Slashdot Mirror
Woman Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case
longacre writes "The Associated Press is reporting an indictment has been handed down in the sad case of Megan Meier, the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend. It was later determined the boy, Josh Evans, was a fictitious identity created by a neighbor of Meier's family. Lori Drew, of a St. Louis suburb, has been charged with 'one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.' Interestingly, despite the alleged crime having occurred strictly in Missouri, the case was investigated by the FBI's St. Louis and Los Angeles field offices, and the trial will be held in Los Angeles, home of MySpace's servers. Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."
She had severe depression. If it wasn't this trigger it would have been another. Simply signing up for myspace and logging in for the first time could have been a major contributing factor.
Perhaps she thought that young girls should not invest their emotions in people they meet over instant messenger or on social networking sites and wanted to teach her a lesson. Maybe she was afraid that a predator was going to get this young girl and thought it better to drive her away from this dangerous activity before she got seriously hurt. Clearly her parents were absent from the equation and maybe this woman wanted to teach *them* a lesson.
Maybe if this generation of kids were not such cry-baby emos she would have taken her lumps and learn from the experience instead of offing herself over something so trivial as an internet boyfriend.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You might as well say "If you fall down, you stand up again.". Which works for everone who is healthy enough to get up on their own.
Alright, I would actually consider that a good analogy. And I stand by it (no pun intended).
With one modification - If you fall, either someone will come along and help you, or the wolves find you first and have a snack. Megan fell, and rather than look for help (she did have reasonably sane parents, regardless of the closeness of their relationship), she slathered herself with wolf-bait and made bleating lamb noises.
Yes, because everyone has to behave like a robot, especially teenagers and people with psychological problems.
Sorry if this offends your delicate sensibilities, but at the end of the day, Megan chose to end her own life. If it makes me a robot for seeing the situation as it stands, rather than in the biased light of some well-intentioned-but-baseless believe in the sanctity of human life, well then, so it goes.