Woman indicted in MySpace suicide case

[Just Kill Me]

The 19 year old got a deal because she sang!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will admit that I was pleased to hear this news. I'm sorry; she didn't "make" the girl kill herself but she sure hand a very active hand in fucking with a child.

[Cravindirt]

Ok, this is the way I see it, the kid who killed herself let herself get fucked with, she could have blocked messages AT ANY TIME from whoever she thought was abusing or harassing her. But she didn't.
I find it hard to believe that this adult was the sole reason the kid decided to commit suicide.
But, if a little bit of name calling and harassing is all it took for the kid to off herself, how long would she have lasted, really?
The kid made a clear choice to commit suicide, you don't do that because somebody tells you to, you do it because you want to.
I don't think the adult made her want to commit suicide, the kid could have avoided her harassment at any time, she could have turned off the computer, not logged in to Myspace, not accepted messages from this person, etc, etc.
In the end for me, yeah the adult acted totally childish, but she did not kill the kid, the kid killed herself.
This isn't murder, it is suicide. NOBODY CAN FORCE SUICIDE.

[TonjaLasagna]

Originally Posted by greysfang

It's about damned time. I hope they fry that bitch's ASS, fucking with a baby like that.

yes, thank goodness they're doing something about this woman.

[western]

Originally Posted by Cravindirt

In the end for me, yeah the adult acted totally childish, but she did not kill the kid, the kid killed herself.
This isn't murder, it is suicide. NOBODY CAN FORCE SUICIDE.

Yeah they can. Not everyone has the mental fortitude to withstand emotional abuse. Someone can be driven to suicide and just because they died at their own hand doesn't mean there weren't contributing factors.

And remember this was a 12 year old CHILD who not only didn't have the maturity or impulse control to know to turn off and ignore the cyber bullying but also lacked the emotional capacity to handle what was being thrown at her. Especially when it's being dished out by someone you believed to be your friend.

If this was peer bullying I wouldn't hold the other person as accountable because they would have been close to the same maturity level. Since this was done by an adult who knows better, who has children of that same age, there should be accountability. Even if she didn't drive the poor girl to suicide there should be repercussions for her cruel actions.

[queenb3577]

good, the bitch deserves to fry.

[Sweetie]

Oh boo fucking wooo. I agree what the lady did was wrong, but I don't think she should be put in jail over it. If she does go then this teens parents need to be right there with this lady, for not protecting and monitoring their daughter. I understand the principal behind it, but I just think this is opening a can of worm if we can starting charging people for PICKING on others. The girl was young and clearly had issues, issues that her parents weren't attending to either. You can't blame others for your own stupid actions.

[yanna]

If this bitch had picked on some random girl then I wouldn't want her to go to jail. Would still think she's scum. My problem is that the cunt KNEW that Megan had problems and she bullied an unstable kid like that.

[crumpet]

Yeah they can. Not everyone has the mental fortitude to withstand emotional abuse. Someone can be driven to suicide and just because they died at their own hand doesn't mean there weren't contributing factors.

And remember this was a 12 year old CHILD who not only didn't have the maturity or impulse control to know to turn off and ignore the cyber bullying but also lacked the emotional capacity to handle what was being thrown at her. Especially when it's being dished out by someone you believed to be your friend.
By that logic, anyone who asks for a divorce or breaks up with someone who doesn't want to let them go could also be accused of making them commit suicide. Companies who lay off people by the thousands could be accused of being responsible for the people who respond by blowing their brains out or going on a shooting rampage. That's where I don't want to see this lead. Just for the record, imo, this woman is a despicable cunt who is beneath contempt for her cruelty and immaturity and I would love to see her get her face bashed in with a couple of bricks. However, who is to know when someone will react in such an extreme way because their feelings are devastated, because they are rejected, or whatever?

And I agree with Sweetie: this child's mother is responsible for monitoring her and could have been more involved in protecting her child by monitoring her internet activities, as all parents should be doing in this day and age. I'm sure she feels guilty about that,too, but no one wants mom to feel guilty in addition to the grief she's already going through. That doesn't absolve her parental responsibility, much like the parents of the kids who fall in love with 46 yr old pedos on the net. This mother knew better than anyone how sick her kid was and had the opportunity to be more proactive. Bullies on the internet are the leat of parents' concerns when it comes to who can get ahold of and influence their kids.

Much like everyone else here,though, this kind of blatant cruelty by anyone to intentionally cause someone (especially a kid) pain and heartbreak is morally unforgivable. I'm just wary of putting people in jail for crimes of immorality. I also disapprove of some of the implied accusations (not necessarily by posters here) that anyone who doesn't agree that jail is the answer must be siding with that bitch of a woman or saying that what she did was 'okay' or not 'that bad'. Plenty of horrible, horrible things are done to people that are far from okay in the moral or ethical sense but that to me doesn't indicate that all mean assholes should be in jail for being mean assholes.

I hope they sue the bitch for everything she's got, ever had, or ever will have and that it ruins her marriage and family. Maybe she will then commit suicide.

[cynic]

^^Crumpet with all due respect, read more about what the child's parents did try to do to help her....read about how long and how often the evil woman stalked and tortured this child.....read how she used specific tactics to work on this depressed adolescent's mind....

