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13 year old commits suicide thanks to fake Myspace account. Discuss

SynysterCola

SynysterCola

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Megan Meier was subject to a rather cruel "prank" set by neighbors a few doors down. "Josh Evans" was a boy who Megan developed a crush with on Myspace. He made her feel special, and then at the peak of her happiness, crushed her and as a result, she took her life.

According to the article:

Lori Drew, her 13-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old family friend told investigators that "Josh" had been created to win Megan's trust and find out if she was spreading rumors about the Drew girl, a former classmate and friend. "Megan supposedly had called [her] a lesbian," Tina Meier says.
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So instead of sitting down and talking to the parents/girl directly, the Drew family figures it's right to play with Megan's emotions and use a fake Myspace account to extract information.

That disgusts me.

Opinions?
 
Jesus Christ. Shows how Laws need to be seriously modernised. Seriously, how are those disgusting people walking free?
 
Man if we start imprisoning people who play e-jokes on others that if gonna be ridic.

I mean they could have done this to some other girl and she wouldn't have suicided. Like other bullying, internet-bullying whatever is a pretty shit thing to do but unless its clear that they had the goal of attempting to make her suicide, nothing like prison is necessary.


The internet grants you a kind of anonymity that makes this kind of thing alot easier, but it also makes it easier for you to forget what it could do to the person in real life i guess.
 
Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe a girl would be allowed BY HER FAMILY to play such a cruel prank on a girl they knew all too well was vulnerable. Bastards.

I'm with the e-mob on this one.
 
I heard about this back in December. It's really sad that people can just get away with this. The worst part is that the girl's mother ENCOURAGED this. ENCOURAGEMENT! It's almost unbelievable. As an amateur web developer I realize how difficult it really is to police things like that, but there are better web designers than me and they should deal with it.
 
Even worse is that the victim's father is the only one getting criminal charges against him. He smashed the foosball table after he found out the people that asked him to hide it were the ones who killed his daughter.

Did those asshats believe that acting like they did nothing wrong would make it go away?
 
D_Force said:
Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe a girl would be allowed BY HER FAMILY to play such a cruel prank on a girl they knew all too well was vulnerable. Bastards.

I'm with the e-mob on this one.
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no, it wasn't the Drew's child that had orchestrated this, it was the mother. in the article it says that Lori Drew was the one who got this started and made sure it kept going.

after reading the article i agree that stricter laws about harassment and e-bullying should be enforced. why should people be able to harass people on the internet with no consequences when you can get arrested for the same actions in the real world? why should the virtual world have a looser policy when the only difference is being able to see the person's face?
 
I have known people who created false personalities just for kicks and its pretty terrible for the person who has been deceived when they inevitably find out. The Drew family have to live with the knowledge they caused a suicide and this is probably punishment enough in this situation. The mother should really have known better than to get involved in young teen's name calling though.
 
Another tragic example of the dangers of letting kids loose on the internet without being educated properly.
 
Ok that was a long article and now that I've read all of it, what actually happened was a lot more sinister than I first though. There definitely should have been some sort of punishment handed down, the Drew's new what they were doing and the fact that they went so far with this is deplorable.
 
I read the whole article and what I can't stand the most is the public and the internet's reaction to this. We get it, what the Drews did was deplorable, but this long after the incident you can stop harassing them.
 
I'm not sure about america's laws, but if this had happened in Canada and the parents took them to court they could sue them for A LOT of money. The law falls under the Intentional Infliction of Mental Suffering. There have been many articles about this case that I've seen before, and in each one of them the mother's intention was to cause the girl pain.

Since she did it intentionally, in tort law the parents of the girl that suicided could sue the mother of the other family and they would win a lot of money for it. But, I'm not sure if America has the same laws.
 
Egh, sorry for the double post but I can't edit my posts right now. Looked it up and America does have a law for the intentional infliction of mental suffering. And, the fact is, the girl that used to be the deceased girl's friend knew that she went through periods of depression and, although this wasn't exactly a "forseeable" consequence of their actions; there is no doubt that what they were doing was going to cause some kind of damage. I have no doubt that if this got taken to court they would end up owing a lot of money to the deceased's family.
 
Ridiculous things like the "Intentional Infliction of Mental Suffering" is exactly why the APA is more of a terrorist faction than Al-Quieda.

Essentially, this case is A lied to B, B felt bad and killed herself.

Last I checked, you have every right to lie.
 
That's not a stupid law at all. There are people with all sorts of different mental states. It's a very, very difficult law to uphold and there are very few cases that go through that actually work. Your over-simplifying of the situation is pretty low.

