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Jury Set to Deliberate MySpace Suicide Case

posted on November 26, 2008


By Taylor Pratt

A Los Angeles jury is set to deliberate the suicide of a Missouri teen who was emotionally tortured on MySpace and committed suicide. In yet another blow to the human race, a 47-year-old woman posed as a 13-year-old boy to tease and humiliate a 13-year-old girl named Megan Meier.

Lori Drew, the 47-year-old woman, lived just a few houses down from Megan. She was upset that Megan had been teasing her daughter in school, and sought revenge. I’d like to take a moment here for you all to read that sentence again, focus on “sought revenge.” We’re talking about 13-year-old girls here. I know they are mean to each other, but as a parent, don’t you sort of prepare for this type of thing to happen in your daughter’s life? Has there even been a kid who wasn’t made fun of at some point in their life? It is part of growing up. It is what shapes us into who we are. As a parent, you have an ethical responsibility to teach your children to overcome those obstacles, not to retaliate to the degree that Lori did. </rant>

Lori is being charged with conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information for the purpose of inflicting emotional distress, a sentence that faces a maximum of 20 years in a federal prison.

I hate to see social networks like MySpace and Facebook as means to deliver these attacks. I can’t imagine it will get any easier as more social networks roll out. Hopefully we won’t be hearing about 50-year-olds seeking revenge against an eight-year-old who said he didn’t like their kid in 140 characters or less on Twitter.

via Reuters

Taylor Pratt is a Search Marketing Specialist at nFusion, a results focused marketing agency.


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  • http://www.greatpriceshere.com Nicole Price

    This is indeed very true and a very stiff penalty is the way to send home the message to other possible perps that this will land them in serious trouble if they were to attempt anything similar.

    Nicole Price’s last blog post..The Best Recipe Sites

  • Pilgrim Writer

    I am in no way minimizing this despicable behavior, but I do object to people blaming the medium. Social media is no more to blame for this kind of social travesty than a gun is responsible when someone gets shot. It is the people who use these tools who are to blame. Having said that I hope they make an example of her.

    Patricia Skinner.

  • http://apple-realincentives.com iphone

    A pretty sad story, I hope she is convicted and gets a tough sentence.

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  • http://www.types-of-flowers.org/ Lily Bent

    The woman behaved like a mother who infinitely loves her child and does her best to protect her for all the cruelties of the world. Wrong behavior, she just had to tech her daughter how to protect herself. I feel pity about daughter and her mother.

  • http://AureliusTjin.com Aurelius Tjin

    It’s so sad to hear that these social networking media facilitated deaths and depressions amongst teens and even old folks alike when they should have been devoted for fun, community interaction, and making friends.

    Aurelius Tjin’s last blog post..The ?ABCDE? Method of Getting Things Done

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  • http://www.internetmarketing.com-seemore.info Jason T

    It is horrible. There must be a way to control this fake social media profiling. Social networks like facebook must find a way to check abuse of this kind. too bad huh.

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