Megan Meier was a 13-year girl who, like most teens, wanted to be liked by others. Sadly for her, she befriended a manipulative family, the Drews’. The Drews’ had a daughter who was Megan’s friend for a time. And then they became ex-friends.
Lori Drew of O’Fallon, MO apparently wanted to spy on what her daughter’s ex-friend had to say about her daughter. How to do that? Create a fake male profile on Myspace (“Josh”) and gain the confidence of her daughter’s ex-friend, Megan.
According to the police report, “[Lori Drew] explained the communication between the fake male profile and Megan was aimed at gaining Megan’s confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people.”
Unfortunately, it all went horribly wrong.
According to Megan’s father, Ron:
Later that day, Ron opened his daughter’s MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw – one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.
It was from Josh and, according to Ron’s best recollection, it said, “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.”
‘”I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet.” Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.’
No criminal charges are being filed in the case (as of yet) and it’s hard to say that there isn’t more to the story than what we know. But it’s clear here that Myspace was used to bully or harass someone, maybe as a joke, maybe for some other reason. Allegedly multiple Drew family members logged in, read, and replied in the “Josh” Myspace account.
The problem is that some people don’t see such behaviors as jokes. And young teens are especially vulnerable to hateful things said to them (especially by someone who they might be led to believe likes them). Megan was apparently already suffering from self-esteem issues and depression before this incident.
Philip recounts his own Myspace horror story over at Furious Seasons, which describes the significant effort and frustration he had in trying to get a group of people who had targeted him disciplined or removed from the service. Apparently the last thing Myspace offers its users is decent customer service, and why shouldn’t that be a surprise?
In fact, one of the dirty little secrets of most social networks online is that very few of them know the first thing about online behavior and community, two vital components when running such a service. They pay a few college students, interns, or foreign-based customer service representatives to answer emails related to the community, with little training or formal organizational support. They intervene only after some time and a significant amount of effort is expended. Some services, citing misguided “free speech” concerns, refuse to remove even the most intimidating or harassing of members (or their posts or pages).
There must be a balance between a member’s individual rights online and the rights of everyone else. Companies that ignore their own members’ concerns and complaints deserve to have their users leave their service as people realize it is little more than a cesspool of ad-plastered chaos.
The guise of anonymity (or pseudonymity) online is a very enticing mask that empowers people to act and say things they ordinarily would never do or say in person. Would Mom Smith ever imagine trying to get away with her fake boy identity in real life? Would someone who insults another person online have the same inclination to do so to their face? No, and for these reasons and more, we have to be careful in mediating our own behaviors and words online as much as possible. Especially since rarely is the anonymity we take for granted online very strong.
22 comments
For additional commentary and notes on this story, which has incited many bloggers because the original print journalist failed to name the family who was alleged to have created the fake “Josh” Myspace account, please see:
http://www.dreamindemon.com/2007/11/14/myspace-hoax-leads-to-megan-meier-suicide/#more-432
http://jezebel.com/gossip/hell-is-other-people/if-you-can-handle-a-really-depressing-teen-suicide-story-right-now-322888.php
Ms. Drew used the same same exact mode of operation as a child predator enacts in the seduction of a child.
Drew posed as a member of the opposite sex and spent weeks and weeks luring this girl into a relationship.
But yet it went further. The adult Drew formed a heated relationship with the 13 year old girl. She worked hard to gain the girl’s confidence. She exploited the girl intimately by posing as a boyfriend. She enacted the same methods child predators use to groom their victims.
Then the woman emotionally raped this child. She took her supposed love and sexual stimulation and crushed the girl emotionally with them -all while knowing the girl was unstable.
This adult and her friends calculated the best way to achieve maximum mental distress and then carried out their plan. Even enticed others to join in the destruction of this child.
There are manslaughter convictions on the books that won based on looser ties to a person’s death than this. Child predators go to jail for following this scenerio.
Ms. Drew is the clear definition of a child predator. She used the internet to stalk, entice and lure a 13 year old girl into a romantic, sexually sparked, full fledged relationship. She then used that power to inflict Great Mental Harm to this child… A physical rape and mental rape are both as equally destructive to a 13 year old child. Drew knew this (or should have known this) and still proceeded unabated.
This is so far beyond “Harassment”, this is full fledged exploitation of a child.
Is the local police of this county out of their minds to think that NO charge will stick?
Is the local District Attorneys office serious if they don’t think this girl’s rights have been thoroughly trampled by a grown woman?
Does the DA really expect people to roll over while this woman goes without so much as even a single charge?
Does even a speeding ticket register a more serious offense than this?
_____________
Last of all, the very worst. Ms. Drew remains defiant and indignant. Claims the girl was already on the edge mentally.
Ms. Drew denies wrong doing and insists she bears no guilt in her actions.
She justifies her actions as being “protective of her daughter”… Please tell me how she was protecting someone by mind raping a 13 year old child?
To add insult to incredible injury…. The Drews file charges against the family that lost this child.
The Drews, in a final act of ultimate hate, seek to hurt this family who lost a beloved child. She seeks to harm them financially….
