here.
The fact that it involved an adult targeting a child, and that Megan's father -- and not Lori Drew -- was facing criminal charges, made it a clear-cut cause for cybermob outrage.
Kurzban agrees and disagrees. He says it's not really the details of a particular social violation that determine the strength of a community's reaction to it, but the degree to which a community agrees in its perception of the violation.
In other words, if many people reading the same facts didn't believe that Lori Drew violated a social norm, then the response against her would have been more muted. Indeed, a minority of people on the blogs said that Megan should have ignored the insulting messages, and that her parents should have monitored her online activity better. But they were swiftly shouted down by the mob.
In this way, the stories of Poop Girl and Megan are wildly different on the surface, yet essentially the same, Kurzban says, since both involved actions that the majority of people in their respective communities reacted to in the same way.
For her part, Wells thinks Drew deserves to be a pariah.
"I think this should follow her wherever she goes," Wells says. "There should be pressure on her to be sorry and to do something to make it better."
Wells herself felt the capricious hand of internet justice on Tuesday, when another blogger condemned her as a "vigilante" and posted her address and phone number online.

[LatrobeGirl]

I found the above article fascinating....

I hate what the Drews did to Megan, but I don't agree with Wells' decision to post Lori Drew's name online. I don't think advocating a witch hunt is a good decision. For instance, if someone decided to murder Lori with the info they got online, would Sarah Wells be held responsible for that?

Two wrongs don't ever make a right. Sarah did to Lori what Lori did to Megan- she bullied her online. I agree that Lori Drew is a reprehensible, morally bankrupt person to have emotionally tortured a young girl into suicide....and even worse, to file a police report against Megan's father after he broke her foosball table out of grief. After all....he lost a CHILD. So what about her stupid table?

But I still don't think that turning a witch hunt on to Lori Drew was a good idea either.

[KTScarlettOkity]

Originally Posted by LatrobeGirl

I found the above article fascinating....

I hate what the Drews did to Megan, but I don't agree with Wells' decision to post Lori Drew's name online. I don't think advocating a witch hunt is a good decision. For instance, if someone decided to murder Lori with the info they got online, would Sarah Wells be held responsible for that?

Two wrongs don't ever make a right. Sarah did to Lori what Lori did to Megan- she bullied her online. I agree that Lori Drew is a reprehensible, morally bankrupt person to have emotionally tortured a young girl into suicide....and even worse, to file a police report against Megan's father after he broke her foosball table out of grief. After all....he lost a CHILD. So what about her stupid table?

But I still don't think that turning a witch hunt on to Lori Drew was a good idea either.

I am torn on this matter. On one hand I absolutely do not believe in vigilante justice. But on the other, if people are not outraged and the perpetrator of the initial offense is not socially outcast they are then essentially socially accepted. Thus the action could be deemed by others as acceptable.

In a real life bullying incident, should not the crowd of witnesses tell the bully that what they've done is unacceptable? Wouldn't this teach others who may be on the brink of "bullyhood" that if they take that path they will become outcasts?

The fact that Lori filed charges against the father tells me that she is unapologetic for her actions in relation to the bullying incident that resulted in a death. And I think perhaps it is up to society to let her know that her actions are indeed unacceptable. To the point of death threats? No, of course not. But snubbing in public, taking business elsewhere, etc....I absolutely do agree with.

[LatrobeGirl]

copied and pasted from abcnews.com:

Parents Want Jail Time for MySpace Hoax Mom
Neighbor Recounts Conversation With Lori Drew About Her Fake Online Identity


The family of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old girl who took her own life after being bullied on MySpace, is demanding justice and jail time for the adult involved in the bullying.

Lori Drew, the Meiers' 48-year-old neighbor in suburban St. Louis, admitted in a police report that she created a fictitious MySpace account and pretended to be a boy with a romantic interest in Megan. According to the police report, Drew created the profile to find out what Megan was saying online about her teenage daughter.

Megan hanged herself in her closet in October 2006. When police eventually decided that Drew had committed no crime, Megan's parents, who had remained silent about the case until that point, spoke out.

"You cannot as an adult sit there and do that and hide behind a computer. It is a criminal act. We want to see her go to jail," said Tina Meier, Megan's mother.

