Woman Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case

longacre writes "The Associated Press is reporting an indictment has been handed down in the sad case of Megan Meier, the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend. It was later determined the boy, Josh Evans, was a fictitious identity created by a neighbor of Meier's family. Lori Drew, of a St. Louis suburb, has been charged with 'one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.' Interestingly, despite the alleged crime having occurred strictly in Missouri, the case was investigated by the FBI's St. Louis and Los Angeles field offices, and the trial will be held in Los Angeles, home of MySpace's servers. Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."

"Emotional Distress"

If you can get punished for inflicting emotional distress, I guess Vista really was illegal...

Back To Reality

I hate to come across as a "heartless" bastard, but jumping off a bridge (or the equivalent) due to some perceived online relationship failure just doesn't seem right.

Then again, maybe kids today are far too sensitive.

Re:Back To Reality

You're not giving the whole picture.

This was an emotionally abused kid who, because of various problems, was unable to make friends at school. Haven't most Slashdotters been there? Then, she turns to someone online in search of companionship. That person, for months, is her best -- and only -- friend in all the world, commiserating with her, sharing her deepest, darkest fears, and generally being with her in a way that her parents (for all their good intentions) can't be.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it's all taken away. The friend is revealed to be someone malicious, someone manipulative enough to string out this child for months at a time before pulling the rug out from under her. She's now left alone, with no one to turn to. I've never (thank God) been that alone in my life, but reading her story makes me understand school shooters all the more. Eventually, she reached a point where the only thing left to do was escape -- permanently.

This isn't a suicide issue. It's an abuse issue. There would be no suicide in this case without the willful, malicious intent to construct a false friendship created by a knowing adult. There was no reason for it. This was murder, plain and simple. Who knows what Ms. Meier might have done with her life. She could've become a doctor, a pilot, or even a Slashdotter. But we'll never know.

Re:Back To Reality

I think that prosecuting this case in this way is shady at best, and liable to be used as a precedent for something that people here will be up in arms about.

Then again the woman in question _CANNOT_ be allowed to get away with what she's done. I'm sure that there is mental health legislation that can be used to put her out of circulation for a very long time. The fact that the prosecutors in the state where this happened decided that they couldn't chase this speaks more about their competance than anything else.
This woman deliberately waged a premeditated campaign of psychological violence against a vulnerable child that ended in her suicide and they think that there is no reasonable chance of successful prosecution? What rock did they find these incompetant idiots under...?

A few thoughts...

Would the situation be any different if it weren't a hoax?

What if Josh Evans really existed, and was true to what was spoken? Because then it would be a freedom of speech issue.

Re:Back To Reality

If an online friend screws you over, you move on. You don't kill yourself, simple as that.

I don't kill myself. But the girl in question did. And, since the villain here was her next-door neighbour who apparently knew her quite well, it is reasonable to expect her to know that the reaction in this case might be quite extreme. In fact she propably knew it, for why else would she had spent months setting the whole thing up ? You don't spend that kind of time if you think that the subject of your malice is going to shrug her shoulders and move on.

Yes, we can all loathe the evil Lori Drew, and she very much deserves the shunning of her community. But to say she "murdered" Megan? get serious.

Yes, I think it's reasonable to say that she did indeed murder Megan. She deliberately set up as nasty and vicious blow as she could, and Megan died as a result of that.

We always have choices. Killing ourselves - or not - Always counts as a choice, one which Megan chose over "dealing".

Yes, a very logical and rational response. Now guess what depression and other mental problems do to your ability to be reasonable ? Especially since we are talking about a teenager; they are under their parent's guardianship precisely because they can't be trusted to act rationally at all times.

p>>Simply because an uninvolved outside observer can see things in context doesn't mean that a person caught in the middle of it can.

Re:Back To Reality

Sorry if this offends your delicate sensibilities, but at the end of the day, Megan chose to end her own life.

You're again assuming that everyone makes choices like a robot and has a completely unclouded judgement and complete freedom of will all the time. Have you ever been experienced people slipping into clinical depression (and I don't mean feeling somewhat "blue" or "depressive", but the real thing) ? They're not acting like the person you've known anymore. Same goes for many other psychological disorders. Scrap the notion that the human brain is a perfect, computer-like decision-making machine all the time. It's not.

Re:Back To Reality

Sorry kid, but you have a lot to learn about life. The older you get, especially if you have kids of your own, the more you will understand how wrong you are about this. A child - and trust me, a 13 year old is still a child - doesn't have the emotional stability, strength of character or experience to rationally make the kind of "choice" you're talking about. The human brain continues to physically develop sometimes as late as age 25. I stroggly suspect that you are still developing, too.

A brain can do all sorts of bizarre things; thinking that suicide is a good idea is only one of them. Thinking that there is no value to human life is another. If you really do believe that the sanctity of human life is baseless, I can only feel sorry for you since it's the cornerstone of the family, society, civilization and the species.

