It’s a sad, sad case.
A 13 year old girl, Megan Meier, took her life after receiving a nasty message from what she thought was a 16 year old boy – but turned out to be a 49 year old woman. Lori Drew, a mother herself, now faces up to 20 years in prison for her role in this tragedy.
From the New York Times:
The woman, Lori Drew, was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization and via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Ms. Drew lives in O’Fallon, Mo., where, according to the indictment, she created a MySpace account under the name Josh Evans in 2006. Prosecutors said she used the social networking account to contact a young girl named in the indictment as M.T.M. with sexually charged messages from “Josh.” The girl, who has been identified by her mother as Megan Meier, was a former friend of Ms. Drew’s daughter.
After a few weeks of chatting, “Josh Evans” began to send Megan nasty messages, via the MySpace account, ending with one that suggested “the world would be a better place” without her. Megan, believing she had been rejected by “Josh,” committed suicide in her home.
Missouri law enforcement officials said they had not found enough evidence to bring charges in the case, and Ms. Drew, who was 48 when Megan died, has repeatedly denied creating the account.
But because MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, is based in Beverly Hills, Calif., and its server is here, federal prosecutors decided to wield a federal statute that is generally used to prosecute fraud that occurs across state lines.
The statute applies in the case, the indictment says, because by violating the user agreement of MySpace, which prohibits phony accounts, Ms. Drew was seeking information “to further a tortuous act, namely, intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
We’ve known for awhile now how bullying is linked to suicide. What we’re now seeing is the myriad different avenues available for people to inflict harm on one another.
According to Megan Meier’s parents, Megan had been in treatment for mental health disorders – Attention Deficit Disorder and “Depression” (as per the AP). It’s important to note this because kids who have psychiatric disorders are going to be more at-risk for suicide, and plenty of kids diagnosed with ADHD and depression spend time online – often at places like Myspace.
I’m never one to advocate for socially restrictive or regressive tactics – like prohibiting Myspace or never letting kids online. The kids tend to just be more secretive about those very behaviors in response, and we need for parents to have *more* supervision of these online activities – not less. I wrote in a previous blog post here in relation to the teenagers in Florida who had kidnapped and beaten a girl, again over Myspace conflicts, about the need to teach our kids appropriate online behaviors. I think this unfortunate case is underlining that need with law.
Lori Drew is facing serious legal consequences to her part in this cyberbullying/suicide case, and in this situation, “cyberbullying” goes beyond overt threats of harm to statements that simply make people feel terrible. How we make others feel is, actually, the crime of any kind of bullying, and the essence of what leads the victims to suicidal thoughts.
Still, I do not know how legal it is or will be to make a kid feel terrible – this battle has yet to fully play out in court. I do know it raises some serious questions about how our culture is handling the new world of communications.
I still say we need to actively teach our kids how to treat others, and we need those lessons to reach into the online world now. They must be told that their behaviors online will have as serious consequences as their behaviors in the school yards. All adults need to be guardians in this sense.
I wish Lori Drew had helped her daughter step away from the initial conflict she’d had with Megan Meier, instead of taking on whatever role she may have played in intensifying the drama. But according to this indictment, she didn’t, and the consequences were much worse than I’m sure Drew would have guessed.
I hope in the future, all kids and their parents recognize that the on and offline squabbles of teen girls and boys are opportunities for such lessons in interpersonal skills, and that kids need us – are counting on us – to show the way.
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