Cyberbullying: Despicable, But Criminal?
Everyone loves when justice is served. But sometimes what looks like justice is just a façade — and a dangerous one at that.
Take the case of Lori Drew. Drew is a 49-year-old mother of two from Missouri whose MySpace prank resulted in the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier.
Megan, like most girls her age, had a MySpace account. Megan was having some emotional troubles. She considered herself overweight, had very low self-esteem, and was depressed enough to have had suicidal thoughts. But that all changed when she met a 16-year-old boy on MySpace. Josh Evans paid attention to her and made her smile. Their friendship blossomed and became somewhat romantic, in a teenage sort of way. Then very suddenly, everything turned sour. Josh became mean and nasty to Megan, and began messaging her school friends saying terrible things about her. The friends ganged up on Megan and posted hurtful comments on her MySpace page. Then Josh wrote to her: “Everybody in O’Fallon [her school] 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.” A distraught Megan then hung herself. She died the next day.
Sadly, the boy Megan ended her life over never even existed. Lori Drew, the mother of Megan’s former best friend, created “Josh Evans” for the sole purpose of interfering in her daughter’s social life. Drew claims she started the charade just to see if Megan was saying anything about her daughter on MySpace. Why it became mean, cruel, and vicious is something only she knows. She has made excuses for her actions, but none that excuse the abhorrent behavior that literally crushed Megan’s spirit and led to her suicide. A grown woman posted messages as a teenage boy, saying hurtful, horrible things to a 13-year-old girl that she knew was suffering from depression to begin with. How did she know? Because Megan went on vacations with that family. They knew she took medication. She was the best friend of their daughter. And yet this mother decided to interfere in her daughter’s life to the extent that she became a part of, and a cause of, so much teenage drama.
There were immediate cries for justice and punishment. Someone needed to be held responsible for Megan’s death and the public outcry indicated that they wanted Lori Drew’s head. But did she commit a crime? While her actions were certainly despicable and vile, were they criminal?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, that answer is yes. Exploiting an anti-hacking law, a federal grand jury last Thursday returned a four count indictment against Drew: one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization. Because Drew could not be legally tried for her part in the death of Meier, she was tried instead for breaking cyber-laws, namely, breaking the MySpace Terms of Service.
Would there have been such a rush to judgment had the case not received nationwide attention? The swell of Internet postings on this story grew to such large proportions that mainstream news eventually picked it up. At that point, it seemed like justice was almost demanded; people were calling for the head of Lori Drew and, even though there was no way to physically tie her to the death of Megan Meier, the authorities made sure that such a public case was going to come to its proper conclusion: with justice served.
But the cost of that justice is too high to pay. What Drew’s indictment means, in essence, is that any Internet user now risks criminal proceedings for doing something as simple as creating a fake name to post messages on a website, something many people do each day for legitimate reasons.
Yes, perhaps Lori Drew did commit a crime, but it was more of a moral crime, not a legal one. Indicting someone because their words and actions led another person to kill themselves is opening a Pandora’s Box of trouble. Unfortunately, in this cruel world things like this happen every day, particularly when teenagers are involved. The fact that Lori Drew used the Internet as a tool to perpetrate her viciousness is the only thing that is giving anyone any authority to prosecute her.
If her words to Megan were spoken, or written on a note tacked to the Meiers’ door, would there be the same outrage? Would Lori Drew be facing jail time, presumably for her complicity in Megan’s death? Probably not, because there is no law to loophole that says you can’t leave a fictitious note from a nonexistent person on someone’s door.
By turning MySpace into the victim and using the hacker law to prosecute Drew, are we now to understand that we can’t make fictitious profiles or user names on Internet forums? That thousands of people who don’t want their employees to read their blogs or their exes to find them can no longer hide behind a pen name, even if there is no criminal intent to using that name? Are we going to have to state our intent when creating profiles or email addresses? After all, it is inconsistent to prosecute one person for this action and not the thousands upon thousands of people who practice this daily.
As a parent of teenage kids, I’m sympathetic to the Meier family and align myself with those who wish to see some kind of punishment served on Lori Drew for being intentionally mean to a child she knew was vulnerable and depressed. A good, old-fashioned public shunning comes to mind.
However, handing down a verdict using laws meant to keep the Internet safe from hackers is doing a vast injustice to the well-being of the Internet and will do nothing to keep our children safe from cyber-harassment. As parents, it is our job to teach our children how to properly use the Internet and to set guidelines for them. We cannot ask the government to step in and virtually tie the hands of thousands of users in order to protect our children from vicious bullies like Lori Drew.
Michele Catalano lives, writes, and takes photographs on Long Island.
Yeah ok, I see what you are saying to a point but an adult harrassing a known depressed teenager into committing suicide does need to be punished severely. That no specific laws exist as yet to deal with this type of situation should be addressed ASAP but no way should that vindictive woman be allowed to walk free.
Perhaps it would be easier for you to swallow the criminal prosecution if it was a 49 year old man who pretended to be someone he wasn’t to destroy an innocent victim online?
Tony, I have no problem with prosecuting her within the bounds of what she did, maybe endangering the welfare of a child. I take issue with the law they used, as it opens up a can of worms in regards to online freedoms.
What happened to FTTW?