Megan was deliberately manipulated by an adult. She was set up like a bowling pin. The person who CHOSE to do so knew what buttons to push so Megan would fall all the harder. I could do the same to a 13 year old by the same methods, but I CHOOSE not to do so, since not only do I value human life, but because I thoroughly understand and *respect* exactly how emotionally fragile a 13 year old can be. The basis of morality is understanding the difference between when you *can* do something and when you *should* do something.

What happened wasn't murder but there was deliberate intent to harm. It's an abuse case that deserves to be prosecuted because it ended in the child's death. All this is cut and dried. The really scary thing is the way it's being prosecuted.

Re:Back To Reality

Whoo finally someone who gets it. I also want to see her parents prosecuted since they no doubt contributed to the girl's sad life. And all of the jerks at her school who wouldn't be friends with her. And her teachers. And all neighbors within a 1/2 mile radius.

It takes a village, and when that village fails it needs to be prosecuted.

Re:Back To Reality

Maybe you should go look up the legal definition of murder. Last time I checked murder was "any willful act, knowingly undertaken, which causes the death of another person." You don't have to mean to kill someone with your actions. If you do something when you can reasonably infer that doing so would cause grievous bodily harm or death, and you do so anyway because you don't care, it's called depraved indifference. This woman deserves to go to jail for her actions. IN our society is is generally considered unacceptable to prey upon those weaker than us, be it mentally or physically. This woman may not have beaten the girl to death with a hammer, but her actions are just as criminally culpable as if she had. She killed this girl, and her weapon was MySpace.

You may not like it, but you can be charged with murder for driving someone to commit suicide if it's determined you did what you did on purpose. You need not have meant to kill them. Just as you can be charged with murder if you shoot someone and they die, even if you didn't mean to kill them. You intended to cause grievous bodily harm which then lead to death. This woman intended to cause grievous psychological harm which led to suicide.

Re:Back To Reality

Maybe, but a 49-year old woman should know better than to go for such an effort to harass, humiliate and insult a young girl who she knew had psychological problems. The fact that she tried to destroy the evidence is proof that she knew she was doing something very wrong.

Scary

Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."

Really I do not think theres anything scary about what will happen in this case. An adult should be semi responsible for there actions.

How can an adult feel like toying with a young girl with an over self conscious image of herself when they live near them?

I can understand that there could be other circumestances when this could be scary but in this case i thought it was just HORRID what the person did.

Mod me a troll if you want. But i think most people when they read this case realize that what that person did was wrong. And i believe that in most circumstances driving someone to suicide is a crime. I don't care if you say that the person was to emotional, thats a reason that you should be semi understanding and not go out of your way to mess with them.

Re:Scary

Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."

Really I do not think theres anything scary about what will happen in this case. An adult should be semi responsible for there actions.

Exactly, we don't tell people who have stalkers to "get over it". We institute means to protect the person who is being harassed (i.e. don't come within 50 feet).

Perhaps the way they are going about the lawsuit *does* set a scary precedent, and there is a *better* way to approach it, but IANAL. I do think that having protective measures in place is a good thing though. We have them for the real world, why not the virtual world?

Re:Scary

There's no question that what this woman did was wrong and morally repugnant. But was it a crime?

It's hard to see what she actually did that was illegal. This could have just as easily happened had the boyfriend been real. Lying to someone about your identity isn't a crime (generally speaking).

On the other hand, if she had a reasonable expectation that the girl would commit suicide because of her actions, she could possibly be charged with reckless homicide or a similar crime for what she did. The obvious defense is that she had no way of knowing what the girl would do. I am guessing from the fact that such charges weren't filed that there was no history of suicide attempts, and that the woman likely didn't know (or can reasonably claim she didn't know) about the girl's clinical depression. Without those critical elements, there's no hope of securing a conviction, so it'd be pointless to file charges.

Personally, I suspect she just was trying to get back at the girl out of sheer nastiness, and didn't think too hard about what her actions might lead to. I wonder if she even feels badly about it. I certainly hope so.

That all being said, I think these charges are pretty tenuous at best. I can understand wanting to see justice done, but essentially making up crimes until you find something that will stick is not the way the American justice system is supposed to work, and it is an abuse of power on the part of the prosecutor. Sometimes you simply have to accept the fact that some wrongs will go unpunished because we are simply not equipped to deal with them at the time, and that is the trade-off for living in a free society.

Re:Scary

I would expect that she knew about the girl's problems. Her daughter and Megan had been close friends until they got in a fight; the reason Lori Drew alleges she started the hoax was to find out what, if anything, Megan was saying about her daughter. Megan confided in the persona for a long time, until she discovered a sudden onslaught of bulletins revealing all the secrets she shared, personal attacks, and comments about her body and mental health.

When Megan questioned "Josh" about his intentions, "he" responded "You should just kill yourself."

