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 ...
She was led to believe that this sick woman was a 16 year old boy who had a crush on her.
Then, the rug was pulled out from underneath her. She had no reason to expect the harassment from the start.
It was certainly malicious in intent. I think the crime is made more serious by the fact it was an older woman (who as a mother should have known better!) bugging a child.
Its like regular life. Muck around on the wrong side of town and you will find trouble.
Stick with folks you are comfortable with and you will likely be alright.
One of the probs I have with the net is that it lets kids sashay into the local porn shop with no ID.
There needs to be moderation at a local level not a federal level. How that is done on the WWW I dont know. People on MYspace and locally HAD to see what was going on in this case.
This kid was runnin with the wrong crowd and the parents didnt have clue.
I agree
Ive been though worse and I’m still here.
I thought those people should be prosecuted, but they got promoted.
Now? I could give a crap. Ive wouldn’t let em control me.
I do.
That's actually kind of funny, given the irony of a 16-year-old girl successfully representing a 30-something-guy when it's so much more frequent that the opposite happens.
Oh, Lord, I feel so horrible. Just when I thought it was safe to leave off hyphens, you went and put them all back in.
I’m a stickler for LAW at the local level.
My family life is a wreck by some measures and a joy in others, but its ours to look after.
Not Obama on capitol hill.
Though I should point out that the hyphen at issue in the link, in "fully-developed nation," is definitely incorrect. Hyphens can be appropriate between two adjectives, but never between an adverb (which "fully" is) and an adjective.
Hey, the editor has a college degree- what do you want, quality or something?
I was just thinking, I am pretty sure she was horrified when the kid killed herself. I doubt she wanted it to go that far.
However, she still should have felt pretty awful about what she was doing.
Personally I am not letting any of my foolish young children onto myspace (when i have them). I think the internet used to be pretty decent (mid nineties) but now it is a portal to all the nuts in the whole world.
Yeah, and Adolph Hitler wasn't guilty of a damn thing except speaking in public. Gosh, what's all the fuss about?
It has a little something to do with incitement and persuasion.
Look up the "manslaughter" statutes in the state.
Most of them have some provision for "setting in motion" events which lead to someone's death. I think a grown woman manipulating the emotions of a teenage girl in this way could easily fill the requirement of "setting in motion" the events that led to the girl's death.
Quit pretending that such alarmingly reckless and irresponsible behavior as this has no real consequences.
So we are prosecuting cases based on "outcry"? "Something" had to be done?!?!
"Something" has to be done is also the chant of the gun grabbers and Madd Mother Nazis every time someone gets killed. "Something" is a dangerous thing.
I'm pretty sure Hitler has the force of the law behind him.
Why is what she did any different from yelling “Fire!” in a theatre?
It’s not. And to add insult to injury, this was an intentional, aggressive act.
Put the B*otch in a room for ten minutes with the friends and family of the girl.
Ain’t hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear something about somebody “taking responsibility...”
“This kid was runnin with the wrong crowd and the parents didnt have clue.”
I thought the original article said that Lori Drew was a trusted family friend. They are neighbors both having teenage daughters. The girls had a falling-out at school, gossip type stuff. Lori Drew and her daughter decided to mess with Megan by creating a fake boy on an internet site they all visited with the intent of hurting her. She succeeded. I’m sure they laughed right up until Megan killed herself. A special form of child abuse, mental abuse. The “mom” knew just what buttons to push with a 13 yr. old girl to send her over the edge. I can’t imagine having a neighbor like this.
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