GolfHos

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-16-myspace-suicide-case_N.htm

Man, I don't even know what to say.

Sad.

That was my thought too! I can't imagine how her daughter is taking this (the women accused). Just wondering how horrible the kids in town are treating her. Also wonder if she had anything to do with the whole thing......

I'd imagine they're taking it better than the dead girls family is.

And yes, the daughter very much had something to do with the whole thing.

Edited for clarity:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/15/internet.suicide.ap/

Frankly, I don't really care too much about the daughters 'Feelings' or Mrs. Drew, who at 49 should know better. I doubt she ends up in jail, but I think the pain and suffering of being dragged in and out of court and incurring 10's of thousands of dollars in legal fees is the least she deserves.

The worst part is this case may just get thrown out only because of what she is being charged. It really has nothing to do with the girl that committed suicide. It only has to do with what the woman posted and the charge is more for a hacker breaking and entering/theft type of charge.

Everyone knows the power of suggestion is huge, especially to a hormonal/emotional teenage girl. That mother should have known better.

There was also involvement from a babysitter and a friend of the daughter (who is thought to have been the one that escalated the 'harsh' messages).  Its local so its been all over the news here.

Sad stuff, but I'm not sure how to feel about prosecuting someone for saying mean things.  Isn't that the childhood we all grew up in?  The girl had significant emotional issues already, she was upset by the messages, she thought her mother wasn't taking her side..... she took it to an extreme and killed herself (none of that shows up in the first article - thought I'd fill ya in - it was her own mothers lack of reaction to her distress that was the final breaking event).

Absolutely, the woman should have known better and discouraged her daughter from repeatedly harassing the girl - but I'm unfamiliar with anything like this being prosecuted before.  Why should the Internet be so different?  I can say 'you're better off dead' in person, but post it on the Internet and I'm subject to prosecution?  Strange precedent.

Some kind of line got crossed when the 49 year old woman started directing the action.

I'm just sayin'...

It is always hard to blame any family member that is dealing with a loss, but unfortunately "her own mothers lack of reaction to her distress that was the final breaking event..."

This is all very sad, but you are right, kids are cruel. It is the tools that we give to our kids to deal with this cruelty that will help them. (and I don't mean the way that is in question here!)

I certainly didn't mean to blame the mother - the majority of my 'blame', if you could even call it that, was her emotional ....well, handicap.  She was under the care of a physician and taking medication - this was not an emotionally healthy girl before all this happened.

But again, growing up I saw, heard, even witnessed all of the same (or very similar)  behavior detailed in this story - and no kid I knew killed themselves.  No one ever once considered taking anyone to court.  No one even considered a law to prevent it.  It quite simply was the harsh reality of children being cruel to one another.  Now, I never witnessed an adult taking part in it - but I certainly knew a few parents with which it would not have surprised me (and they were not highly respected people as a result).  The woman certainly deserves the looks, stares, and glances that come her way.

A girl needlessly killed herself - people are looking to blame someone.  But I think trying to blame someone is the wrong route to take here - it leads you down a road you best not take.  As difficult as it is to accept - there is nothing that can be done to protect overly sensitive young kids from the world.

The mother on trial sounds to have reverted back behaving in the petty ways she most likely acted when she was a teen. 

The difference between her and a teen is that she should have known better.  In a situation like what she got involved in, a higher standard of behavior is expected from an adult.  She should have behaved like, well, an adult.

I don't see this situation as being a lot different from a little league baseball dad coach who instructs a 12 year old to go out on the mound and fire a fastball at an opposing player, simply because the dad coach wants to get back at the kid for some petty slight they perceive.  If by some sort of freak chance, that batter is killed by the act, I have no doubts that the dad coach should and would be held criminally liable for the death of that child.

In this case, the mother inserted herself into some sort of petty conflict that sounds rather typical for kids that age. By her actions, she clearly and quite obviously intended to send a child a hateful message intended to inflict emotional harm. As a result of her actions, one of the children is dead.

Hell yeah she's guilty.  I don't see how this is a close call.

I don't think a blame the victim defense is going to work.

Your usual talent for quality analogies missed the mark this time.  This was not an overt act that directly led to death - there was no ball thrown, no bat swung, no board check delivered.  This is an attempt to criminalize the power of suggestion.

While the mother is certainly petty and should have known better - she was not directing the attack like a battlefield general, and had (from early accounts anyway) not even been aware of the direction the hoax had taken.  The babysitter sent messages, and her daughters friend sent some (apparently the more hurtful ones - fake boyfriend 'dumping' her, etc.).

But criminalizing the power of suggestion - that is the road we cannot go down.  How many people have posted that Brit and her crazy psyche should off herself?  If she does can they be charged with a crime?  What about me telling aske that he should kill the president if he hates him that much?  Should he do it, am I now responsible for the presidents life?  What about all the times someone on this board told me to go *fudge* myself?  Should I perish in the act, due to a faulty fleshlight I'm sure, are they now criminally liable for my death?  As slippery slopes go, this trial has an 80* pitch.

BTW, the above is nowhere near my complete thoughts on the case - there are holes to fill - but I'm busy at work today and unable to lend enough time to the scribing.