Not everything that’s wrong or “bad” needs to be a matter of law. Being “mean” to someone should not result in prison time, or legal culpability in their suicide.
There are more means at our disposal for administering “justice” than a badge and a gavel.
While I see what you’re driving at, I’m not really worried about a slippery slope here. There’s a world of difference between trolling (or whistleblowing) under an anonymous handle, and an adult plotting for months to deliberately drive a child to suicide.
Yes I suppose the precedent could be used maliciously against people in other circumstances with better motives for their anonymous identity, but as collateral damage to society goes, I’ll take that over the aftermath of the lynch mob that would otherwise have been absolutely necessary.
Send her a** to jail, now.
A couple of things here:
The fact that it made national attention is not relevant to the case. At the end of the day, a 13 year old is still dead.
MySpace also has thousands of sexual predators on the site that law enforcement is trying to track, should we put an end to that as well? After all, they too are using fictitious names to hide from people. MySpace purged their system of 29,000 sex offender profiles, but I don’t believe that they ran a check of the 180 million users to make sure they are using their legal names, or banned anyone from using nicknames or online character names.
I agree that the laws being used to prosecute Lori Drew are at best a stretch, but I think that demonstrates the desperation at being caught flatfooted without a means of punishing this woman. Maybe I am being melodramatic, but a “public shunning” is completely insufficient for what occured. The hard facts are that if it were not for the actions of this adult woman, Megan would most likely be alive today. I do not like the way she is being targeted, but I wrestle with the feeling that she must pay for her actions. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is a civil matter, but has it ever been tied to a death? I don’t think there is any good way out of this, but my gut wants that woman to pay. Unfair maybe, but honest.
Every law can result into a “slippery slope”. In this particular case, Michele Catalano is indulging in a gross exaggeration. Our society will not fall apart if we attempt to distinguish between legitimate Internet use—and malicious harassment that leads to a suicide of a teenager. And yes, I also suspect that the author would feel quite differently if a 49 year old man were involved.
An adult acted in such a way to cause the death of a minor. That’s at least harassment if not manslaughter (depraved indifference to life). They shouldn’t have used the whole myspace angle. They should just treat it as a criminal act.
The archaic practices of ostracism, banishment, and public humiliation seem like perfectly appropriate ‘sentences’ in a case like this. Perhaps that’s it! A revival of the medieval stocks and pillories for these lowlifes whose outrages don’t quite rise to the level of prison incarceration.
What I’m curious is why they had to get creative about it. If a man created a fake myspace account to start up a romantic relationship with an underage girl we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
The first step is obviously to sue her into another dimension. Since, as an adult, she was toying with the romantic feelings of a minor by masquerading as another minor, there is another option… I see no moral or tactical difference between this and a pedophile going impersonating children of a net to manipulate someone. She became a predator. She should be treated like one.
“because there is no law to (this)Ed. loophole that says you can’t leave a fictitious note from a nonexistent person on someone’s door.” Actually there fraud laws that pertain to this.
“Yes, perhaps Lori Drew did commit a crime, but it was more of a moral crime, not a legal one. Indicting someone because their words and actions led another person to kill themselves is opening a Pandora’s Box of trouble.” In your world what is the foundation of legality? See also scearming “FIRE!” in a crowded venue, from which, deaths “occur”.
Unfortunately, we don’t actually know what occurred because the people involved “scrubbed” the crime scene,(after a fashion), but I am willing to let this go foward just for the sake of disclosing the investigation and making it public.
In conclusion, let ask you one simple question; if this was your sister, cousin, friend, whatever would your opinion be the same? Of what, exactly, do you fear?
I understand the point you are making. And I’d like to offer my own view from personal experience and why we need laws to protect people from cyber-harassment.. The MySpace hoax case is unique and tragic. In my opinion, the people who did this weren’t trying to kill the girl, they were trying to inflict emotional harm. They did both, egregiously. The crimes that Lori Drews are charged with reflect only what they CAN possibly charge her with. I’m not sure that creating a phoney account is illegal or if it should be, but lets try to make some distinctions clearer.
In my case, I was harassed and threatened for nearly two years on the web both at home and at work. The perpetrator could only be charged with lying to an FBI agent because the crimes [harassment- now signed into federal law] weren’t in place.
Sure, there’s snarky comments on a blog or a mean myspace page but then there’s a more directed kind of harassment which can affect your life, such as your job and your sense of well-being [in the case of threats].
Let her rot in prison (county prison too) for a few years and realize that she snuffed out a young girl’s life. Let her immaturity be her solace in the slammer as she obviously has no conscience.
“I see no moral or tactical difference between this and a pedophile going impersonating children of a net to manipulate someone. She became a predator. She should be treated like one.”
I couldn’t agree more. There is no difference and a pedophile doesn’t need physical contact to be aroused. She should be treated as a pedophile and put in prison.
If this is the surest way to prosecute and incarcerate her, so be it. I have more faith in our system than to cower at the thought of abuse. The system punishes abuse also.
A point that I think everyone (including Ms. Catalano) is missing:
Isn’t there a difference between using a pseudonym and pretending to be an entirely different person? When I post online under a pseudonym, I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not – I’m me, just with a different (and obviously fake) name. There would be a big difference between me posting in a forum under a pseudonym as a 24-year-old woman (which is what I am) and posting in a forum under a pseudonym as a 40-year-old man. The problem comes from this woman’s willful misrepresentation of herself, not the use of a pseudonym to do so, and future legal cases based on this precedent would hopefully reflect that.
