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This story has all the makings of a tragic soap: a vulnerable love sick teenager, a sick vengeful adult and death.  Unfortunately this story is not confined to the pages of a book, but is a reality that took place in October 2006 and resulted in Megan Meier, aged 13 at the time, taking her own life.  But why did she do it?  What had happened before?  Who caused it?  And what does this have to do with technology?

It all started when Megan fell out with the daughter of her neighbor Ms Drew in St Louis, prompting Ms Drew to take it upon herself to spite Megan.  She did this by creating a fictitious 16 year old boy, Josh Evans, who lived in the local area which she did by creating a fake MySpace account.  This was then used to contact the unassuming Megan, and create a friendship, although the implication is that Megan believed it to be more serious than that.

But why would she do this?  The idea was to get back at Megan by then breaking up the virtual relationship, which of course would cause harm to Megan—the aim of the whole scheme.  However the comments were incredibly harsh, including one that said the world would be better of without her and a distraught Megan took her own life.  Now, Ms. Drew is on trial under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something only previously used against computer hackers but the only law in Missouri that the prosecutors could take her to court for.

Although she is not being directly charged with the death of Megan (the judge had considered this, but later dismissed the idea of excluding suicide evidence) she could still end up with a 5 year prison sentence.  However this will end up being a very gray area, as Dean Steward the defense lawyer believes “The jury is going to end up thinking that Lori Drew is being tried for the death of Megan Meier. .  .”  Nevertheless, there is still a chance that the jury will take this into account regardless, which although is not ideal, it could result in a full 5 year sentence.

So what can we learn?  Firstly that there are bad people out there, and that we are in danger of becoming immune to this threat because of the amount that it is publicized.  Perhaps the teens of today don’t care what adults say and will go out of their way do to the opposite, but we must remember that they are still vulnerable and that social networking can be dangerous.  So if you are considering getting back at an ex, a hated enemy or an irritating boss, remember that it is not hard to track this kind of thing. 

Source [BBC]