So here's what happened: you have to be 14 to use MySpace. There's nothing to enforce that, but it's the rule. So this girl somewhere out in the Midwest who was NOT 14 had a MySpace page. It's only fair to mention that all three of us have them - Alex mostly so she can see the pictures our friends post.
Anyway, this girl Megan Meier had this depression thing going on for a long time. She gets MySpace, and a boy friends her. She gets all happy. Then after a month, he drops her, saying she sucks and the world would be better off without her. So she kills herself.
Yeah. But the thing is, that boy was not a boy. He was really the mother of a girl who Megan had been on-and-off friends with. The mother claimed she created the fake boy so she could see what Megan was posting about her daughter.
Nothing has happened to the mother. I guess it's not against the law to fuck with someone so badly that they kill themselves. I'd call it interfering with the pursuit of happiness, but I'm no lawyer.
I have so many issues with this whole thing.
First, this girl Megan was like totally mentally unstable. MySpace is not for the meek. Really, it's just not. People write really cruel things, and if you're sensitive, it's not for you. Megan's mother shouldn't have let her have a MySpace account.
Second, Megan was reading the last message the "boy" sent as her mother was leaving to take her sister to the orthodontist. Megan's mother left her home alone, just calling and telling her to log off. Megan didn't, because she couldn't. I totally get that - when people are talking about you, you have to stay and know what they're saying. The mother should have taken Megan with her, so Megan was forced to stop reading.
You'll say "but the mother couldn't have known she'd kill herself over this" and you're right. But, supposedly Megan was crying and freaking out over what some boy who'd never met her was claiming he'd heard. If a boy I didn't know was saying that to me I'd be asking him who he heard it from, asking why he believes what somebody else thinks about me without making his own decisions. The mother says she "monitored" Megan's MySpace usage and all this stuff, approving who she could friend. As if that makes it okay to break rules, because you're watching the kid do it? No.
For me, it just keeps coming back to that Megan NEVER should have been on MySpace. If somebody left me a message saying I suck, it wouldn't make me think I suck. If somebody told me I'm a slut, it wouldn't crush me, because I know I'm not. All I'd think is somebody's getting and spreading bad info.
But I'm not that sensitive. And even though I go to a shrink, I'm not really mentally unstable. Megan was.
Also, that other mother? Lori Drew? She said she created the boy's profile to see if Megan was talking shit about her daughter. Okay. Weird, but okay. So how is telling Megan she's a slut and that the world would be better off without her, helpful to her original thing of seeing what Megan's saying?
Because if that were me, I'd have de-friended that "boy" as soon as he said that. Who wants friends who call you a slut?
I feel kind of bad for the other girl, the daughter of the mother who created the boy's profile. She'll have to go through the rest of her life knowing that because of what her mother said, a girl she'd been friends with killed herself. And I feel bad for Megan's family. Because even if they made a couple of bad choices, they shouldn't have had to have their daughter die for them.
1 comment:
On Wednesday, October 21st, city officials wasted no time enacting 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?
The Vice rejects the premise of this new law and believes it completely misses the mark. Classifying this case as 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. Megan participated in the conversations willingly because she was misled, lured, manipulated and exploited without her knowledge.
This law willfully sets a precedent that future child exploiters and predators might use to reclassify their cases as harassment cases. 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.
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?
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. The Vice is outraged that a motion was never even filed, so that the case could at least be argued before a judge or jury.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com
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