Town to vote on online harassment after girl's MySpace suicide, page 1
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Topic started on 20-11-2007 @ 06:54 PM by LDragonFire

Town to vote on online harassment after girl's MySpace suicide


www.usatoday.com
The tragedy of Megan Meier will take another twist tonight when officials in her home town vote on whether to make online harassment a local crime.

Meier is the 13-year-old suburban St. Louis girl who met a cute 16-year-old named Josh Evans last year on the social networking site MySpace. They became close, but suddenly he turned on her, calling her names, saying she was "a bad person and everybody hates you." Others joined the harassment — the barrage culminated in Megan's Oct. 16, 2006,
(visit the link for the full news article)


reply posted on 20-11-2007 @ 07:51 PM by Raist
reply to post by LDragonFire


I heard about this last night on the news and found myself at odds with myself.

What I mean is should we really become draconian enough to pass laws about bullying people on the internet? Wow that would really be a difficult law to really enforce or many people could end up in the stockades so to speak. How often do people get insulted over the internet when no insult was meant, how many times do people let their tempers flare a little further because they are on the internet? This could be a very bad law if passed because who is going to judge how far to take it and what will be considered punishable?
On the other hand I can see why these parents and many others would want this sort of law passed. Maybe this girl was just fine and this somehow worked its way over her to make her break down mentally. I wonder if they might also try to push some sort of “online predator” type of law at the adults responsible for the “game”.

Another part of me wonders just how stable this young girl was to begin with. I understand that many teens’ especially teen girls are more sensitive about the goings on around them and in turn likely to become depressed and commit suicide.

We do have to remember though the dangers of passing a law that might punish certain acts. It will be a narrow road that would need to be walked in order not to fall and possibly be punished. Or it could be a road so wide that those who should be punished would never have a word said to them.

It could be that these adults might be feeling extremely bad as they surely had no intention of this sort of thing happening. It is hard to blame someone for another’s actions all the time. I am sure that many of us have said something to someone at some time that really hurt a person possibly someone we had never met before and never seen again. I am sure the adults responsible are getting a few threats to their lives now too or at least threats of harm coming to them their family or property.

It is sad though that some adults could not see how devastating this might be and how childish it really is. I hope they are thinking about this nightly now as they lay down to sleep and throughout their day as they go through their workday.

Raist



reply posted on 20-11-2007 @ 09:20 PM by goosdawg
Boy, this is a tough one.

The very medium that enabled this irresponsible adult to harass this susceptible young lady is also the medium whereby they were outed.

The term, "Hoist by their own petard," comes to mind...

A local law to dissuade such behavior would, IMHO, be very difficult to enforce, since the internet is such an international endeavor.

But I think the parents of the victim may have recourse through civil means, since they may be able to make a case implicating the actions of the adult, through their egregious act of impersonating a minor.

It's just amazing to me the level to which some idiots will stoop to intentionally hurt a child these down and sorry days.

Pathetic, and oh so sad...my heart goes out to the parents of this young lady.


reply posted on 21-11-2007 @ 12:09 AM by SegaNerd
Originally posted by apc
Why is one of the most common knee-jerk reactions "That should be illegal!" ?

Is it so hard for people to simply take care of their own?

Had these parents known every keystroke typed and every word read by their child while on MySpace, homicidal child rapist central, she would still be alive.

If there should be a law against anything, it should be to harm or kill a child through neglect.

Oh, there already is a law against that.



I agree that the girl could've probably had a better support system with her parents, but I don't think it's right for them to moniter whatever she says. They knew about the relationship she had with the boy, and that is more then I'd let my parents know at that age. She was 13, she had the right to that sort of privacy. It was their choice to let her use the website, but do you think that they really expected her ex-friends mother to impersonate a cute guy, and play with her daughters emotions for what seemed like months, eventually driving her to her suicide? The fact was, the girls mother knew that the "boy" started saying mean things to her, and the girl killed her self anyways! The parents thought the MySpace profile was as legit as their daughter thought it was.

I think it's unfathomable that an adult would actually manipulate a 13 yr old girl like this, being over the internet or not.

From other stories I've heard about this, the adult responsible has not seemed that remorseful. They should atleast charge her with something, such as impersonating a minor, as someone else said.

P.S. I honestly think that websites such as MySpace should be 18+. If people (teens, parents, other adults), cannot excersice maturity and use the websites in the way that they were intended, then none of this would've happened, along with other sad cases as well (those places are breeding grounds for pedophiles).


reply posted on 21-11-2007 @ 02:04 AM by captainplanet
Common sense would tell you nothing good for the minor would come of it. The neighbor is absolutely at fault. She wasn't dead before, just depressed. It’s not first degree murder but it’s a very serious societal problem, it has to do with people’s perceived self importance. The self importance that allows them to go as far we will let them. A new policy, or at least a conviction of some kind, would only affect those cancerous, selfish minded people.

It would not have necessarily been something else. She probably would have went on being a normal depressed teenager until she met a real 16 year old boy and got over him like every other teenage girl. She was slammed with something that made no sense and was not mature enough to handle it. I doubt her peers would have been smart enough to pull it off that believably.

This is just what I think, I think the last comments sent to her were probably from the kids that had access to the account, but she never would have trusted “Josh” if the Parent didn’t create him. The neighbor opened an account purely to slander and deceive a minor in front of her peers, anyone whose made it to adulthood should know better. It is entirely the fault of completely inconsiderate and malicious behavior on the part of an adult against a minor.

And if they did nothing wrong why did they delete the myspace account immediately after she killed herself? Were they trying to hide something or was their mission just over?
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