I myself, would have walked over to this witches house, to personally take care of the problem.It would have been quick,and very painfull.Take care of yourself,and your family,because the American judicial system is geared for the criminals,NOT THE VICTIMS…ask Orenthal Simpson!!!!
bottom line this kid was CRAZY to begin with, where were her parents and if their daughter had all these mental health issues why then were they not with her at the time of her death. im sorry but i have absolutely no compassion for anyones suicide. if it wasnt brought on by this little internet farce then she would have certainly found another reason to end it all. Sorry but no jail time for the drama momma perhaps some civil litagation in the form of punitive damages. i normally would jail anyone for any reason but this one just does not seem to apply
What she did was unquestionably wrong, but how can we hold her responsible for that young girl’s death. We need to take some personal responsibility in this country rather than finding someone else to blame. People being mean to you is no reason to kill yourself no matter how depressed you are. This is along the logic lines of blaming alcohol makers or auto makers for drunk driving accidents.
I agree with Bill. I read that in Lori’s statement to the police the at a point the conversation became sexual. My question is why did she continue? This makes her a pedophile. A 49 year old woman makes online sexual exchanges with a 13 year old girl. It doesn’t matter if she meant to make good on any of it.
I thought that this would be the way to prosecute her.
To become a member of MySpace, individuals are required to submit
registration information – including name and date of birth – and have to agree to
certain TOS that regulate their use of the website. Among other things, the
MySpace TOS [Terms of Service] require prospective members to provide truthful and accurate registration information; to refrain from using any information obtained from MySpace services to harass, abuse, or harm other people; to refrain from soliciting personal information from anyone under 18; to refrain from promoting information that they know is false or misleading; and to refrain from posting photographs of other people without their consent. The indictment alleges that Drew and her coconspirators violated all of those provisions.
From the link provided it’s clear that Drew is being prosecuted for far more than making up a fictitious name–and rightly so.
Additionally, you atate; “As a parent of teenage kids, I’m sympathetic to the Meier family and align myself with those who wish to see some kind of punishment served on Lori Drew for being intentionally mean to a child she knew was vulnerable and depressed.” and actually conflate what appears to be conspiracy and colusion with “being intentionally mean” then proceed to demonstrate an alignment with the perpetrators, not the victim. Why, with the use of adjectives such as these, one would be tempted to think that this is not such a big deal. As a mother you should no better. To me, it doesn’t appear that you are willing to do anything. In democracies the evil that is visited on them are the evils that are allowed to exist. I do, however agree that in part we share a responsiblity to teach our children civil discourse. Sadly though, many parents are shirking that responsibilty,or teaching something else entirely different, (and evil, in the case of the Drew family).
In my eyes this woman is guilty of Manslaughter. She pushed a young underage girl with history of Mental Illness to Suicide. She should be held accountable for her actions. She should be Jailed for a long long time.
Kent,
Your question where was the mother? she was downstairs and then out with another child when her daughter was hanging herself. The mother tried to stop her from accessing myspace.
Yes the daughter was emotionally unstable. But it was despicable for Lori Drew to deliberatly attack this girl and destroy her emotionally. Lori Drew may not have committed a crime and I think this prosecution is a stretch. But she could be held civilly repsonsible in a a tort action. Not all wrongs need a criminal law , there are civil actions that can be taken.
Kent:
From what I understand the parents were with her in the house when she hung herself. Additionally she was under medication for clincal depression. Just a guess here but, pschotropic drugs can effect people strangely at times. It is possible that whatever medication she was taking contributed to an altered perception of reality. That said, this is congruent to you, your friends, your mother and her friends beating a retarded classmate after school.
What a crock. It’s sad when our laws are so convoluted that someone can’t be prosecuted for causing the death of a child. And Michele Catalano,if that’s your real name, pontificates on the law being more important than Megqan Meier. An Adult causes the death of a 13 year old and Catalano thinks shunning is good enough. One would have to think Catalano is a liberal who belives that just because she would shun Lori Drew, that settles the case. But Lori Drew, will rationalize the death as not to be her resonsibility and what of others who play these kind of vicious games. If a slap on the wrist is all they have to worry about, we will see plenty more copy cat crimes. I suppose when children beat other children and then post the videoes on the web, Catalano thinks they shouldn’t be held accountable. Or when terrorists post messages or tutorials on how to kill people, we shouldn’t take any action because we wouldn’t want to infringe on the sacrosanctity of the web. The real problem here only touch on, in passing, by Catalano is that prosecutors didn’t take the time to find a good rationale for charging Drew. They didn’t work hard enough to find a reasonable enough way to make Drew bear responsibility for her dispicable actions. But that does not mean it wasn’t possible. The internet is a new universe that has its own set of interactions. We will need new laws to govern proper behavior. Those laws will have to be developed to address the crimes committed.
I don’t understand why the Meier family has not filed a wrongful death suit (in civil court) against Lori Drew. That would certainly bring attention to the problem.