....this was a woman who would have caused trauma to an adult....it IS child abuse if it is nothing else.......

...this is not your typical over-emotional teenager overreacting.....this was an adult woman stalking and working over months to get this kid to kill herself......criminal laws are there to hold people accountable for their actions....this woman needs to spend time in jail.....

[Sweetie]

"read about how long and how often the evil woman stalked and tortured this child.....read how she used specific tactics to work on this depressed adolescent's mind"


Where was the depressed and fragile child's parents when this was happening? They should have been there nipping it in the bud.

[cynic]

Read it, Sweetie, the parents had tried to get their daughter to stay off of the internet...but try doing that with a 12-13 year old.....all of their social lives are on the internet.....they had talked to her about this boy (that the adult woman was pretending to be a 16 year old boy interested in the girl) and tried to get her to not correspond with him.

The day she killed herself, her mom was at the dentist's....she had tried to get the kid to come with her, but the kid was determined to find out why the "boy" didn't like her any more and by that time "he" had a lot of other kids talked into bullying her online.....she called her mom at the dentist and the mom kept telling her to sign off and the kid kept saying she would.....the mom left the dentist office and by the time she got home, she and the Dad talked to the girl and thought she was settled down.....when they went up to get her for dinner...she was hanging dead.....

What more could they have done?

[witchcurlgirl]

The Dubious Indictment of Lori Drew

While the degree of moral fault assignable to Lori Drew as the cause of Megan Meier's death is open to debate, it is unquestionable that Megan's suicide is tragic. That sad reality does not justify stretching federal laws against identity theft and computer-aided fraud in an effort to prosecute as a federal crime (in Los Angeles, no less) Drew's use of a fabricated MySpace account to send mean messages to Megan, her neighbor in O'Fallon, a suburb of St. Louis.


With the help of others, Drew allegedly created a MySpace account under the fictitious name of Josh Evans. "Josh" engaged in an email flirtation with 13-year-old Megan before telling her in a final message that the world would be better off without her. Megan hung herself shortly after reading that message and died the next day. More detailed background is available here and here.

The indictment (pdf) charges Drew with using a computer in O'Fallon to access the MySpace server in California, "without authorization and in excess of authorized access," to obtain information from the MySpace computer to further the tortious act of inflicting emotional distress upon Megan. The "without authorization" allegation is grounded in the claim that Drew violated her "Terms of Service" agreement by lying to MySpace when she created an account in a fictitious name.

Think about that one for a minute.

Any time you tell a fib to MySpace -- any time a little white lie appears on your profile concerning your age or weight -- you are violating your TOS agreement (see indictment paragraph 12(d)). If you then use that account to send a harassing message to someone, you've committed a federal crime ... at least in the view of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

This charging decision exemplifies the growing federalization of local crime. Drew's conduct may have been reprehensible, but state prosecutors in Missouri could not conclude that it was criminal. Should a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles be entrusted with the power to punish a local incident that occurred in a different state?


We should not applaud the "novel" or "groundbreaking" interpretation of a statute that clearly was not meant to apply to harassing messages sent through bogus MySpace accounts. Columnist Barb Shelley answers the indictment succinctly:

I'm not inclined to expend much sympathy on Lori Drew, but she's clearly being indicted because of the unintended consequences of her actions. There aren't enough lawyers in the world to prosecute everybody who embarrasses and bothers people in Cyberspace.

Nor should that be a federal prosecutor's role. Is the LA office so over-staffed that it can afford to police MySpace pages in suburban St. Louis? Do we want our federal courts clogged with prosecutions for sending harassing messages via social networking sites?


Law Professor Orin Kerr agrees that this charge is "not what the statute is about." He warns:

“It’s a dangerous theory because terms of service are violated so often, and that means there’s a choice courts must face: maybe any violation of any terms of service is a federal crime; maybe no violations are a crime; or maybe some violations are a crime. If a court allows it, then it means that if the government is looking for a criminal charge against someone, they just need to show someone violated a term of service."

This prosecution is an abusive and dangerous misapplication of the law. The indictment should be dismissed and the U.S. Attorney's Office should be given a good scolding.

The Dubious Indictment of Lori Drew - TalkLeft: The Politics Of Crime

[cynic]

Then what is their definition of child abuse? Use those laws....I don't care what law they use to charge the bitch, just use the criminal justice in some form to make her responsible for her actions....

[Just Kill Me]

Crimes of moral turpitude... there are many laws that punish people for what the law deems "immoral" that's sort of what laws do.

[january]

This woman intentionally inflicted emotional distress on a minor. While she was posing as "Josh" for a long time, she asked her questions about her friends, and Megan told her things in confidence. After Josh told her hated her, that she was a "fat bitch" and "the world was better off without you", she took everything that had been told to her and released it all on Myspace, so everyone turned against Megan. This all culminated within a few days, I think, it was very quick and Megan had no one to turn to. Basically, the guy she liked told her she was fat, ugly, a bitch, no one would like her, and that the world would be better off without her, and her friends all turned against her because of things she said, and were bullying her as well. The worst part is, Lori Drew KNEW that Megan suffered from depression and that she had been medicated. So she hit her when she knew she was vulnerable. Sick bitch.