Just as MS. Drew attacked an innocent little girl, Ms. Drew now attacks a grief stricken family – again seeking to harm someone’s very life.
This woman is evil incarnate
This woman has county officials protecting her…
The same county officials who would put ANY other child exploiter in jail.
It would appear we have a few corrupt city officials. Officials who need to be fired
Perhaps the county detectives on the case need some scrutiny. Did they really investigate this crime thoroughly? Apparently not.
There had better be some charges…and some heads better role from this complete mismanagement of law enforcement.
For those of you who feel powerless against this injustice, please read. You are not powerless.. Public pressure CAN result in the proper handling of this case as it has many times before.
Example:
About a month ago, a child nearly drowned in the family swimming pool. The child was pulled inside the house to try to recessitate the child.
A cop who showed up after paramedics arrived, ran into the house and slipped on the wet floor. A floor wet, because the child was soaking wet.
After the cop received full pay for her workman’s comp claim…and after all of the cops medical bills were paid….this cop proceeded to sue the family of the boy who is now a vegitable.
Public outrage and anger lead to the cop’s suspension from the force…and the cop was finally forced to repeal her case.
Story Here:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/287909686/506421
Had this story been covered up and hidden, this cop would have gone forward and sued this grieving family while their child was still in intensive care.
See… you do have a voice… public pressure can give a victim a small amount of justice.
Megan Meier deserves at least a little justice in all this – not just some new law named after her.
If you feel the adult child predator in this case should bear some kind of responsibility to her part in this, then make sure your voice is heard.
Ms Drew could set this up on your child next…
Even if you watch your child like a hawk….remember the following.
Your child’s friends have computers.
Your child’s school has computers…
Libraries have computers…
If your child desperately desires to get to a computer, they will find one eventually…
And Ms. Drew, and others like her are waiting.
Justice deserves to prevail here…and so far it has NOT!
Danny Vice
http://dannyvicegrip.blogspot.com/
1 ruined foosball table – REPLACEABLE
1 Megan Meier – IRREPLACEABLE
We deal with victims at our site every day who have this sort of thing done to them. However, we recognize Megan was 13, which makes it all the more beinous.
Screwing with someone’s head & soul is a ticket straight to hell.
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
Lori Drew is a psychopath. That part is clear.
But more disturbing than that are the actions of authorities: If it had been an adult MALE that “carried on” in a sexually explicit way with a 13 year old girl, even if it WERE for the purposes of revenge for his teen daughter, he’d be locked up as a pedophile.
Second, there are al-READY laws on the books that cover this type of harassment. For chrissake: just implement them!
What is particularly chilling to me, is that Lori Drew knew that the victim was known to be suicidal in the past. That means that her statement to her that the “world would be better off without you” or whatever it was… is even MORE chilling: it means she was TRYING to steer this girl to suicide. It means she had a desire to push it in that direction, and did so.
Reminds me of Charles Manson. He never “technically” put his own hands upon his victims either, but he “made it happen” by manipulating people, I mean that’s the premise upon which he was convicted: that he had INCITED it.
Same thing here. Lori Drew incited this suicide and should be just as responsible as Manson was when he incited those murders—and she should also be treated just like any other adult who engages in online relationships of a sexual nature with under-aged children.
We have an article on this online predation process as well:
http://cyberpaths.blogspot.com/2006/12/lures-of-online-predator.html
The authorities treat these victims like hysterical women/men/ parents. Every one of our victims has been blown off. Not one has the money to even sue for Emotional Distress – and these predators count on that.
Something has to be done about people like Lori Drew and even the predators on our site who cause divorces, emotional breakdowns, fraud, etc. We have had some of our reporting victims self-harm and attempt suicide. Thank God, none of them have suceeded so far. These predators think that behind a keyboard they are invincible.
The scorned woman or distraught teenager excuse is getting tired.
The naming of Lori Drew has sparked quite a debate indeed. Some major news outlets have chosen to name the perpetrator(s) behind this story such as the New York Times. Some have chosen not to. The mainstream media however has concluded that the blogging community should shoulder the responsibility of first naming the perpetrator behind this story.
The first question I have in this debate is simple. What is new here? Since before the French Revolution, the media has been used to ‘out’ individuals who’s actions seem to bear public relevancy in some way.
Although Lori Drew has not yet been charged in the case of Megan Meier, the media has never required formal charges to be made before running a story. In the case of some journalist like Dan Rather, some media outlets run with stories before even confirming that they’re true.
In this particular case, media outlets that have chosen to withhold Lori Drew’s identity have done so in consideration of other Drew family members.
I’m wondering if by doing this, the media plans to always withhold the names of interesting persons who outrage the community, if those persons have children. This would certainly be quite a ground-breaking event
Right at this moment, there is a story of a cop who is under investigation in the strange death of one wife and the disappearance of another. The cop in the story has a family, yet the media huddles outside his home relentlessly.
I could go back and list thousands of stories where the media wasted no time in delivering the names and occupations of individuals that were later cleared of any wrong-doing. I’ve never heard of another instance where the media apologized for naming names.