She did. She hung herself with a belt in her closet; it wasn't enough of a height to break her neck, but she crushed her throat and slowly suffocated over the next hour. Her mom found her upstairs, dead, a few days before her fifteenth birthday. She never lived long enough to find out that the cruelty was perpetuated by a grown woman living a few houses down, her daughter, and another neighbor girl.

I've been following this one for a while.

Re:Scary

Contrasting between the two mothers, I would say that their contribution to her death, in Drew's case is a matter of provocation, and in Meier's case a matter of failure at prevention. I think it raises the question of whether either woman had a reason to suspect that she would commit suicide, and I believe that in both cases the answer is no; nor do I believe that it was Drew's intention to drive Megan to suicide.

I think it is clear, however, that Drew's intention, at least towards the end of this scenario, was to use her positions of trust as a family friend, a close friend's mother, and an imaginary boyfriend, to torment the child and cause her anguish. This is the charge levied against her.

Re:Scary

What is scary in this case isn't that the bitch would be punished. That is why she has been charged, a huge public desire to see this woman punished when there is no clear law that would allow it.

What is scary is that instead of finding some actual law she broke, they are railroading her with an incredibly loose reading of anti-hacking laws. The problem is if she is convicted of this, and it is upheld on appeal, it sets incredibly bad binding legal precedent that violation of terms of service isn't just a civil contract violation anymore, it is criminal computer hacking.

What does technology have to do with this?

The issue here is that prosecutors are using the typical shotgun approach, and firing a bunch of charges at her to see what will stick.

Technology has nothing to do with this crime, and there could be negative ramifications if she is indeed found guilty of federal communication charges for a local crime.

Let's pretend this occurred 30 years ago, and instead of using the internet as the backdrop, the woman and girl simply exchanged letters as local pen-pals. The woman would photocopy the girl's letters, and circulate them around the community, demeaning and belittling the girl. The girl finally finds out, and commits suicide over the humiliation and emotional distress.

So what's the difference here? Society at large demands punishment for this woman, as she acted intentionally to harm the girl emotionally and humiliate her publicly. Whether she did so using sign language, morse code, hand written letters or the internet is irrelevant.

Re:It's as simple as this

She was 13... what 13 year old girl (or boy for that matter) doesn't have emotional issues?

Thats a very unstable and impressionable stage, where shit like the pencil you use in school seems important.

If the case was another 13 year old, I would be rather dissapointed that the charges stuck... however she was/is 49 years old, preying on a 13 year old... thats, just flatout fucking bullshit.

Re:It's as simple as this

Of course it's all "alleged". Until such time as the person is convicted, any reasonable news outlet will use the word "alleged" as a CYA measure against libel charges.

Re:It's as simple as this

Except half of slashdot didn't create the profiles to terrorize a little girl and cause her to kill herself. In this specific case, a life was lost because of the actions of this woman.

Re:It's as simple as this

I think people here might be missing the logic behind this.

The "victim" for the computer trespass crime is MySpace, not the girl or her family.

MySpace suffered no financial losses because of this, so this is a highly dubious criminal charge. The family, on the other hand, has a legitimate case which they should take to the civil courts.

(Obviously the base instinct is "get 'em!", but Slashdot should be more perspective about computer crimes.)

Another aspect to the logic behind this is...

"Get her (woman) any way you can" There is no legal means for prosecuting someone for what she did to the girl, so they found another way to bring charges, i.e. being arrested for resisting arrest or the way Gotti caused the deaths of dozens, but he went away for tax evasion. What she did was not acceptable socially, so the criminal justice system is trying to find a way to squeeze her in. I don't like it, but right now I think its better than having US Code specifying the legality of things like this on the Internet more than it already does. Considering the 80% of congress is technically inept (optimistic) and a different 80% could care less about passing ambigous legislation that can be misused.

Re:It's as simple as this

If the perp had have been a man, he would have been arrested. More importantly, we're not talking about a 13 year old harassing another 13 year old, we're talking about a 40-odd year old woman who knew the victim deliberately crafting a fake persona and instigating it into her life. Knowing that the target - a child - had mental issues, this deranged pathetic excuse for a human being nevertheless persisted in her campaign to deceive the child, involving as many of her own daughter's friends as possible.

This is one of the most twisted things I have heard, and your logic echoes that of the sociopathic, fat, middle aged woman who felt the need to do this "I don't feel bad about this because she had issues with depression".

The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences.

Re:What's the big deal?

I'm not sure I'm saying it properly, but it seems to me that this is going beyond calling somebody nasty names into an entirely new game. The case apparently centers on the manipulation of a minor through cold-blooded deceit and willful misrepresentation. It's the difference between beating somebody up during a fight and torturing a helpless prisoner.

I'm not sure a law covering something like this wouldn't wind up being a cure worse than the disease. However, if this woman actually did what she's alleged to have done, she's a sadist at least and probably a sociopath. People like her wind up getting caught with dead people chained in their basement.