On Thursday May 15th, 2008 a federal grand jury indicted Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis for allegedly executing an online prank which resulted in the suicide of a teen-aged neighbor. Investigators have said that Drew and other participants who weren't named perpetuated a hoax on the social network known as My space in an effort to find out information about 13-year-old Megan Meier.
Witnesses have said that the suspect in question was doing so in an effort to find out whether Megan was talking about her daughter on My space, as they were former friends and apparently had a falling out. Drew has been accused of creating a false profile on My space, and posing as a 16-year-old boy named Josh. The woman then began contacting Megan under the false profile and first showing interest as a friend and then dating interest. Megan was reported to be lifted and happy about the newfound attention from this new person.
Then suddenly, the emails from the Josh character began to become abusive and hateful toward the young girl. One of the cruel messages contained text stating that the world would be a better place without her, and thus young Megan was evidently depressed and hung herself in her home in October of 2007. Drew has repeatedly denied making the false profile and contacting the teen, however, other witnesses say differently. An employee of the perpetrator, one 19-year-old Ashley Grills said that Drew had suggested that they should talk to Megan via the Internet to find out what Megan was saying about her daughter.
In April, on the ABC breakfast show "Good Morning America" Grills admitted to creating the My space profile, but said that Drew did write some of the messages sent to Megan. After Meier hanged herself, Drew and the co-conspirators deleted the account information from Myspace in an effort to cover their tracks.
Usually used to address hacking issues, U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time this federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-network-working case. Both Myspace and Megan Meier are named victims in the case. The indictment that was issued against Drew says "MySpace members agree to abide by terms of service that include, among other things, not promoting information they know to be false or misleading; soliciting personal information from anyone under age 18 and not using information gathered from the Web site to "harass, abuse or harm other people." Each of the four counts charged against the woman carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in prison.
Drew will then be arraigned in St. Louis and afterward moved to Los Angeles for trial. The MySpace network is a subsidiary of the Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media Inc., owned by News Corp. The indictment issued also noted that the MySpace computer servers were located in Los Angeles County. FBI agents in both St. Louis and Los Angeles were the ones who investigated the case.
One such assistant agent in charge of the case, Salvador Hernandez, of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending and said,"The Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go before they must stop. They exploited a young girl's weaknesses," Hernandez said. "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she's responsible for her actions." This may serve as a message or warning to other cyber bullies out there to actually think before they act. The laws are getting tougher, and it's no wonder with intruders like these playing with people's lives