Don Henley’s ‘Dirty Laundry’ certainly applies well to conduct of most major news outlets.
Lori Drew is a primary subject of the story, she is not a rape victim, and is not a minor. Identifying her breaks no new ground, nor does it deviate from what news outlets do on a daily basis.
I also remind readers that her name and her role in the Megan Meier tragedy were documented as public record. A public record that Lori filed on her own accord. This is a critically important fact in this debate.
News outlets, bloggers and the general public were handed Lori’s name and Lori’s own self admissions when she herself filed that police report and sought to elevate the entire situation into the public domain.
Had Lori Drew simply acknowledged what she did was wrong, and apologized – the police report that identified her may have never been filed, and the entire situation may have well been kept at the lowest profile.
Will we see the media write about this? Not likely.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com
While the Megan Meier case seems outrageous and unique, it isn’t unique. Hundreds of cases of egregious and heinous acts go on every day with the same excuses out of our lawmakers.
One such other case….The case of Nikki Catsouras, is a classic example of disgusting, hateful activity against innocent victims, while our lawmakers excuse themselves from enacting laws to prevent this.
The excuse lawmakers use to let themselves off the hook stem from the growth of the Internet and how fast it’s changing. This is a sham.
Chat rooms, message boards, instant messengers and email have been in existence for far over a decade now. While the software used to transmit messages changes slightly, the basic essence of using the Internet to send a message is largely the same. Is a decade or two long enough to establish some basic decency laws in regards to Internet usage?
I’ve posted the Nikki Catsouras story along with many details about the Megan Meier case so the inactivity out of our lawmakers towards these types of cases can be clearly seen.
Those who are interested in learning about cases like Megan’s and Nikki’s case are encouraged to drop by and comment on them if you like. I have a couple of polls set up as well. Danny Vice would like to hear your point of view.
Public awareness of the problem and discussions about possible solutions are the best way to pressure elected officials into action instead of excuse making.
I invite you to come by and share your opinion.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com
I think that Lori Drew should be taken out behind the shed and have the shit beat out of her.I don’t know how or who would do something like this to a 13 year old girl. I am only a 15 year old girl and I act more grown-up than Lori Drew will ever be.
Megan Meier was my best friend and I want some justice for her sake. I really loved her. I miss her so damned much right now. I don’t go one day without thinking about her. I also want Lori Drew to be put in jail so she can have the worst form of torture I could think of. CHINESE WATER TORTURE! One drip she hates it. A few drips she thinks she’s gonna go insane. A few hundred drips later she go completely psycopathic. A few million drips she goes insane and kills herself.
As an adult Lori Drew should have known better. For Megan’s sake a monkey knows better than Lori Drew in this case. I know I wasn’t brought up to talk shit like this, but that was my Best Friend that she drove to complete insanity, and to the brink of death.
Megan Taylor Meier. May she always REST IN PEACE. And walk with the lord forever and eternity.
10/16/2007!
I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU MEGGY-PIE!
We can all set justice against this woman. All we have to do is make sure everyone in her town (cashiers, waiters, cops, gas station attendants, etc) know who she is and refuse to wait on her or check her out.
When she moves to another town, keep track of her. Just show her the same feelings that she tried to tell Megan people felt about her. Make sure that everyone knows who she is and people turn a cold shoulder to her all of her days upon this earth, Shun her…
We, the people of this nation, can deal a harsher punishment unto her and her family than any judicial system can. We just have to make her where abouts know and keep reminding people who this woman is… Peer pressure works even when you are 50+
I honestly feel the women who created the site should be punished to the full extent of the law.. Our kids today DO NOT take HUMAN LIFE serious at all. My daughter went thru a similar bulling and was ostrizised from all of her friends for a whole summer. Evey time this girl found out my daughter was hanging out wiht someone she would befried them to take them away from my daughter and spread lies about her to every one. the girls mother did the same thing to me. We were all close friends at one time and we did not agree with the behavior of the other girl we wer lied on and treated very unfair. All because of one evil little girl my daugher prayed God, would take her and she did not want to live any longer and the girl is still doing things the same way..BUT not to my daughter. i wish megans mom could come to our home town and talk to the kids here, there is a lot of it going on here and no one wants to do anything about it. This happened to my daughter in the sixth grade and I talked to the counsler about it and took the mean girls movie to her to see if she would show it and she said she did not think it was approiate. I told her what happened and because the girls family has lots of money and donates to the school she did not want any part of it. and just this past week the was a 18 year old girl ran over with a truck and killed by a 17 year old girl. they had been fighting for over a year over a boy etc. now one is dead and the other in jail..This could have been stopped if parents would be more active in their kids lives and check on them to see what they are up to.. I talked to the other mom about my daughter and she told me she did not like confrontation… so sad
True enough this case is not the case of cyber-bullying where families have lost a member. In this case, it is really sad to realize that an adult is the one who drove a 13-year-old girl to her end. Parents should be there to teach their children wrong from right, it is unfortunate that the one who should know what is right from wrong is the one who destroyed the young and promising Megan Meier. May she rest in peace, for she will no longer be bothered by people who do not know good.