Posted on 06/16/2008 7:50:14 PM PDT by khnyny
A 49-year-old woman pleaded not guilty to charges arising from her role in a MySpace hoax that ended with a 13-year-old girl committing suicide after being spurned by a fictitious boy. Lori Drew, 49, of Missouri, denied charges of conspiracy to inflict emotional distress and accessing MySpace computers without authorization. She will fact trial on July 29.
Prosecutors say Drew set up a fake account on the social networking site and posed, with others, as a 16-year-old boy "Josh Evans" to target a classmate of her teenage daughter, Megan Meier.
Meier hanged herself in October 2006, shortly after receiving a message from "Josh" saying amongst other things that he had no interest in a romantic relationship with her and would be better off without her.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Since the key of her MO was to obtain a fraudulent identity, then use the fraudulent identity to harass someone online (a violation of the various telecommunications laws), the easiest thing for our benevolent leaders to do would be to make it impossible (or punishable, more likely) to create a fraudulent identity. For the children.
How do you think she could have been stopped?
One thing that's disturbing is that none of the people involved had any qualms, nobody apparently said, stop, this is a bad idea, until a kid that was involved got qualms long after the funeral and dropped a dime on the operation.
True—I suppose my statement was overly broad, when it was primarily directed at the solecism that “fully-developed” is.
It seems you are suggesting that legislators should not pass any laws to protect citizens. Is that really your contention? Or do you think that some laws (like laws against murder) are okay, while others, like laws against electronic harassment and stalking, are not okay? Your point is unclear.
Do you understand the sequence of events? The rejection happened very suddenly. She did not have the opportunity to pull the plug before the hurt took place. During the times when she was enjoying her IMs with Drew and her coven, she did not know she was being cruelly manipulated so that she could pull the plug. Saying that she could get away from the people who tormented her is like saying that you could get away from the stalker the very first time he appeared in your life.
I've been called ridiculous names on this forum. It was annoying, maybe harassing, but didn't in any way impact my safety or my freedom to carry on my business.
There's a difference between an adult of strong character being insulted by strangers whose opinions he doesn't care about, and an emotionally weak, depressive, confused child being rejected by someone she thought loved her. There's a very big difference between your situation and that in which an adult torments a child she knew very well was unstable. And this is the great point: here we have an adult psychologically abusing a child.
I think public shunning is the appropriate response to this woman's behavior, and will probably last much longer than any time she might serve.
She has been shunned in the town where she works. None of that has made any impression on her. It has, however, left her free to continue to damage the lives of others again. Drew is a sociopath, and jail is the safest place for people who abuse others like this and feel no guilt about it.
I makes perfect sense that murder should be against the law, while tapping on a keyboard should not. I can't even believe that is confusing to some people.
The Over-Criminalization of Social and Economic Conduct - (this is from 5 years ago, and the various legislatures have marched onward, churning out more and more and more laws the whole time)
You do understand that the US tax code is out of control, don't you? You understand that the IRS tells you that if you call any of its people and they instruct you on a tax issue, and they're wrong, you're still liable? Their lack of understanding of their own regulations (which can put you in jail) is NOT their problem?
The criminal and civil codes in this country are not far behind.
BTW, Google my tagline and find out what the Romans had to say about this state of affairs millenia ago. The Founders were well aware of this kind of stuff.
Then by your logic it follows that murder should be against the law, while deliberately driving a car into a schoolchild should not. Right? The result is the same whether you are just tapping on a keyboard or holding the wheel of a car.
Yes, I do understand very well that the US tax code is out of control. I understand also that there are too many laws on the books (hey, I live in a county in which the law dictates that I have to have a handrail on the two steps leading from my pantry to my garage). I also understand that some prosecutors get power-hungry and damage the lives of others.
But so far I have not seen an answer to my question. Do you think there should be no laws? Are you a libertarian or anarchist? If not, what do you think the laws should consist of? Should there be laws that prevent people from injuring or killing each other? Should manslaughter be a crime at all?
I believe the Founders had laws dealing with the questions you raise. I think you need to do some reading before we talk again.
Have a good day, and watch out for the American legal system wormhole weapon.
Sorry you don’t think that answering legitimate and sincere questions is worth your time. You won’t win many converts to your position, whatever it is, if you insult rather than explaining.
No, wrong. Deliberately driving a car into a schoolchild was murder, last time I checked, while online chatting under an assumed name was not.
In some cases, tapping on a keyboard could be a legitimate crime if it actually damages the property of others directly or endangers national security such as in the case of hacking or spreading viruses, but the woman in this story was just being a plain ól bitch and chatting online. Hence, no crime.
Oh yeah. Lori Drew is no different from Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Osama bin Laden, Elizabeth Bathory, John Allen Mohammad, and Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold. Sure, the scale and the number of people killed is much larger, but all them are evil sociopaths.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but in case you are . . .
Antisocial Personality Disorder is a mental illness that appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is a reference used by psychiatrists to identify the particular mental/emotional dysfunction a psychiatric patient presents. I think the ICD-9 code for this is 301.7. The disorder encompasses a range of behavior including (and here I'm paraphrasing) a total lack of empathy for the feelings, rights, and concerns of others, a lack of respect for society's norms, and a belief that the laws that apply to other people do not apply to the patient. People with this disorder often appear to require more stimulation and excitement than others do, and will resort to lies, trickery, and manipulations, sometimes lying so skillfully that those around them initially think they are quite lovely people. Sociopaths often evince a complete lack of remorse for wrongdoings.
So you see this could describe Joe Stalin, but it could also describe Lori Drew and a lot of people you might have run into in your personal or professional life. There is a continuum from the person who's just selfish, pleasure-seeking, and manipulative, to someone who's actually a mass murderer.
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