Parents Look To Put MySpace Mom Behind Bars
MySpace is supposed to be a place for everyone of all ages to keep in touch with friends and to meet new ones. No one ever expected that it would be yet another place for vulnerable children to be bullied around. This came into everyone’s mind after 13 year old Megan Meier took her life after she had received many insults from her ‘friends’ on MySpace. One of those ‘friends’ turned out to be a mother that lived right next door to her.
The family of Megan Meier, the is demanding justice and jail time for the adult involved in the bullying. Lori Drew, the Meiers’ 48-year-old neighbor in suburban St. Louis, admitted in a police report that she created a fictitious MySpace account and pretended to be a boy with a romantic interest in Megan. According to the police report, Drew created the profile to find out what Megan was saying online about her teenage daughter.
Megan hanged herself in her closet in October 2006. When police eventually decided that Drew had committed no crime, Megan’s parents, who had remained silent about the case until that point, spoke out. “You cannot as an adult sit there and do that and hide behind a computer. It is a criminal act. We want to see her go to jail,” said Tina Meier, Megan’s mother.
In an exclusive interview with “Good Morning America,” the neighbor who first tipped off police about Drew’s involvement says that Drew confessed to her that she had played a hoax on Megan.
“She did sit here in my living room and confess everything to me. She told me that they had pulled an image of a boy off the Internet and that they had created an account using the name of Josh Evans, and she said she knew the last message that left her house that Monday when Megan attempted her life was that, ‘The world would be a better place without you,’” said the neighbor, who asked that her identity not be revealed.
Now others are calling for justice in the case. Prosecutors say they are reviewing the case to determine whether anyone will be charged with a crime. Last week the board of aldermen in the Meiers’ hometown, Dardenne Prairie, Mo., passed a law making Internet bullying a misdemeanor in the town. “It’s time that we do something against this. On all levels, the state and federal level,” Dardenne Prairie Mayor Pam Fogarty said.