While I do understand your premise that it is a stretch to charge this woman with the laws used to indict her, I am not understanding of your conviction to protecting people’s ability to pass themselves off as someone they’re not. Perhaps the two biggest problems with the Internet are the fraud perpetrated by people acting under false identities, and the anonymity of phony little handles that make it “okay” for people to slander and libel others without responsibility or recourse all over message boards, etc.
The Constitution protects our rights to freedom of speech from action by the government, however, it doesn’t protect a right to “con” others with a false identity. If, as you say, you don’t want your employer or employees to know what you’re saying, perhaps you shouldn’t say those things. Or, more importantly, if people were more open about truths instead of “publicly” agreeing with politically correct drivel before going online to “privately” to anonymously post their “true” feelings society would be in a far better place.
Are you people so seriously hungered for vengeance that you are blind to the consequences of setting this precedent? Nevermind, the answer is in the question.
Honestly I miss the point.
From what I’ve read it looks as Lori Drew should be charged with instigation to suicide.
Which in most countries (I’m not sure about the US, in ,most of the EU it certainly is) is considered a serious crime, to be punished with several years of jail regardless of whether it happened on the net or in the
real world.
You all make good points and have given me a lot of food for thought. While I would not exactly call Lori Drew a pedophile, I can see how you can make the distinction that what she did borders on the same type of crime.
I am in no way saying she should not be held responsible in some way and punished for her complicity in the death of Megan Meiers. Just want to make that clear. Personally, I’d like to have a few minutes alone with her. I would really like to see her charged criminally for her part in Megan’s death, not for her part in violating a term of service.
And yes, there is a distinction between creating a pseudonym and creating an entirely different personality… like I said, I appreciate that the comments here have given me a lot to think about.
I’ve been a foster dad to many troubled kids over the last few years. We’ve had kids diagnosed with depression, bipolar, ADD, ADHD, substance addiction, RAD, OCD, ODD (GOD I hate that one) and others. Nearly all of them so far have been girls, for reasons that aren’t quite clear to me, but whatever.
When you’re dealing with kids like this, it doesn’t take much to set them off. I’ve heard a LOT of threats of suicide over this time, but I’ve developed a pretty fine sense of when they mean it. I would NOT be able to tell if a kid was in a bad way by the words they type in a written message. You just can’t have that good an idea where a kid is at without being able to observe them in person. This is the very reason emoticons were invented…to give a more blatant way to indicate happy, sad, kidding, etc.
I would not presume to pass judgement on this woman myself, without finding out a LOT more information that doesn’t seem to have been released publicly. What was her role in the girl’s life before this whole incident? Did they have any kind of relationship, adversarial or not? How aware was she that this girl was depressed, and did she have an understanding that clinical depression is nothing to mess with? Many people have no clue that threats of suicide from a teen can be much more than drama.
All that said, the woman’s despicable, and would not be allowed near any child I was responsible for. But criminal responsibility? I have a hard time with that.
As a foster dad, let’s say I hug one of our girls when she’s feeling down, and tell her I love her and it’ll be okay.
A week later, the social workers and cops show up on our doorstep, take away all kids living in our house, all their stuff, strip our fostering license and take me away in cuffs for sexual assault. Sound farfetched? It’s not. I’ve spoken to several people who have lived this sort of thing. They did no wrong (and quite a bit right) and almost had their lives destroyed as a result.
There are AT LEAST two sides to every story, particularly when it involves troubled kids. I haven’t heard enough of the woman’s side yet to outright condemn her.
In my opinion, authorities need to sit down and think about what this woman did. They need to identify her action and charge her for what she did instead of making up charges. They look lazy to me, as in they are not doing their job. Are you going to tell me that there are no laws to punish what she actually did? How about stalking? How about manslaughter? How about homicide? Charge her and let the jury decide if she is guilty.
Bust a cap in her head.
When I first heard she was being prosecuted for SOMETHING I felt a little better about life. Ahhhh, justice is served. And then when I heard what she was being prosecuted for, I took a pause. I may have even uttered an audible, “Uh oh.”
A couple folks here know my real name, but I choose to use Timmer when I blog and Tim O’Connel when I’ve written some bad fiction simply because I have a family, and while I’m willing to stand by everything I’ve written, I’m not willing to open my family up to any repercussions, real or imagined, from folks that disagree with me. Just ask Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom if you think it’s just paranoia.
Under this law as it’s being used in this case, Ben Franklin and Samuel Clemens would be targets for prosecution if they were writing on the web today. I’m no Franklin nor Clemens, but there are lots of reasons people may have for choosing to remain anonymous and insulated from their writing personas.
From what I’ve read, the world of teenage girls can be quite cruel. One girl can befriend another with the express purpose of betraying her new friend later as wrenchingly as possible. Perhaps Lori Drew had been that kind of girl when she was a teenager.
Nonetheless it is horrifying to think that a mature woman and mother could stoop so low and vicious.
Why would it have been absolutely necessary, Stacy? Furthermore, wouldn’t it have actually been less theoretically harmful to our legal system for a lynch mob to have gone after the Drew family than to have a precedent which criminalizes all of the possible actions listed in this article? Not that I advocate retributive violence against the Drews, but objectively speaking, the lynch mob would be far less harmful to society than the bad precedent which can be, despite your protests, extremely easily abused.