In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," the neighbor who first tipped off police about Drew's involvement says that Drew confessed to her that she had played a hoax on Megan.

"She did sit here in my living room and confess everything to me. She told me that they had pulled an image of a boy off the Internet and that they had created an account using the name of Josh Evans, and she said she knew the last message that left her house that Monday when Megan attempted her life was that, 'The world would be a better place without you,'" said the neighbor, who asked that her identity not be revealed.

Now others are calling for justice in the case. Prosecutors say they are reviewing the case to determine whether anyone will be charged with a crime.

Last week the board of aldermen in the Meiers' hometown, Dardenne Prairie, Mo., passed a law making Internet bullying a misdemeanor in the town.

"It's time that we do something against this. On all levels, the state and federal level," Dardenne Prairie Mayor Pam Fogarty said.


The Back Story

Megan sometimes suffered from low self-esteem and was on medication at the time of her death.

"That is what makes it even more disgusting, that she knew the circumstances around our daughter and still played on it," said Megan's father, Ron Meier.

But Megan's family said she looked forward to her 14th birthday and having her braces removed.


When a cute boy befriended Megan on the social networking site MySpace, the two formed a quick connection during their more-than-monthlong relationship.


"She got this e-mail from this boy named 'Josh Evans,'" Tina Meier said.


Josh claimed to be a 16-year-old boy who lived nearby and was home-schooled. But what began as a promising online friendship soon turned sour, as compliments turned to insults.

[LatrobeGirl]

Josh said he didn't have a phone and so Megan couldn't talk to him. But the two continued their communication online, despite some red flags Tina Meier said she saw.

"It was just that nervous mom," she said. She called police to find out whether they could determine whether a MySpace account was real. They couldn't.

Still, all seemed to go well between Megan and Josh until an unsettling message started a tragic chain of events.

"Megan gets an e-mail, or a message from Josh on her MySpace on Oct. 15, 2006, saying, 'I don't know if I want to be friends with you any longer because I hear you're not nice to your friends,'" Tina Meier said.

The person using Josh's account was sending cruel messages and Megan called her mother, saying electronic bulletins were being posted about her, saying things like, "Megan Meier is a ****. Megan Meier is fat," according to The Associated Press.

The cyberexchange devastated Megan, who was unable to understand how and why her friendship had unraveled. The stress and frustration was too much for Megan, who had a history of depression.

Tina Meier discovered her daughter's body in a bedroom closet Oct. 16, 2006. Megan had hanged herself and she died a day later.

But six weeks after Megan's death, the Meiers learned that Josh never existed. A mother, who had learned of the page from her own daughter, told the Meiers that Drew had created and monitored Josh's profile and page.

There was a connection between the Meiers and Drew's family. In fact, Drew had asked the Meiers whether her family could store their foosball table.

Once they learned Drew's involvement, the Meiers destroyed the table, placed it in Drew's yard and encouraged the family to move, according to the AP.

"That's the biggest tragedy of this whole thing: An adult did it," Ron Meier said.

[LatrobeGirl]

I don't have much to say about all this except that it was a tragedy in every way possible.

If only....Lori Drew hadn't been such a psycho....
If only.....she hadn't written that fatal line "The world would be a better place without you"
If only....mom had followed her guts instincts....
If only..........

Lori Drew needs to be evaluated. Seriously.

[Crystal_Ann]

The fact that Lori filed charges against the father tells me that she is unapologetic for her actions in relation to the bullying incident that resulted in a death. And I think perhaps it is up to society to let her know that her actions are indeed unacceptable. To the point of death threats? No, of course not. But snubbing in public, taking business elsewhere, etc....I absolutely do agree with.

She is defintely unapologetic for what she did. She proved that when she told the cops that when she found out at the funeral that Megan tried to kill herself in the past that she didn't feel as guilty then had the nerve to tell Megan's mother to give it a rest when she tried to talk to her about what happened. I feel bad for her family especially her kids. I have no problem with Lori being the target of vigilante justice (as long as she's not murdered or injured) but it must be tramatizing for her family having people drive by their house at night screaming murderer and having several cops storm into their house in the middle of the night because someone prank called them saying that a man was murdered in there.

