A few months ago I read a story about a woman on a subway train in Asia who let her dog do it’s business on the subway car, much to the dismay of her fellow passengers. After she refused to clean the mess up, some people took it upon themselves to take pictures with their cellphones of the mess along with the woman’s face. The woman’s face spread all over the internet. She was ridiculed and torn apart by web surfers who happened upon the story. Soon her identity came out on the net. People recognized her on the street. Her parents contact information was revealed. The woman had to quit her university, though the worst part of the whole experience for her was probably the death threats she received.
I’m reminded of this in light of a story I wasn’t planning on getting into today because I hate posting incredibly depressing stuff here, but I think those who haven’t heard the story should know about it. Jezebel has done an incredible job covering the events of this, far better than I could, and the Gawker sites get far more exposure than I do, but I want to do my part in spreading the word of a sick, sick crime that took place in October 2006.
Megan Meier was a 13 year old with depression who was seeing a therapist for suicidal thoughts. She was also described as a bubbly girl that liked spending time with friends and parents. Somewhere along the way, she parted ways with an on again / off again friend. Sometime after, she met a 16 year old on MySpace named Josh that seemed to take to her. Megan was excited that this boy had taken interest in her and soon became infatuated with him, rushing to the computer after school every day to talk to him. She’d tell her mom, who was very involved in her daughter’s computer activities, about this cute boy that liked her. For a girl with low self esteem, this was a dream come true.
Six weeks later it all changed. Josh suddenly turned on her, calling her fat and a slut. Megan cried. Josh and others were posting MySpace bulletins about her. Her mom wanted her to sign off. Megan was sobbing uncontrollably, her mother not understanding what was going on wasn’t taking her side. Josh told her the world would be better off without her. Then Megan hung herself in a closet. Her mom discovered her 20 minutes later.
Josh is a horrible person right? No actually, because he doesn’t exist. While the ambulance was at the house the phone rang at another girl’s house. The girl was told by the mother of the girl Megan had parted ways with before to keep her mouth quiet about MySpace because something had happened at the Meiers house. You see, Josh was actually that girl’s mother, a nearby neighbor of Megan. She drove Megan, who she knew suffered from depression and poor self esteem, to suicide.
Jezebel has a headline up today that really brings it all home. “Megan died never knowing this young man didn’t exist”.
Sick. And it’s stories like this that make me wish we had a better legal system to punish idiotic twits like the mother who played Josh and the father who let it happen. Alas, as far as anyone knows there’s no law broken here unless they get caught for cyber harassment. But hey, they’re remorseful right? No … no they’re not. They’ve actually told Megan’s mother to leave them alone. They’re not the least bit remorseful. They’ve told Megan’s mother to “lay off”.
Which brings us back to the very first paragraph in this post. They’ve been outed. The names are on the internet now, and people are digging up everything from pictures (already seen the husband) to work addresses and phone numbers. I’m not going to post that kind of information here, but if you dig around the Jezebel articles I’ll post below and the comments posted therein you’ll see the names and probably get an idea how deep people are digging.
You can blame the machines all you want, but machines are metal lumps of shit without someone there to operate them. It’s not MySpace’s fault. It’s not Megan’s fault, it’s not Megan’s parents fault. It’s the jackasses that pretended to be a 16 year old boy in order to upset a suicidal young girl. Jackasses that should’ve known better, who did something you’d expect out of a punk child and not a couple of people that are supposed to be adults. Supposed to be parents. There’s no excuse for what they did. They killed her. I’ll go so far as to call them murderers, and personally hope the rest of their lives will be full of nothing but unending misery.
Don’t take my word for it though. I’ve got some reading here for you if you’re interested in the story. The first article is the first I read about the story and the one that really got to me. The account of the last two hours of Megan’s life are chilling.
And the following articles are from Jezebel chronicalling their coverage of the events.
Depressing Teen Suicide Story
Are the Parents Ready To Atone?
Worst Mother Award
Why the Parents Were Named
Megan Died Not Knowing
November 24th, 2007 at 12:07 am
On Wednesday, October 21st, city officials enacted an ordinance designed to address the public outcry for justice in the Megan Meier tragedy. The six member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.