As I said on my own blog about this subject, the ability to get people in trouble for free speech here is catastrophic if the prosecution’s arguments are taken seriously. Not only that, but Drew will have to live as a social leper wherever she and her husband go. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if her husband ends up divorcing her so that he can have a sense of normalcy in his life. Even as a conservative Reformed Protestant, I would find myself entirely sympathetic to a man who divorces his wife after finding out that she has a heart this utterly black and cold; at a minimum, she’d deserve the nickname “Satan’s apprentice” for life…
Additionally, what she has done is objectively speaking worse than the sort of behavior exhibited by a child molester. Most people would agree with that, given how insidious her attack on Megan was. The moment that her past gets out in any new community, she’ll hardly know a moment’s peace.
Personally I think she should be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. 1) She engaged other people in her criminal enterprise with a directed goal of causing this girl to commit suicide. 2) It is no different than cutting the brake lines on someone’s car then claiming “Hey, I just cut the brake lines. If she hadn’t started the car then she’d be alive. You can’t possibly hold me responsible for her death.” That’s a BS defense, and I think a competent prosecutor could absolutely make the case that her actions constituted a criminal conspiracy to kill that girl.
One last comment and the I will go away, I promise.
In my world I willing,(and in some cases un-willing), abbrogate SOME of my GOD given birthrights for the sake of civil governance. Without my abbrogation this would be nothing more than societal law of the jungle. This is primarily to produce a society that is conducive to producing civil, responsible individual citizens and to promote a collectve that is not possible any other way.
If, as you state, “in this cruel world things like this happen every day”, there is no need for me to abbrogate any right. For I can be as evil and cruel as the man next to me, if that is to be the case. I was under the presumption that there were some societal borders which we were not ready to cross. I am sadden that it appears we have crossed that threshold and are accelerating. In this world, 13 year olds are fair game.
Prosecutors combed through the entire state legal code and said that she didn’t break the law. That’s why this is in federal court. What she tried to do wasn’t homicide by any respected legal started from Old Testament law, to modern American law. It was trying to convince someone to kill herself.
Cutting the brakes on someone’s car is quite different from what happened here. The person whose brakes are cut has no control over the actions which lead up to their death, thus making it murder. Psychological manipulation is still just manipulation. There was nothing stopping Megan from just blocking “Josh” and ignoring his words, except her own lack of willpower (understandable, but still not enough to make Drew a murderer).
To the question “Cyberbullying: Despicable, But Criminal?”, to me, the answer should be yes. I’m not a legal expert so I could be wrong, but I would think it falls under existing harassment, stalking, and perhaps sexual predator laws, depending on what exactly she wrote in her letters to the girl.
If in the act of stalking or harassing the girl, she additionally violating the terms of service with MySpace, I say charge her with that as well. Throw the book at her.
Michelle,
I’m kind of tentative about responding here, I have read criticism of this indictment on high-flown legal blogs and found the reasoning wanting, and said nothing.
First, know who charged Drew, what they actually charged her with doing. It’s not what you say.
She is charged with violating TOS, per se, but violating permitted use of a private commercial webservice computer located in another state, in order to gain unauthorized access to information about another person in furtherance of a tortious act, and conspiracty to do these things. ALL of those things, PUT TOGETHER. Not “this thing hers, and that over there too, but boolean “THIS AND THAT.”
My frank impression at the law blogs, is I have found them trying to read both the charges and the applicability of the statute through a desireability filter, not cold appraisal of whether the technical language of the statute is fulfilled, or whether Drew’s actions are the criminal equivalent of some other form of unauthorized access to protected information.
The “tortious action” element is not murder nor does it have to be.
Her tort is alleged to be, and need only be, trying to intentionally inflict emotional distress (while doing the other things she is charged with doing).
The fact that there is no equivalent state law to produce an indictment for the same reasons, means only that Missouri has no equivalent statute for this violation of interstate commerce law.
That doesnt mean that the Federal charges are bogus, It does’t mean that interstate commerce laws should not apply. Nor that the state made any mistake. Assuming there is a law under which to charge Drew in Missouri, misjudgment or proper use of discretion by Missour prosecutors contributedto their decision not to charge under some local law.
If Drew had used some local BBS service, the Feds would not be involved.
Jack Banas, the local prosecutor “found” a statute to charge Drew with, but (inexplicably) determined it did not apply because in his determination there had been no attempt to harm Megan. I could go on at length about that decision and have elsewhere, because there were both good and bad reasons to do so but anything thoughtful would be too long to include here.
Now, it seems to me the court will have to decide if Drews admission that her chief motivation was to gain access to Megan’s private Myspace page, otherwise hidden from users is getting unauthorized information. Megan invited “josh” to view it, but Drew used a trojan boy to do it.
If Drew had created a trojan horse on a page that Drew had created, and Megan willingly clicked on it, that would be “hacking” and fit anyone’s definition of the statute.
So why is the “trojan boy” different from the “trojan horse”?
Well?
Also, about that door note analogy: If I tresspass, and I commit a tort on private property, say, leave you a note that is crafted to deceive, with shocking news in it – say , I have run over your child and driven her to the hospital- but the whole thing was just a hoax to punk you, the tresspass and the reasons for doing it could be criminal.