It's kind of ironic that the same medium Lori used to destroy a 13 year old child, ended up destroying her life and making it a living hell.

[samanthajane13]

Lawyer: 2nd teenager may be linked to MySpace hoax
By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent Wed Oct 15, 4:40 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - The teenager who committed suicide after an Internet hoax was not the only girl exchanging messages with a fake MySpace address allegedly operated by a woman now charged in the girl's death, the woman's lawyer said.

Attorney Dean Steward filed a request in federal court for the phone records of a second teenage girl identified by the initials "S.D."

His client, Lori Drew, of O'Fallon, Mo., is accused of helping to create a false-identity account on the social networking site, posing as a teenage boy and befriending her 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier.

Prosecutors say Megan hanged herself in 2006 after receiving messages from Drew on the fake account saying the world would be better off without her. Megan was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression.

In his motion, Steward seeks the phone records to prove that prosecutors mistakenly linked Megan to a message that S.D. actually sent to the fake account.

Prosecutors have said the message — listed in the Drew indictment as "Overt Act 9" — was sent by Megan because she was induced by Drew to flirt with the fictitious boy.

Steward criticized the government for poor research and said S.D.'s e-mail address was on the message.

"Doesn't that throw doubt on the rest of the overt acts?" he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "There are 10 overt acts and maybe they are all flat wrong."

Steward quoted the message as saying: "Heyy babe!!! Call me sometime (phone number) It's the cell. I love you so much."

The lawyer said S.D. was "a juvenile that was part of a group of teenagers who were texting and e-mailing each other. There were a couple of boys involved."

He said in his court filing that he had contacted S.D.'s relatives, who confirmed her cell phone number.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office, declined comment.

In May, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Drew on charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress. She pleaded not guilty.

The case, which is being prosecuted in Los Angeles because MySpace's servers are based in the area, is scheduled for trial Nov. 18. A motion to dismiss charges is pending.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081015/...T9prY5a59H2ocA

[SaraSidle]

Originally Posted by samanthajane13

Lawyer: 2nd teenager may be linked to MySpace hoax
By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent Wed Oct 15, 4:40 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - The teenager who committed suicide after an Internet hoax was not the only girl exchanging messages with a fake MySpace address allegedly operated by a woman now charged in the girl's death, the woman's lawyer said.

Attorney Dean Steward filed a request in federal court for the phone records of a second teenage girl identified by the initials "S.D."

His client, Lori Drew, of O'Fallon, Mo., is accused of helping to create a false-identity account on the social networking site, posing as a teenage boy and befriending her 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier.

Prosecutors say Megan hanged herself in 2006 after receiving messages from Drew on the fake account saying the world would be better off without her. Megan was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression.

In his motion, Steward seeks the phone records to prove that prosecutors mistakenly linked Megan to a message that S.D. actually sent to the fake account.

Prosecutors have said the message — listed in the Drew indictment as "Overt Act 9" — was sent by Megan because she was induced by Drew to flirt with the fictitious boy.

Steward criticized the government for poor research and said S.D.'s e-mail address was on the message.

"Doesn't that throw doubt on the rest of the overt acts?" he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "There are 10 overt acts and maybe they are all flat wrong."

Steward quoted the message as saying: "Heyy babe!!! Call me sometime (phone number) It's the cell. I love you so much."

The lawyer said S.D. was "a juvenile that was part of a group of teenagers who were texting and e-mailing each other. There were a couple of boys involved."

He said in his court filing that he had contacted S.D.'s relatives, who confirmed her cell phone number.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. attorney's office, declined comment.

In May, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Drew on charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress. She pleaded not guilty.

The case, which is being prosecuted in Los Angeles because MySpace's servers are based in the area, is scheduled for trial Nov. 18. A motion to dismiss charges is pending.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081015/...T9prY5a59H2ocA

I really hope they throw the book at her Samantha. I cannot believe someone could do that to any vulnerable teenager whether she had problems or not. Talk about bullying- maybe the kids learn it from the adults. IMO sara

[samanthajane13]

"I really hope they throw the book at her Samantha. I cannot believe someone could do that to any vulnerable teenager whether she had problems or not. Talk about bullying- maybe the kids learn it from the adults. IMO sara"

Me, too, Sara!