Am I missing something here?  The thrust of it seems to me to be the IIED, not the cyber-crime charge.  A woman created a fraudulent MySpace account appearing to belong to a 16-year-old boy.  She then engages in a pattern of conduct to lead the victim into a romantic online relationship with said non-existent boy.  She then has non-existent boy jilt the victim, urging suicide.  This is far, far past the point of one child in the schoolyard calling another child fat or ugly.

Even without an actual suicide denouement, how is that NOT intentional infliction of emotional distress?  If Drew or her pals actually knew (as is alleged) that the girl was clinically depressed or on meds for it, that hole just gets deeper.

I think this case is similar to scaring the bejesus out of an old dude with a heart condition and causing him to die of a massive heart attack. Almost every time someone makes a racist remark on TV,  some apologist will defend the remark as not having racist "intent". In this case, I think the intent to harm the girl is pretty clear. Only the degree of the intended harm is left to question. Whether or not there's enough evidence for something like involuntary manslaughter is up to the court to decide.

No problem.  Thanks to hard working people like yourself, we'll stave off a recession with thanks to your productivity.

Doing my part at work, too--let me just say that copulation, or the lack thereof, is now recognized by the Dept of Treasury as a leading economic indicator-- I didn't bother to read what the mother had actually done since I am swamped at work.  My vague understanding from when this incident was first reported was that she inserted herself in a teenage catfight, fanning the flames, committing injurious acts of perjury and perdition.



All the prosecution has to do is prove she is an evil, manipulative moron, which seems like a slam dunk. 

I can't wait the several years it will take for Scalia's writing for the majority, affirming her conviction and imprisonment, even though she may be-technically, innocent of all charges against her-on the basis that putting away people like her not only saves American teens from terroristic tragedy, but more importantly, it makes for great theater to be exploited by the Law and Order franchise and contributes to economic productivity.

My bad. 

In my defense, I've been corresponding a lot lately with colleagues in China.  As an Olympics sponsor, Blader Industries, Inc., is planning a Copulationfest to correspond with the games.    We figure with 1.6 billion people, representing ~800 million acts of copulation, we can just about corner the world wide market with this single stunt.

Long day... getting longer.

Anyway - I started on this story from a different place than most of you are.  I read the early articles, I knew that more people than the mother were using the account, etc.  It still does not paint a very good picture of the adult involved - she's clearly a bitch.  However, she was unaware of the nasty turn the account communications took - unaware that an 'employee' of hers had ended the 'relationship' and was sending nasty messages using the account.  That this 'employee' was the one that sent the 'world would be better off without you' message.  The adult was clearly being a bitch, but played no role at all in the nasty turn the account took on that final sad day.

I already knew that Megan's response to the messages were nasty in nature themselves - that her own mother scolded her for sending them after repeatedly telling her to log off previously in the day; which resulted in the 'you're my mother, you're supposed to be on my side' cries by Megan right before she ran upstairs and hung herself.

I had already read that Megan had threatened to kill herself long before any of this began.

There was a lot going on here.


And anyone that thought I was equating this to schoolyard 'fatso' chants, well I apologize for not being specific.  I witnessed more than once a kid telling another that everyone hated them and they would be better off dead.  Very specific and applicable incidents to the one here.  One resulted in the girl running home crying... to be out the next day playing again as if nothing happened.  And a boy that wanted to beat up the kid that said it... I cannot recall who won the fight, I had no dog in that hunt.  These are clearly incidents of intentional infliction of emotional distress - yet resulted in nothing.  In this case, we're appalled by the result - a senseless suicide by a young girl.  We're allowing the sad result to cloud our judgment on harassment law IMO.  I'll say it again - its a slippery slope.


And now that I just looked up IIED, I find that its a Tort Law (not criminal, if thats the right term) and is often viewed unfavorably by courts because of the 'slippery slope'.  My GRE results did not lie  ;)

I didn't know it was a multi-party harassment account.   That mitigates a bit.  I can see your point.    But the 'bitch' set things in motion, after all.

Still, I think you are too harsh on the victim with the whole "she had issues, afterall" argument. 

Most kids her age can be categorized as emotionally unstable. T Especially with respect to how they deal with interpersonal relationships.  Many such kids, completely normal, are in therapy and receiving meds to help them cope with this difficult developmental period.

From my own experience with my own daughter who has passed and emerged from that horrible period, there seems to be this brief window of development when they are acutely sensitive to how they are perceived by peers and they take EVERYTHING literally. 

They have one foot in their childhood, where everyone is honest and certain things (like the internet) possess authority no less than their teachers and parents.  I cannot tell you how many times my daughter promised me that there was no possible way she could fall prey to an internet predator because, "Facebook doesn't allow those people to become members."  The innocence was lovely, but I just couldn't convince her otherwise.  At the same time, the kids become drunk with the freedom these online communities provide them.

The Facebook/Myspace communities make the natural self perception problems worse because  just like our little playground here, there are fewer inhibitions and far less nuance in communication, compared to the ways our species spent eon's of evolutionary time adapting.  The cute little emoticons at our disposal are a poor substitute for the infinite array of subtle non-verbal cues we deploy. 

The poor girl had no way to know that she was being yanked....with the complicity of adults, no less.

She was like a lamb thrown in a den of full of lions.  She didn't have a chance.