Edit that to ” she is not simply charged with violating TOS, pe se, but also…”
Some thoughts:
1. Huxley’s main comment here is on the mark, and the libertarian law bloggers are not.
2. Jim’s comment that “Personally I think she should be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. 1) She engaged other people in her criminal enterprise with a directed goal of causing this girl to commit suicide” is interesting, and not yet refuted here. I’m not familiar enough with with this case–is what Jim claims true?
3. Michele Catalano’s use of “mean,” “nasty,” and “hurtful” and the like minimizes Lori Drew’s darker and, frankly, murderous plotting, and the acute sufferings of the victim. I find it despicable that certain bloggers (including a favorite one of mine) are so concerned with this “precedent.” Really–do they really feel that millions of Americans will now find themselves facing criminal charges for not revealing their real names on their comment posts? And is people’s right to post anonymous comments on blogs really something so substantial next to the tragic death of a thirteen year-old girl anyway?
Welcome to the nanny state. Someone did something horrible we don’t like. We demand that the nanny ( the government) fix it, right now! So in response to our cries, they do. A little more freedom is lost, the day become a little darker, and we regress a little more.
radtop, when you can engage in less hyperbole, I will take your comments seriously.
Sarahw, thanks for your explanation.
Nathan,
Bad cases make for bad law. The federal government has no way of consistently enforcing the violations that this precedent could create, thus making its enforcement selective. Selective enforcement tends to by abused by those with an agenda or an axe to grind, thus reducing the society’s rule of law to rule of men.
Why is the death of one teenage girl so serious that you would change an unrelated law just to get a half-assed justice for her? If you want to prevent this, then get the legislature to pass an appropriate, clearly-written law. Contortions of the law breed injustice, but you seem to care not for the injustice that “getting justice” in this one situation could create.
Your position reminds me a lot of the gun grabbers who say “are gun rights worth the lives of children,” and who never gauge the fact that gun control will save some children, but it will kill others as well. As always, causality is not one dimensional; one cause can have multiple, separate outcomes as it effects ripple outward into the world.
Mike T, before I move on to our points of disagreement, I want to say that your point about selective enforcement of laws is a legitimate one. Also, I agree with you that the relevant legislatures should be passing laws to deal with situations like this.
At the same time, I don’t see a legal or moral “right” to anonymity on the ‘net, and in any case there are ways of remaining anonymous without resorting to faking completely different personalities. In fact, this doesn’t actually seem to be the only, or even the main, issue here (see below).
More importantly, my understanding is that MySpace TOS were violated–and rather egregiously so. As commenter Huxley above noted,
Huxley went on to write
Why should Lori Drew not be prosecuted for violating both the letter and the spirit of an agreement that she willingly signed? Her crime was not only failing to provide truthful ID–something that MySpace required of her–but also in actually harassing and causing harm to a person–two things also prohibited by the MySpace Terms of Service. Accordingly, it seems to me that if this is the point upon which she is being prosecuted, it’s a very good one–and thus I must disagree with your statement that this is a bad case making bad law.
(A brief aside about guns, the usual libertarian position is one I disagree with, just as I am disagreeing with what seems to be the usual libertarian position on this issue and this case.)
Nathan,
You don’t have an explicit right, but right now a de facto one exists. It would be injurious to free speech, among other rights, if there were a federal mandate to end anonymity and pseudo-anonymity. In other words, it would be bad for the public liberty if the prosecutor gets his way because it would empower the state without much public gain.
Why would you want to use federal criminal law to enforce a civil contract? Her use of MySpace was in violation of their Terms of Service, and thus they should sue the hell out of her instead of getting the feds involved. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer that criminal law generally never intersect with contractual agreements. Yes, she might be able to be prosecuted under this agreement, but that doesn’t mean that the law that she is being prosecuted under is a good one, especially since companies like MySpace have the legal muscle to enforce their ToS agreements against users like Drew with powerful ramifications for a lone individual.
The libertarian position here is that you are taking a bazooka to swat a fly. Yes, you will revel in the fly’s death, but you will also be out a chunk of your home.
I just don’t think it’s necessary to warp laws to prosecute her because she will live with a stigma for life, and there is ample room for the Missouri legislature to adopt legislation to address this sort of attack on people with bipolar disorder or a similar illness. On the aggregate, Drew can be allowed to slip by the wayside, as society just moves forward by providing a clear, effective law to provide punishment for similar behavior in the future.
Indeed. Most blogs do not require you to register under your real name (or if they do, they usually allow you to post under a pseudonym. Look at PJM for instance).
Government’s role here is to enforce contracts. In this case, the MySpace TOS is a contract. Plus, you know, what everyone else has said, more or less.
Perhaps Michele could provide us with a few legal alternatives to what hs been done to Lori…
This woman is cruel and heartless, and inflicted pain and suffering on someone on purpose. Let the bitch pay.
I am hoping this will be a precedent-setting case that will help write better, tougher Internet stalking laws – because, let’s face it, the Founding Fathers didn’t see this one coming.
The criminal codes and legal precedents do not exist to punish this evil woman, and any attempt to reform the laws to deal with bizarre instances like this is sure to fail. The obvious response is to use the powerful tool that is at hand: a civil suit.
She will have to endure months of torment, going through discovery, depositions, waiting for the case to come up, and the trial itself. The media will savage her, repeatedly reminding the public of the case. She won’t be able to run off and let the world forget her. Hell on earth.
