FlutterbyeWings

Megan was a typical middle-America teen with the same hopes, interests, and vulnerabilities.  In Megan’s case, however, the vulnerability proved deadly.

Like many teens and adults, the thirteen year-old from Missouri found that developing a circle friends was difficult.  Her parents tried to help their daughter overcome her self-consciousness.

Hoping to quell her anxieties about her appearance and to avert a too-common adolescent obsession with image and attractiveness, Megan’s caring, protective parents had moved her from her former middle school to a local Catholic school mandating uniforms and modesty. She flourished there. Long insecure about her weight, she joined the volleyball team and lost 20 pounds. If the scholastic switch had meant she had grown away from any old neighborhood friends, she was making new friends and looking forward to inviting them all to a big birthday party.

She was especially enthused about a new online friend named Josh Evans. The cute 16-year old became something like a boyfriend over the month or so they had known each other, though they’d never met in person or even spoken by phone (his family ostensibly had Internet access, but no phone). They spent hours chatting online and exchanging messages on MySpace.com, the social networking site popular among teens. Much as her parents worried about the Internet’s possible predators, and much as they may have been concerned about the attentions and intentions of this older boy, Megan was thrilled. A good-looking, charming and kind guy was apparently fascinated by her. Some of the angst and uncertainty of being thirteen fell away, and the sensitive girl was again the boisterous, confident presence she’d been as a child.

Source

Unfortunately, Josh was not what he professed to be but a cruel hoax perpetrated by the mother of one of Megan’s former friends.  Lori Drew, a neighbor of the Meiers, decided to make Megan suffer by creating a MySpace persona of a boy who would win and then break Megan’s heart.

The plot worked perfectly, but to the horror of Megan’s parents, the teen took her jilting by a non-existent cyberlove to the ultimate extreme and committed suicide by hanging herself in her closet.

After Drew’s involvement in the plot, she was charged under a federal internet fraud statute to which she plead not guilty.

Lori Drew denied initial police reports that she set up the account with her daughter. Federal allegations say that she was instrumental to the hoax, but she blames her employee in her home-based direct-mail business, Ashley Grills, who admitted involvement but further implicated Lori Drews. Grills, meanwhile, was gravely affected by the unfortunate events: she attempted suicide, and was hospitalized.

All that was slow to come to light; the Drews were understandably quiet themselves, tending to funeral arrangements. Lori Drew allegedly warned another of Megan’s peers, the girl across the street, to keep quiet about the hoax and her role in it. But that girl told her mother, and the horrified woman took the tale to school counselors.

The neighbor finally invited the Meiers to the school counseling center and filled them in on the truth behind the situation, and they approached the authorities. The FBI conducted an investigation—quietly. The US attorney’s office and the St. Charles County prosecutor would eventually decide that potential charges involving stalking and harassment didn’t apply to this case and that it couldn’t be successfully prosecuted. Eventually, federal prosecutors would determine that there could be a case in establishing that Lori Drew had defrauded MySpace. In May 2008 they subpoenaed the site. They filed charges of conspiracy in Los Angeles County, where MySpace’s servers are located.

In November, Drew was found guilty of only the misdeamenor charges that were brought against her with the jury finding that she did not intentionally set out to cause Megan’s death.  She is awaiting sentencing and faces up to three years in prison and $300,000 in fines.

While there always be questions in a case like this, there are some certainties:  this is not the first or last time someone set themselves up as something they are not via the internet.  It is the nature of the anonymity of cyberspace, and for the most part, the guise is harmless.  The second thing that is certain is that the legalities of this case are not over.  Lori Drew’s attorney’s will appeal and Megan’s parents will file a wrongful death lawsuit against Drew and all that were culpable in the hoax.  And finally, it is certain that many will lobby for more specific laws to control this activity on the internet in hopes of preventing another occurrence of like Megan’s death.  As well-intentioned as these laws maybe, however, the opportunity to prey on another vulnerable human will always be available to those who seek to find such activities.

Tags: Megan Taylor Meier