In a case that has been in and out of the news somewhat regularly since 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide by hanging herself on October 16, 2006 after becoming the butt-end of a cruel hoax that was allegedly perpetrated by an adult and a juvenile, the case appears to be moving forward—at last—with the indictment of Lori Drew, 49, on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing computers without proper authorization, handed down by a Los Angeles federal grand jury on Thursday, May 15, 2008.
To recap for those readers who are not familiar with the story, when the case began some nineteen months ago young Megan believed that she had made a new friend in Josh Evans, described as a cute teenage boy who began exchanging messages with Megan on MySpace. Josh claimed that he was born in Florida and had recently moved to O'Fallon, Missouri, located east of St. Louis and not far from Megan's residence in Dardenne Prairie. Megan, who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder and was on medication, continued the correspondence with Josh for several weeks before he suddenly broke off his friendship with her on October 15, 2006 by telling Megan that someone had told him that she was cruel and unpleasant toward her friends. The problem was that Josh didn't exist, and the following day Megan hung herself. She died a day later.
On the day that Megan hung herself, she had received very cruel messages from someone logged into "Josh's" MySpace account. The messages that were being posted were stating things such as, "Megan Meier is a slut; Megan Meier is fat." Megan, upset, told her mother about the messages as her mother left the house for an appointment. When she returned home, she viewed the messages in question and was surprised to see that her daughter had engaged in vulgar language in her responses. She expressed to Megan that she was upset over the language that Megan had used. Megan went to her father in another area of the house because she was feeling so badly about what had happened, and he attempted to raise her spirits by telling her that everything would be okay. Less than half an hour later, Megan was found in her bedroom after hanging herself.
The following day—the day Megan died from her injuries—Megan's father located another message from Josh in which Megan had been told that she was not a good person and that the world would be a better place without her. Although law enforcement authorities were eventually brought into the bizarre case, they would not be able to retrieve the message found by Megan's father. The message had either been deleted or, possibly, the lengthy passage of time between Megan's death and when her parents learned from another parent six weeks later that the cruelest of hoaxes had been perpetrated against their daughter had rendered the message lost somewhere in cyberspace. The other parent, it turned out, had learned about the Josh Evans MySpace profile from her own daughter's use of the online service and had felt compelled to share what she knew about the case with Megan's parents.
Lori Drew, the woman who, along with one or two others, allegedly used "Josh's" fraudulent MySpace profile to send messages to Megan, was not immediately charged with a crime. Missouri law enforcement officials initially said that the case did not seem to fall within the parameters of any law that was on the books and that little, if anything, could be done about Drew's purported actions and the actions of those who had allegedly helped her. Nonetheless, Drew, who lived down the street from Megan and her family, allegedly told the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department that she had used the Josh profile because she had been attempting to gain Megan's trust so that she could learn what Megan had been saying about her own daughter online. Last month, a 19-year-old employee of Drew's told ABC's Good Morning America that she had created the fake MySpace profile, and that Drew had written some of the messages sent to Megan. Drew's employee claimed that she, not Drew, had sent Megan the message about the world being a better place without her being in it, and that the message had been an attempt to get Megan to end the online relationship with Josh because she felt that the hoax had gone too far.
"I was trying to get her (Megan) angry so that she would leave him alone and I could get rid of the whole MySpace (profile)," Drew's employee said on national television.
Although the case began in Missouri, it ended up in federal court in California because MySpace is based out of Beverly Hills and their computer servers are located within Los Angeles County. So far there has been little mention regarding the fact that 13-year-old Megan had been able to sign up for an online service that requires its members to be at least 14—apparently there were no safeguards in place other than the new member's attestation of being the required age. Such lax sign-up rules gives one cause to ponder whether MySpace should somehow share in the responsibility for problems associated with its online service and the victimization of innocent parties by its members.
Megan's mother initially told reporters that she didn't believe that anyone involved in the case had intended for Megan to commit suicide.
"But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile," she said.
Meanwhile, Lori Drew has denied creating "Josh's" MySpace account. She has also denied sending any messages to Megan. Each of the counts in the indictment against Drew carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, if convicted.
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