The hard evidence is all against her; her reckless malice is certainly comparable to that of a sexual predator, if not worse. What jury would fail to grasp that? What jury would find in her favor? If a jury trial is not available (I don’t know the details of the civil court system), what judge would dare let her off?
So: sue her. Do NOT settle with her — compel a trial, and before a jury if possible. Depend on publicity and financial ruin to devastate her.
Justice? Maybe not, but as close as we can get. Take it.
MikeT –
I would agree with you about “manipulation just being manipulation” were we a) talking about an adult victim here who was b) of sound mind.
There’s a reason we have different rules for children and adults in our legal system. We, as a society, recognize the special vulnerability of children to adult manipulations whether they be sexual or otherwise. That’s why they’re not allowed to sign contracts, held fully accountable for their actions in court, are protected from sexual predators in ways that adults are not, etc. In addition, I would argue that the child’s mental issues (which Drew was well aware of) made it impossible for her to make a reasoned decision in this matter – a key point in your attempt to refute my brake-cutting analogy. I would further argue that Drew knew it would be impossible for her to resist the emotional manipulation because of those mental illnesses, and it was a major factor in her decision to pursue her criminal enterprise in the first place.
Just because the state prosecutor made the decision that he thought the case would be too difficult to make doesn’t mean that a) no laws were broken, or b) that another prosecutor given the exact same set of circumstances wouldn’t choose to bring the charges. Your assertion that the state’s failure to bring a case is proof that no case could legally be brought is, in fact, no proof at all.
Lots of crimes aren’t prosecuted across this country every day because the prosecutor decides the case would be too time-consuming or that they might ruin their conviction rate by bringing a case that they had a possibility of losing or for any number of other reasons which have nothing to do with whether or not an actual crime had been committed.
You choose to take the prosecutor at his word that there was no possible way to bring a charge. I don’t. I think he would rather let the Feds try the lesser charge than even running a slight risk of ruining his win-loss record in court in a high-profile case which might adversely affect his career. I still believe that the entirety of the facts of this case would absolutely support a conspiracy to commit murder charge, and I believe the prosecutor was simply too cowardly to bring it.
Trolls who post “Your mom is gay” in a online message board are dime a dozen. On the internet everyone is faceless, so they’re emboldened to flame some annoying poster that gets on your nerves. You won’t approach a dejected bunch of female soccer players who just lost a game and say “You biotches got PWNED FTW” because you have to mind their vulnerability. In MySpace or anywhere online, you don’t have to.
Whether this should be crime if it leads to a loss of life, I don’t know. But if you create a fake persona to bully a target just for the sake of a certain reaction something needs to be done.
I agree with Bensen. I would not wait for the government to decide what to do. I would take the woman to court and make her defend herself in front of 12 parents. The public scorn and financial strain would be far more punishment then any verdict a prosecutor could produce. And a civil suit would take less time to reach the courts.
The problems is that the feds want to muscle in on this prosecution to show that they are “doing something”. It seems that there is no appropriate federal law for this type of case.
The better approach may be to look to state law, and to ignore the Internet aspects involved. If state law does not have a remedy for extreme psychological cruelty in such circumstances, then perhaps state law should be changed.
As regards civil remedies, Lori Drew has no real defense to an action for punitive damages, for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Jim,
The murder statutes, as written, won’t work because they require that the person who is to be charged knew that their actions would result in the death of the individual. To be blunt about it, unless the prosecutor can actually prove that Drew knew beyond a reasonable doubt that her words would have a direct cause of suicide, first and second degree murder are legally out of the question. Don’t believe me? Go look up the statutes themselves.
If the prosecutor actually got the charges to sick, then it would have warped the murder statutes to the point that any action that **might** cause suicide, would be considered murderous. That could range from breaking up with a depressed girlfriend, to firing a struggling employee.
The issue isn’t the Internet. The issue is that one person hounded another to death. This is a lot like the gun control craziness: people confuse the means with the act. It is reasonable to argue that using a firearm to commit murder worsens the crime, since it was using a tool of power to commit the crime. The same might be said of the Internet. But the place to start is with the crime, not with the tool. And this is especially true with the Internet, whose value to learning is demonstrated by sites like wikipedia and mathworld and whose value to human freedom is demonstrated by the struggle of repressive regimes to restrict it.
For everyone so concerned about a troubled young girl being treated badly on myspace, why is there so little questioning as to whether it was appropriate for this girl to be on myspace in the first place. Everyone seems so worried about how the laws should protect from this type of bad behavior when it seems like the bigger problem is that everyone thinks it is OK for a 13 year old girl to have an on-line ‘romance’ with a 16 year old boy. Would her death have been less tragic if it had really been a 16 year old boy who was ‘mean’ to her? As some have pointed out, there are any number of hazards lurking for children through the anonimity of the internet, yet parents continue to allow them to participate without adult supervison — why not just drop your 13 year old troubled child at the mall by themselves and hope for the best!! And the only way that anyone can be ‘hounded’ on the internet is for them to actively engage — deliberately and repeatedly. Did it never occur to her mother to monitor and/or limit this child’s access on the computer, or more importantly, if it was even appropriate for such a ‘troubled’ young girl to be on myspace in the first place? Using the internet for a learning tool is a far cry from unattended myspace access, and if parents are going to continue to let their children (including emotionally unstable 13 year olds) enter the internet world unattended there will never be enough laws to protect them from the hazards.
