Woman Indicted For MySpace Hoax Surrounding Suicide of Megan Meier
Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: MySpace, Suicide, Indictment | Themes: Business
A federal grand jury has indicted Lori Drew, the woman accused of driving a young Missouri teenager to suicide through social networking site MySpace. The woman faces three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy.
In October of 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after a friend on MySpace began to send her negative messages.
Megan began speaking to a 16-year-old boy by the name of Josh Evans through the social networking site. The boy claimed he was new to the area, was home schooled and did not yet have a phone number.
After a couple of weeks, the messages to Megan turned nasty, with the last allegedly telling the girl, “the world would be a better place without you”. Meier was found later that day hanging in her bedroom closet.
It then emerged that “Josh” was a fictional character apparently made up by a neighbour living four doors away from the Meiers. Lori Drew allegedly made up the account to see if Megan would gossip about her own daughter (a former friend of Megan’s) to her new friend on MySpace.
According to the Chicago Tribune, a former employee of Drew’s, 19-year-old Ashley Grills admitted to setting up the account and sending some of the messages to the young girl. She claimed final message was sent by her but only in an attempt to cut contact with the girl as she felt the hoax had gone too far. Grills told Good Morning America that while she sent some of the messages, Drew was also responsible, having sent several messages herself. While Drew admits she knew of the account’s existence, she denies setting it up or sending any of the messages.
Lori Drew will be summoned to appear for arraignment in federal court in Los Angeles in June and is expected to surrender to authorities in St. Louis. Each count of the indictment carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
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Whatever, that shouldn't be illegal. Telling somebody that nobody likes them is just practicing free speech. And is there seriously a charge called "accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress"? If people don't like it, don't use a computer. Is it illegal for me to go up to somebody and tell them that I don't like them?
Ahh, yes, the freedom of speech argument that so many idiots like to hide behind.
You're right, you have the right to say whatever you say, but what you seem unaware of is, you're also held responsible for everything you say.
Hey, I can call every woman I work with "bitch", freedom of speech, right? Of course I'll be held responsible for it and probably won't have a job at the end of the day. I may even get sued by those women.
Sorry, but if this woman didn't mean to kill anybody, but her direct actions led to the death of another, in the legal world, that's called manslaughter. She planned it out, so that's manslaughter in the first degree. She should go to jail for 20 years. Throw in that she was pretending to be someone else, which is also illegal, and there's two major crimes she's guilty of.
Ok, freedom of speech at a workplace is completely different, I could also get fired for telling a customer that my company's product is terrible.
If I call somebody a bitch on the street, that should be fine, just ignore it. Words are just words, they don't hurt people. If I go to a bar and I tell some girl that she's ugly, she goes home and kills herself, why is that manslaughter?
As for impersonating someone else, she wasn't impersonating a real person, she made up an alternate identity, which as far as I know isn't illegal.
I think you're stupid, and you should shut up and go die (and I appreciate you defending my right to say so).
...ok so thats just a bit of devil's advocate, but your argument is still really naive. If you tell a 6 year old to jump in front of a moving car and they do it, you'll be in trouble. Yell fire in a movie theater and someone gets trampled, you get in trouble.
...Telling a 13 year old shes better off dead, well...now she is dead
Messing with that girl's head was downright cruel, and thankfully we aren't the ones who have to decide when the line is crossed. Not to mention that if you call the wrong person a bitch in the wrong place, you might get shot. Would that just be freedom of expression? right to bear arms? self defense?
Freedom of speech should not extend to insults and spam. Public forum and speech maybe, but bothering people just because you can, being a public place or not... way to go gm0n3y... insult can be even an ellaborated speech that does not have insulting words inside. And that's where your right ends and the other's begin.
While its certainly morally wrong for the woman to do that to her I can't agree with it being illegal.
The freedom of speech should extend to insults like or not. We should have the right to express our disliking of others. If this type of speech were to be made illegal everyone in the world would be guilty of it as almost anything can be taken as a insult.
She also never says to go kill herself. She says “the world would be a better place without you” Well I think the world would be a better place with out rapists. Did I just commit the very same crime by thinking and expressing that? If a rapist kills themselves over my comment should I be put in prison?
Also a 13 year old girl should be more logical than this. She obviously has some sort of mental problem as a normal teenager wouldn't kill themselves over a comment from a person they never met.
While its certainly morally wrong for the woman to do that to her I can't agree with it being illegal.
The freedom of speech should extend to insults like or not. We should have the right to express our disliking of others. If this type of speech were to be made illegal everyone in the world would be guilty of it as almost anything can be taken as a insult.
She also never says to go kill herself. She says “the world would be a better place without you” Well I think the world would be a better place with out rapists. Did I just commit the very same crime by thinking and expressing that? If a rapist kills themselves over my comment should I be put in prison?
Also a 13 year old girl should be more logical than this. She obviously has some sort of mental problem as a normal teenager wouldn't kill themselves over a comment from a person they never met.
Well, NuclearShadow, I wish you a nice witch hunt!
You can express your opinion of a person to their face when they allow you so. But what if everybody (or just a group of people who think they're everybody) starts calling names individuals, in guilt or not. That kind of crowd can even do more afterwards. You might be mature enough to stay away from that crowd and just express the "Bitch" opinion when you think it's informative, but just imagine a past tense when groups of villagers (in the offensive sense of the word) start pointing at individuals who in their opinion had done something wrong. Well, if you don't like somebody, you just stay away from them, maybe even report to authorities, but judge, jury and executioner... Just imagine what kind of oppressing force is free speech in the way you describe it. When did women receive the right of free speech? And when did homosexuality became a sexual attraction instead of a mental disease? No, true freedom of speech is speech without fear of consequences, and that means a balance between what you can say and what you cannot or should not because you might end up limiting the freedom of speech of somebody else. And I believe this is the right evolutionary step of development of free speech.
I can understand it being a crime to tell a minor to harm themselves (or break the law), but in this case she pretty much just said that she didn't like the girl. I don't like Robert Mugabe, if he kills himself now, do I go to jail?
We already have slander laws to protect people from others lying about them, so if we are just limited to insults, what's the big deal? If it was an adult that committed suicide nobody would care, but because its a kid its somehow illegal? Sure there is a line that needs to be drawn, but IMO, in this case, we are far from it.