That's it! My kids are not getting internet access!

[Dreamer128]

Well, if I had kids, that is. This story only hit local media this morning, but I was shocked by what I read. What kind of soulless, malignant creature would do this to a depressed 13-year old girl? Obviously, the woman didn't mean for this happen, but her level of emotional maturity is shockingly low.


Mom: Web Hoax Led Girl to Kill Herself
By BETSY TAYLOR – Nov 16, 2007

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Mo. (AP) — Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her. Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.

The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan's.

Now Megan's parents hope the people who made the fraudulent profile on the social networking Web site will be prosecuted, and they are seeking legal changes to safeguard children on the Internet.

The girl's mother, Tina Meier, said she doesn't think anyone involved intended for her daughter to kill herself.

"But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile," she told the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, which first reported on the case.

Tina Meier said law enforcement officials told her the case did not fit into any law. But sheriff's officials have not closed the case and pledged to consider new evidence if it emerges.

Megan Meier hanged herself in her bedroom on Oct. 16, 2006, and died the next day. She was described as a "bubbly, goofy" girl who loved hanging out with her friends, watching movies and fishing with her dad.

Megan had been on medication, but had been upbeat before her death, her mother said, after striking up a relationship on MySpace with Josh Evans about six weeks before her death.

Josh told her he was born in Florida and had recently moved to the nearby community of O'Fallon. He said he was homeschooled, and didn't yet have a phone number in the area to give her.

Megan's parents said she received a message from him on Oct. 15 of last year, essentially saying he didn't want to be her friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn't nice to her friends.

The next day, as Megan's mother headed out the door to take another daughter to the orthodontist, she knew Megan was upset about Internet messages. She asked Megan to log off. Users on MySpace must be at least 14, though Megan was not when she opened her account. A MySpace spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Someone using Josh's account was sending cruel messages. Then, Megan called her mother, saying electronic bulletins were being posted about her, saying things like, "Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat."

Megan's mother, who monitored her daughter's online communications, returned home and said she was shocked at the vulgar language her own daughter was sending. She told her daughter how upset she was about it.

Megan ran upstairs, and her father, Ron, tried to tell her everything would be fine. About 20 minutes later, she was found in her bedroom. She died the next day.

Her father said he found a message the next day from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

Another parent, who learned of the MySpace account from her own daughter who had access to the Josh profile, told Megan's parents about the hoax in a counselor's office about six weeks after Megan died. That's when they learned Josh was imaginary, they said.

The woman who created the fake profile has not been charged with a crime. She allegedly told the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department she created Josh's profile because she wanted to gain Megan's confidence to know what Megan was saying about her own child online.

The mother from down the street told police that she, her daughter and another person all typed and monitored the communication between the fictitious boy and Megan.

A person who answered the door at the family's house told an Associated Press reporter on Friday afternoon that they had been advised not to comment.

Megan's parents had been storing a foosball table for the family that created the MySpace character. Six weeks after Megan's death, they learned the other family had created the profile and responded by destroying the foosball table, dumping it on the neighbors' driveway and encouraging them to move away.

Megan's parents are now separated and plan to divorce.

Aldermen in Dardenne Prairie, a community of about 7,000 residents about 35 miles from St. Louis, have proposed a new ordinance related to child endangerment and Internet harassment. It could come before city leaders on Wednesday.

"Is this enough?" Mayor Pam Fogarty said Friday. "No, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it's something, and you have to start somewhere."

Link: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...OsJfwD8SV4LVO0

[Firestormalpha]

Old news, but all the same its really sad.

Malicious deception leading to suicide should be regarded as a form of manslaughter if not murder, and prosecuted accordingly. However it's not so the parents have no real legal recourse.

[Dreamer128]

It is, but such things reach our local newspapers about a month after they happen. If American scientists found out today that a meteor is about to hit the earth, and we all have only two weeks left to live, we'd read about it in thirteen days.
Anyway, I've managed to dig up a more recent version of the article:

Frontier justice in an online world?

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Mo. — For nearly a year, the families living along Waterford Crystal Drive in this bedroom community northwest of St. Louis kept the secret about the boy Megan Meyer met in September 2006 on the social-networking site MySpace.

He called himself Josh Evans, and he and Meier, 13, struck up an online friendship that lasted for weeks.