Michele,
In thinking about the legal issues involved in the Lori Drew case, I think it might be helpful to try the following thought experiment.
First, remove Lori Drew and the other adults from the case.
Apparently, the daughter had access to the fake account, so this is not entirely unreasonable. If what the mother did violated federal law, presumably the daughter also violated the same law as she participated in the same conspiracy and accessed the same account.
Subtracting the adults, we are left with is a 13 year old girl registering a fake account on a website and using it to be mean to another girl in her class.
The registering of the fake account, violating the terms of service, is apparently what makes it federally illegal. So, let’s remove the technology and the way the prosecutor is applying the contract language from the equation and imagine instead that the correspondence occurred in real life, without an intermediating third party. Let’s say, for example, that the notes from “Josh” were slipped into the target’s locker.
What we are left with is a teenage girl playing a mean prank on another teenage girl and that girl ends up with her feelings hurt. You know, the sort of thing which has happened all day, every day, in every high school in the history of high school.
Yes, it is bad that teenagers bully each other and are mean to each other. No, it should not be a federal crime carrying a possible sentence of five years for hacking, even if it happens on the internet, violates Terms Of Service and the victim happens to react very badly to the bullying.
There is no legal right to not have your feelings hurt.
=darwin
Also, there seem to be a lot of comments along the following lines :
She engaged other people in her criminal enterprise with a directed goal of causing this girl to commit suicide.
No. There is no reason to believe that Lori Drew or anyone involved in the conspiracy had a specific goal of causing Meier to commit suicide. There is some evidence that they had a specific goal of “messing” with her, “messing” with her is a different goal than causing her to commit suicide. The fact that the poor girl happened to respond by committing suicide does not retroactively make that suicide the goal of the conspiracy.
I am frankly terrified that many of my fellow citizens apparently do not see this key distinction, or are choosing to ignore it.
=darwin
@darwin:
It was more than simply “messing” with her. Lori Drew knew that Megan Meier had emotional instability problems, and (allegedly? yeah, whatever) used that knowledge to induce an uncontrolled emotional state in which Meier presented an immediate danger to herself.
In your little “thought experiment,” you miss that a teen girl who hounded another into suicide, would be doing it for kicks, just to see how far she could push the victim. It isn’t a “teen prank” when it’s a constant, deliberate action intended to cause emotional distress. It probably borders on a social disorder (look it up).
Lori Drew never grew up. Her adolescent behavior demonstrates that. If, at 49, she is still engaging in this kind of teenage viciousness, she needs to be removed from society.
@Adele: MySpace’s TOS only requires that users be at least 14 years old, which Megan Meier was not. However, I don’t know of any states that allow minors to enter into legal contracts without the consent of a parent or guardian, something never once mentioned in MySpace’s TOS or Privacy Policy.
I agree. The understandable desire for retribution against this horrible woman (which I certainly do feel myself) is blinding folks to the fact that there may not be any legitimate crimes with which to charge her. She should be sued for every penny she owns or ever will own, and beyond that she should be shunned by every community in America, or anywhere else in the world. But beyond that, we need to be careful about how far we’re willing to go to punish her.
We’ve seen plenty of examples in recent years that justifiable moral outrage can lead us to make terrible mistakes. If a case for manslaughter or child endangerment can be made against Lori Drew, that would be fantastic as far as I’m concerned. But cooking up highly questionable pretexts for criminal prosecution based on the MySpace terms of service is wrong, and it does put us all in danger.
Vigilante justice lowers us to the level of those who committed the initial misdeeds.
Far better to educate others so it doesn’t happen again. One way: support the Megan Meier Foundation.
Sorry Kate, but “educate” is not justice. “Education” won’t bring back Megan Meier any more than “justice” will. And if we can’t get “justice,” then we’ll say we’re “educating” people, so we can say we at least “did something.” I don’t buy that.
So which is better, “vigilante” justice, or no justice at all?
Adele — Megan’s parents actually did supervise her internet use. They had the password to her myspace account and she required permission from them to log on. They frequently checked the activity on her account.
the the first people who support lori drew–KENT and LEE–your comments are very insensative. I understand your points, but you couldn’t have had a bit more compassion, I mean we are talking about a 13 year old girl’s suicide here. I have not suffered from depression and I’m counting that neither have the two of you, otherwise there would have been some understanding of Megan’s thought process. The article stated shewas taking medication for her depression–meaning her parents knew about her emotional distress. It also said she was smiling a lot more and seemed much, much happier in the days leading up to her tragic death. So there was no reason for her parents to be concerned with Megan’s well-being.
we can’t play the “what if” game here, we can only talk about what is. And what is is that Lori Drew made some pre-meditated decisions to suggest an already emotionally unstable CHILD take her own life. Nothing is more cruel or heartless than that. Whether Mrs. Drew meant her suggestion or not isn’t the point, the point is that she made a decision so say those terrible things to Megan with some inclination of what the outcome may be. She isn’t a ten year old boy taunting a peer, she is a 49 year old GROWN UP who had a huge part in a young girl’s suicide.
She should be punished rightfully.