Lori Drew
|
Lori Drew is an American woman who is notoriously known for her unforgiving actions by pushing 13-year old Megan Meier into committing suicide after an intense campaign of cyberbullying against her. She had created a phony MySpace account posing as a 16-year old boy named "Josh Evans" and harassed and bullied Megan to the point where she ended her own life.
Background edit
Lori Drew was the mother of a friend of Megan's whom she'd recently had a falling out with. It was reported that she set up the phony MySpace account to get information about Megan and later humiliate her, in retribution for her allegedly spreading gossip about Drew's daughter.
Megan, who had suffered from depression for years and had already endured bullying to a degree, initially received positive messages from the mysterious "Josh Evans", but eventually the messages became hurtful and mean. The first of these type read: "I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends."
More messages of this type were sent, some of Megan's messages were shared with others, and bulletins were posted about her. Tina told her daughter to sign off, and went to the orthodontist. She called her daughter to ask her if she signed off, and she didn't. Megan was sobbing hysterically. When her mother got home, she was furious that she hadn't signed off. She was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back. Megan then told her mother, "You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!" and then left from the computer and went upstairs. According to her father Ron Meier and a neighbor who had discussed the hoax with Drew, the last message sent by "Josh" read: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows who you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you"
Megan responded saying, "You're the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over." The last few exchanges were made via AOL Instant Messenger instead of MySpace. When she ran upstairs, she ran into her father. She told him about the trouble and went to her room. Ron went downstairs to the kitchen where he and Tina talked about the cyberbullying and made dinner. Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence, and ran up to Megan's room. Megan Meier had hanged herself with a belt in the bedroom closet. Despite attempts to revive her, Megan was pronounced dead the next day on October 17, three weeks before her 14th birthday.
Aftermath edit
Initially, Drew denied knowing about the offensive messages that were sent to Meier. She told the police that the account was aimed at "gaining Megan's confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people". The neighborhood mother who had told the Meiers that Drew had the hoax account said "Lori laughed about it", and said she had intended to "mess with Megan".
Drew was indicted and convicted by a jury of violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 2008 over the matter. Her conviction was vacated by a federal judge on a post-trial verdict, on grounds that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act did not intend to criminalize the conduct of which Drew was accused. The government chose not to appeal this post-trial ruling. Following that her MySpace account was deleted after that.