The boy then abruptly turned on Meier and ended it. Meier, who previously battled depression, committed suicide that night.

The secret was revealed six weeks later: Neighbor mother Lori Drew had pretended to be 16-year-old "Josh" to gain the trust of Meier, who had been fighting with Drew's daughter, according to police records and Meier's parents.

After their daughter's death, Tina and Ron Meier begged other neighbors to keep the story private. Let the local police and the FBI conduct their investigations in privacy, they pleaded.

But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.

The community's patience dried up. Furious neighbors — and in the wake of recent media reports, an outraged public — are taking matters into their own hands.

In an outburst of virtual vigilantism, readers of blogs listed the Drews' home address, personal phone numbers, e-mail addresses and photographs of the couple.

Dozens of people allegedly have called local businesses that work with the Drew family's advertising-booklet company and flooded the phone lines this week at a local discount department store where Curt Drew reportedly works.

"I posted that — where Curt works. I'm not ashamed to admit that," said Trever Buckles, 40, a neighbor whose two teenage boys grew up with Meier. "Why? Because there's never been any sense of remorse or public apology from the Drews, no 'maybe we made a mistake.' "

Local teenagers and residents protest just steps from their tiny porch. A fake 911 call, claiming a man had been shot inside the Drew home, sent police to surround the one-story house. People drive through the neighborhood in the middle of the night, screaming, "Murderer!"

The Drews, who have mounted cameras and recording devices on the roof of their house to track neighbors' movements, have declined to comment.

Cyberbullying has become an increasingly creepy reality, where the anonymity of video games, message boards and other online forums offer an outlet for taunts. Yet drawing the line between conduct that is illegal and constitutionally protected free speech can be difficult.

Still, Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy lawyer and executive director of WiredSafety.org, notes one federal statute that might apply in the Meier case: the telecommunications harassment law. The law, amended in 2005, prohibits people from using the Internet anonymously with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person. Terri Dougherty, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis, declined to comment on whether prosecutors could apply the statute in the case.

The mounting tension worries community leaders. The St. Charles County Sheriff's Department, which rarely visited the suburb, now patrols regularly. County prosecutors are re-examining the case.

On Wednesday, the city's board of alderman unanimously passed a law that makes cyberharassment a misdemeanor with a maximum 90 days in jail, $500 fine or both for each violation. It's the most stringent punishment available to the city.

"We're all in shock," Mayor Pam Fogarty said. "If I have anything to say about it, we'll never have our hands tied legally like this again."

Online chats

Dardenne Prairie is an upper-middle-class enclave of about 7,400 people 35 miles northwest of St. Louis. Over the years, the flat expanse of farmland has been taken over by subdivisions, bistros and strip-mall cafes.

The Meiers moved to the east side of town 13 years ago. The couple was drawn by numerous families and safe streets with names such as Swan Lake Drive and Tri Sports Drive.

"There were kids everywhere, and they've all grown up together," said Tina Meier, 37, who works in real estate. "They ride their bikes together, have barbecues together, go on family vacations together, go to school together."

Megan Meier befriended Lori and Curt Drew's daughter in elementary school, and the two became close, Meier said.

When Megan transferred to a different middle school last fall in an effort to help her deal with her depression and get away from some bullies, the two girls grew apart, her parents said.

Around the same time, Megan started to use the Internet under the supervision of her parents. The eighth-grader browsed through her friends' Web sites and chatted about school.

When a boy, "Josh," messaged her on MySpace and asked to be friends, the girl excitedly agreed. The two talked online for about six weeks, her parents said.

The messages grew nasty in October 2006, according to an FBI transcript. Josh told her he had heard she was a terrible friend and sent a string of disturbing messages and postings that said Megan was "fat" and "a slut."

The final message isn't included in the transcript: "I remember it said something like, 'The world would be a better off place without you,' " said Ron Meier, 37, who works as a machinist.

That evening, as her parents were downstairs preparing for dinner, Megan wrapped a cloth cord around her neck and hanged herself in her closet. She died the next day.

In the weeks that followed, the Drews comforted the Meiers. They said nothing about the fake MySpace account.

They prayed at the wake and consoled sobbing community members at the girl's funeral. They invited the Meiers to birthday parties and had Megan's sister, Allison, over to bake holiday cookies. They asked the Meiers to help hide Christmas gifts in their garage, far from their children's prying eyes.

