MySpace Suicide: Social Networks Don’t Kill People, People Kill People
Like most people, I was deeply disturbed and saddened by the story of Megan Meier, a Missouri teen who killed herself after the mother of a former friend used MySpace to perpetrate a cruel hoax.
The woman — 48 year-old Lori Drew — posed as a fictitious 16 year-old boy named Josh Evans on MySpace to gain Megan’s confidence. After six weeks of being the perfect e-boyfriend, “Josh” turned cruel. “His” last message to Megan:
Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.
Megan promptly ran upstairs to her room and hung herself with a belt. She died the next day.
As with other forms of adolescent cruelty, most people get over the effects of cyberbullying as they grow up. When I was in 7th grade, some girls in my class made a website all about how ugly I was. The worst part was that the parents of the girls in question did nothing to punish their daughters when my mother brought the website to their attention.
I was utterly humiliated, but I somehow managed to survive the experience, just as I survived the cruel notes in my yearbook and the attempts to flush my belongings down the toilet. I grew up and (mostly) moved on.
But this was before online social networks were a glimmer in anyone’s eye. I can only imagine how horrible it would have been if those same cruel girls and their idiot parents had been able to use MySpace for their ends. Social context accelerates everything: application and group adoption, the spread of news, and cyberbullies’ cruelty. It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.
That said, I hope that people won’t rush to condemn MySpace for Megan’s tragic death.
There was a time when cars were relatively new technology when people regularly got behind the wheel while they were falling-down drunk. Then there were a number of tragic crashes. People lost their lives. And slowly, laws and social conventions sprung up around drunk driving. It’s now not only illegal to drink and drive, it’s socially unacceptable.
The same thing will happen with cyberbullying, but we need to spend money and effect tremendous cultural change before that will happen. I applaud legislation that seeks to criminalize online harrassment. I applaud similar movements that seek to make it socially unacceptable.
In the meantime, the best we can do is educate our children about the realities of online life: people aren’t always who they say they are and the anonymity of the Web makes new heights of cruelty possible.
Unfortunately, when parents like Lori Drew are the ones doing the educating, we have a long way to go.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The whole thing is disgusting and sad, and the repercussions are still being felt (the parents are now getting divorced because of the guilt).
And, the thing is - Megan’s parents were doing the right thing. They were monitoring her Internet usage, and would log-in to MySpace for her. Should they also been reading her emails?
And, that is terrible about your school - I always noticed that girls are so much meaner. I’ll have to tell you the Mom story one day.
I wasn’t the ugliest in school. I was just most often ignored or pigeon holed. Instead, I hung out with the ugliest. I hung out with the people who were shunned, marginalized, made to feel small.
School is terrorist training.
I have a daughter now (and a son). I’m terrified of how at 5, school is already about things like popularity. My daughter doesn’t get invited to all the parties. She’s a little too smart for her britches sometimes. She’s attractive, smart, and funny, but doesn’t always mesh well with the other kids. Will she have those problems in a few years? Will someone coax her into a noose?
Life is rife with things to worry about, so I won’t invest too too much of my soul into that worry. But I will say that your post touched me.
I wish you well in your new universe, here where you are the star you aways were.
As details about Lori Drew’s 6 week cyber-voyeur techniques emerged, the more I am convinced that outing this kind of behavior is not only right, but essential. Essential? Really?
It is becoming clearer everyday that Lori Drew employed many of the same grooming techniques that child predators utilize to charm their way into gaining a child’s trust. The most significant key here is that Lori Drew spent approximately 6 full weeks baiting Megan into this trust by posing as a “cute” boy that Megan would be attracted to.
Right here, Drew utilizes the sexual stimulation that exists in male/female pair bonding in order to manipulate the 13 year old girl.
Lori Drew groomed her victim like many child predators do, enticing her with flirtation, mild sexual conversation and playing on Megan’s weakness. Lori knew that Megan had a low self esteem and was treated for depression.
There are uncanny parallels between the typical Child Predator MOA and those utilized by Lori Drew to control and manipulate Megan in the relationship Lori developed with her.
Outing Child Predators has been public policy in most states and is usually upheld under the premise that the public has a right to reasonably protect itself from criminal behavior where it exists. Families with children have a right to know when those who might prey upon their child, live nearby. Public policy dictates that if a child is exposed to potential harm from predatory activity, then parents should at least have the opportunity to be aware such harm may exist.
But what if a child predator confesses to a crime, but is never convicted? Does the potential for risk exist despite the legal process?
Thus far, details in the case have been heavily supported by Lori Drew’s own admissions, police records and interviews. The amount of speculation in this case has been minimal, and the majority of public outrage has largely focused on the facts presented.
The Missouri Public Records Act of 1961 was enacted partially to inform the public of persons, events, proceedings and reports that may effect the public directly. The records (such as the charges Lori Drew filed against the Meier family), were the principal documents used to tie Lori Drew to her abhorrent acts. By filing this police report, Lori in effect put herself into the spot light. The Blogging community simply connected the dots and reported the results.
The Vice enjoys the sharp irony that Lori Drew’s own actions, activities and zeal to hurt someone eventually lead to her own uncovering. As I see it, public policy laws and Lori Drew’s own manipulations of those laws worked to her undoing. The Vice is appreciative for Lori Drew’s assistance in these efforts.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com
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
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