What happened is a girl's "close friend", who knew about her bouts with depression because of her weight and popularity, and her mother set out to inflict emotional and psychological pain on this girl because they fell out. They knew fully well that this would cause a lot of pain to the girl, and while they might not have intended suicide it was still a possible outcome of their actions given the circumstances.

Equate it to punching someone in the head. You aren't trying to kill the person, just hurt them. However, there are times when, for some fluke reason, a person can die from being punched in the head even once. If that happens are you not to be held responsible just because you didn't mean to do it? No. You were trying to hurt them. It's the same thing here. They were trying to hurt this girl with the FULL knowledge of her emotional and psychological troubles. So, yes, the "Intentional Infliction of Mental Suffering" would be more than appropriate here.
 
It is not like they brought physical harm on her themselves. Slander is a crime, but lying is not! Goading someone into suicide or helping someone engage in suicide is sketchier on legality, but that is not what happened here. Just because there was malice involved, and just because it was a parent orchestrating it against a kid, does not necessitate legal ramifications. It is of course unethical and cruel, but they did nothing illegal. By the logic of half of the people in this topic (to make up a similar 'irl' scenario), if some parents had a grudge against some other parents with a daughter, and they paid their son $50 to take a girl on a date then leave her at the end of the date abruptly, and then the girl killed herself, that the parents would be responsible?

Also, this logic would make all internet trolling illegal. Hacking and theft and slander are crimes - simple trolling is not, no matter how much a person does or does not react!!
 
m0nkfish said:
Another tragic example of the dangers of letting kids loose on the internet without being educated properly.
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This, along with CK's post above, sums it all up nicely. This girl, along with every single other user on the planet, has to assume a level of responsibility for their own actions when they get on the internet. That means watching your own ass, being careful around people you don't know, and basically having a head on your shoulders. As saddening as this whole story is, this girl was obviously not mentally strong enough to deal with what happened to her, and that is no one's fault.

And as for everyone thinking the Drews got away with murder... they've been completely ostracized in the community, no one will talk to them or even look them in the face. Not exactly without punishment.
 
It's disgusting that the girl bullied someone who she knew sufered from depression, however I think the way everyone else has treated them is no better, if they continue to be harrased who knows, one of them might commit suicide too.
 
Gormenghast said:
Man if we start imprisoning people who play e-jokes on others that if gonna be ridic.

I mean they could have done this to some other girl and she wouldn't have suicided. Like other bullying, internet-bullying whatever is a pretty shit thing to do but unless its clear that they had the goal of attempting to make her suicide, nothing like prison is necessary.


The internet grants you a kind of anonymity that makes this kind of thing alot easier, but it also makes it easier for you to forget what it could do to the person in real life i guess.
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agreed
you dont suicide for this shit.
like 1 on a million pranks ends up this way
bad luck.
 
I feel scared... I hope you Smogoners don't turn on me. ._.

But seriously... that just sickens me. Especially the fact that they walked away legally scot-free! I think they really deserved what they eventually got. I particularly didn't like the daughter hearing "Happy Birthday" with a big smile, days after she drove her friend into commiting suicide.

But you have to admit, part of it was the girl's fault... You can't become emotionally attached to web file, because that person may just be some dumb kid, someone intending to antagonize you, or some online predator rapist. Not that it justifies their actions in the slightest, but...
 
I have to agree with DM, CaptKirby and others.

I admit I feel disgusted at what the Drew family did and if there was a way to legally punish them, I would hope for it.

But that's the sad truth. There is nothing legally that can be done (it's not really sexual harassment, so that's out of the question) to punish the Drew family.
 
I think both parties are to blame. The Meiers for not educating their daughter about the dangers of the internet and obviously the Drews for their prank.
 
For the most part I agree with Gormenghast; this is really a small chance of happening. I mean, crap like this where people play sick pranks like this on myspace probably happens every day; this is just one example of an incident with a very unfortunate outcome.

The only part that really sickens me is that the parents approved of this type of behavior. First of all, 13 year olds shouldn't be on Myspace in the first place (14 age requirement, if I recall from when people actually went on), and second, parental encouragement of mentally harming another person at all is just sick.

Also I have no idea how one can develop a crush on someone they've never met in real life, to be quite honest.

I'm not sure laws can help stop this "e-bullying" as some of you guys may call it. I mean, kids can commit suicide from real life bullying too, and you don't see the government punishing bullying too severely. Just my 2 cents.
 
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