Lori Drew charged over MySpace suicide

D

dWhite

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Another reason why I hate Myspace, and another good reason why it needs to be shut down completely.

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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/16/1210765091402.html

A Los Angeles federal grand jury has indicted a woman for her alleged role in a MySpace online hoax played on a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide.

Lori Drew of St Louis, Missouri was indicted on Thursday on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorisation to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.

Each of the four counts carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in prison.

Drew allegedly helped create a fake MySpace account to contact neighbour Megan Meier who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.

At the time of the incident, the Drews and the Meiers lived four doors apart in Waterford Crystal Drive, in the town of Dardenne Prairie. The Drew's teenage daughter and Megan were friends.

The online relationship between "Josh" and Megan bloomed for several weeks before the tone suddenly changed.

On October 15, 2006, Josh sent Megan a message saying, 'I don't want to be friends with you anymore because you're not nice to your friends'.

That post triggered a flood of hate posts from other users.

"All of Josh's friends and all of Megan's friends were calling Megan a whore, a fat ass. Calling her all kinds of god awful names," Megan's mother,Tina, told the ABC network in an interview last year.

Meier hanged herself on the evening of October 16, 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including the last message sent from Josh which read: "the world would be a better place without you, and have a s**t rest of your life."

After that, Josh's profile vanished from MySpace.

It wasn't until several weeks after Megan's death that the Meiers discovered Drew's involvement in the fake MySpace profile.

Drew, who was 48 at the time of the incident, has denied creating the account and sending messages to Megan.

She claimed through her lawyers that she did not instigate the Josh Evans profile, nor did she use the fake profile to communicate with Megan. While she knew about the ruse, the lawyer said, she was apparently unaware that the Josh profile had been used to attack her neighbour's daughter.

She claims the profile was the work of her teenage daughter and a teenage employee called Ashley Grills.

Last month, Grills, now 19, went on national TV saying that while she was responsible for setting up the fake Josh profile, Lori Drew and her daughter were also involved in the cruel hoax.
 

Zdroyd

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And that is why I hate MySpace.

I believe that mass community forums should be banned. Only private or one topic/group forums should be allowed. (In other words: no MySpace or FaceBook, If people want to join a forum it should be a private/one group forum. Ex: x10, Gamers Forums, Fan Groups, Clan Forums.)

Hmmm... The keys on my Keyboard are acting crazy. Backspace is deleting my whole entry (Which is anoying) and the onther non letter jkeys are messing up... This is weaird..\
 

ASPX.King

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I believe that mass community forums should be banned. Only private or one topic/group forums should be allowed. (In other words: no MySpace or FaceBook, If people want to join a forum it should be a private/one group forum. Ex: x10, Gamers Forums, Fan Groups, Clan Forums.)

^^^ what he said ^^^

i don't like mspace, twitter, facebook, and the like...
 

jsobeck

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Another instance of common sense gone through the window. How many people use Myspace? Millions. How many cases like this are there? Far less than that. The majority of people don't have any problems with Myspace, Facebook, etc. The people that do have problems generally have the sense to report it; I know I had a problem with a "friend" a few months back and I simply blocked him and reported his actions to the appropriate people at school and that was that.

Not to be the cold one with no sympathy, but if she went that far without anyone stepping in, who's to blame?
 

callumacrae

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I think it's horrible that someone would wind someone up so far that they kill themselves.
She should have told someone.
I don't think myspace should be banned, because not many people have trouble with it. I prefer Bebo, because apparently you can get viruses from myspace
 

Sharky

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So you could say that she was 48, and 'dating' a 13 year old through an online alias. Which opens a whole other bag of beans.
 
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DJ DR3NCH

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Myspace as the company/corporation isn't to blame, it's the people that use the website and the people that do these horrible things to others.
 

kkenny

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Seriously, you guys make it look like Myspace is the "e baddie" here. But it's not. It's a truthful organization where users around the world can communicate, but some people just don't have the common sense or the maturity yet to handle myspace, this they do stupid things. It's like blaming Windows for deleting your important pictures, when you accidentally pressed delete and empty recycle bin. It's just plain stupid.

I don't really care about Lori Drew, to me, she's a major idiot and I don't give one respect to people who died for stupid reasons. It's only her fault that she died, just cause some person she never met in real life broke up with her. That's just plain dumb. Waste of life.
 
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