Last Thanksgiving weekend, the Meiers learned the truth from a neighbor who had figured out that Lori Drew had conducted the online relationship with Megan. In a rage, they hacked up one of the gifts they were storing — a foosball table — with an ax and sledgehammer. They dumped the pieces onto the Drews' driveway.

"I heard this God-awful screaming," said neighbor Kristie Kriss, 48. "It was Tina. When I heard what happened, I couldn't believe it."

Days later, when the Drews complained to police about the loss of their foosball table, the truth became public.

According to a police report, Lori Drew said she "instigated and monitored" a fake account before Megan's suicide "for the sole purpose of communicating" with the girl.

The Meiers hired an attorney.

"We told our friends to trust the system, and we would have our justice," Ron Meier said.

Neighbors couldn't keep their feelings hidden: Many people shunned the Drews, meeting their gaze with sneers and obscene gestures.

On the anniversary of his daughter's death, Ron Meier's relatives lined the street with balloons and put up signs that asked for "justice for Megan."

Meanwhile, the Meiers' marriage fell apart. Tina moved out this spring and lives with her mother. They are getting divorced. Allison, 11, splits her time between the two.

Ron Meier remained in the house on Waterford Crystal Drive and kept his daughter's room exactly as it was before the suicide. Her clothes fill the closet. But he's stopped sleeping at the house.

His attorney suggested that he spend nights with friends or family, because "if something does happen to the Drews, I'm going to be the No. 1 suspect and I'll need a witness to prove my innocence," Ron Meier said.

"All we feel is frustration, anger," neighbor Kriss said. "For months, we've been asking ourselves, 'What mother in her right mind would do this? And why won't the cops do anything to punish them?'

"We just want them gone."

Los Angeles Times researcher DeeDee Correll and the Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.

(Link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...suicide23.html )

[JrKASperov]

The real problem here is bad parental supervision. I'd make sure I knew what they were looking at where until at least the age of 16.

[Mack_Attack]

Or until they move out. Really is sad.

[Firestormalpha]

As much as it was the Meiers fault for not regulating net access for there daughter, it was also the other parents fault for instigating an escalation in the fight between the girls to the point that it caused the other girl to take her own life. Regardless of statutes that they can or can't be brought to charge on, they still maliciously attacked her on an emotional level. They are whether the law supports it or not, responsible at least in part, for the girls death.

[Bungleau]

Read the details, folks. This is not just something between the girls. The second girl's *MOTHER* was the one who created "Josh" and perpetuated the activity. Where was *HER* mother in supervising her?

As for the foosball table... I'd say the Meiers were in the wrong. I understand it, though... what would *I* do if family "friends" did something like that to us? Could I turn the other cheek if someone did something like that, which was the final straw in my daughter killing herself? They might be happy they weren't wearing the table...

I'm sure there's more to the story (like the Drew's side), but from the little details that appear here, they appear to have created Josh, he grew beyond their expectations, possibly got out (or got out of control), and someone (who sent those final messages) finally pushed the right "wrong" button.

And that someone doesn't want to face up to their responsibility.

Pathetic worm meat.

Sad... very sad...

[Sazerac]

At any case, the situation is now moot. Prosecutors are not going to charge anyone in the case. I can imagine a hefty civil liability (wrongful death, anyone?) case is going to be in the offering instead.

This is honestly why most people make me sick.

[Firestormalpha]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22102073

New update on the issue, apparently the other family's new tactic is to play the "we don't know what you're talking about, we're the victim's here" card.

[Bungleau]

This might be thread necromancy, but another new update....

The mom involved has now been indicted.

Woman indicted in fatal cyber-bully case LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Missouri woman who prosecutors say used a fake MySpace persona to "torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass" a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide was indicted on Thursday on federal charges. Lori Drew, accused of participating in a hoax on 13-year-old Megan Meier that led her to believe she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy, was indicted on conspiracy charges by a U.S. District Court jury in Los Angeles. Meier had what she thought was an online friendship with the fictional boy, "Josh Evans." She hanged herself at her Missouri home in October 2006, after "Evans" told her he didn't want to be friends with her anymore and that "the world would be a better place without you." (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Philip Barbara)

Sad... on many levels.