Does this new law provide any justice for Megan? Does this law provide equitable relief for a future victim or actually weaken the current law?
I reject the premise of this new law and believe it completely misses the mark. The reasoning behind this opinion is that city officials have consistently treated this case as an Internet harassment case instead of a child welfare/exploitation case.
Classifying this case a harassment issue completely fails to address the most serious aspects of the methods Lori Drew employed to lead this youth to her demise. The Vice disagrees that harassment was even a factor in this case until just a couple of days before Megan’s death.
Considering this case a harassment issue is incorrect because during the 5 weeks Lori Drew baited and groomed her victim, the attention was NOT unwanted attention. It was not harassment at all. It was invited attention. Megan participated in the conversations willingly because she was lured, manipulated and exploited without her knowledge.
This law willfully sets a precedent that future child exploiters and predators can use to reclassify their cases to harassment issues. In effect, the law enacted to give Megan justice, may make her even more vulnerable. So long as the child victim doesn’t tell the predator to stop, even a harassment charge may not stick with the right circumstances and a good defender.
Every aspect of this case follows the same procedural requirement used to convict a Child Predator. A child was manipulated by an adult. A child was engaged in sexually explicit conversation (as acknowledged by Lori Drew herself). An adult imposed her will on a child by misleading her, using a profile designed to sexually or intimately attract the 13 year old Megan.
Lori then utilized the power she had gained over this child to cause significant distress and endangerment to that child. She even stipulated to many of these activities in the police report she filed shortly after Megan’s death.
We can go on and on here, but the parallels between this case and many other child predator cases that are successfully prosecuted bear striking similarities.
Child Predator laws do not require much more than simply proving that an adult has engaged a minor in sexually explicit conversation. Lori Drew has already stipulated that her conversations with Megan were sometimes sexual for a child Megan’s age.
City officials who continue to ignore this viable, documented admission and continue to address this issue as harassment are intentionally burying their heads in the sand, when the solution is staring them right in the face. Why?
On June 5th, 2006, Governor Matt Blunt signed into law stiff penalties for convicted sex offenders. The Vice believes that officials continually reject a child predator classification of this case in order to keep the penalty of this offense out of this harsher realm.
Opponents of this law are active in defeating this law not by changing it, but by disqualifying cases like Megan’s from ever being heard.
There are several other child exploitation laws on the books. To date, none of them have even been considered by City, State and Federal officials in this case. I’m outraged that a motion was never even filed, so that the case could at least be argued before a judge or jury.
Those satisfied with this response out of Missouri officials need to think through the effect this law will truly have. It quite honestly has the potential to directly undermine Jessica’s law. It quiet easily gives prosecutors a way out of prosecuting child endangerment and child predator cases in the future.
Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing here.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com
November 24th, 2007 at 11:05 am
You’re right. I’m actually kind of surprised that the media hasn’t picked up on the child predator implications of this case because it screams scandal and is just the kind of story someone like Fox or MSNBC would jump all over. If they can find a way to prolong a story they’ll do it, and that’s the perfect tactic.
I didn’t know they actually passed the misdemeanor until now. There’s a chance I’m gonna catch some flack for this but it kills me that in response to a kid dying over a harassment issue, a simple bill is passed that makes said harassment a crime punishable by a simple $500 fine and at maximum 90 days in jail. I realize there’s not much else they could do, but it reminds me why I dislike the legal system so much. To me that bill is essentially saying that Megan’s life was worth $500 and a couple months locked away, if that. I have a skewed view justice anyway that I rarely get into. The fact that you can kill someone and sometimes end up just getting 20 years in prison for it always seemed an odd punishment to me. Doesn’t fit the crime at all.
We can probably all agree that in a perfect world, Lori Drew would be charged with some sort of indirect murder crime. As well, if the conversations were sexual at points, she should get some kind of child predator charge thrown on there as well as be forced to register as a sex offender. Just because it’d make her life so much harder down the road. And if anyone else in the Drew family was involved, nail them too.