On May 15, 11:25=A0pm, Mack the Knife <bulldog101...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Woman indicted in MySpace hoax suicide
> Fri May 16, 2008 12:21am BST
> by Dan Whitcomb
>
> LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of
> pretending to be a love-struck teenage boy on MySpace and drove a 13-
> year-old girl to suicide with cruel messages was indicted on Thursday
> on federal charges.
>
> Prosecutors say Lori Drew and others created the fake MySpace persona
> of a 16-year-old boy to woo neighbour Megan Meier for several weeks,
> then abruptly ended the relation****p and said the world would be
> better off without her.
>
> Meier's 2006 suicide by hanging, just hours after she read those final
> messages, made worldwide headlines and prompted calls for social
> networking sites like MySpace to crack down on cyber-bullying.
>
> "This adult woman allegedly used the Internet to target a young
> teenage girl, with horrendous ramifications," U.S. Attorney Thomas
> O'Brien said in announcing the indictment in Los Angeles, where
> MySpace is based.
>
> "Any adult who uses the Internet or a social gathering Web site to
> bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl,
> needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences,"
> O'Brien said.
>
> Experts said the indictment, which was handed down in Los Angeles
> after Missouri authorities declined to prosecute Drew, was a first of
> its kind and could stretch the bounds of the federal statute on which
> it was based.
>
> "We are in uncharted waters here," University of Southern California
> law professor and former federal prosecutor Rebecca Lonergan told
> Reuters. "This case is unprecedented and it's also a very aggressive
> charging decision."
>
> Lonergan said Drew was charged with accessing a protected computer to
> obtain information, a statute typically used against defendants who
> hack into government computers.
>
> "While I think most people agree that it merits punishment to harass a
> young girl to the point where she commits suicide, it's not clear that
> this conduct is covered by this federal statute," she said.
>
> A FICTIONAL BOY
>
> Prosecutors say Drew, mother of a teenage girl who had a falling out
> with Meier, and several others created a profile for the fictional
> "Josh Evans," using the picture of an unwitting teenage boy.
>
> They then contacted Meier, who lived four doors away in O'Fallon,
> Missouri, through MySpace as "Josh" and spent several weeks flirting
> with her before ending the relation****p on October 15, 2006.
>
> Several hours after the final message, Meier, who had argued with her
> mother over the relation****p, hanged herself in the closet of her
> bedroom in a St. Louis suburb, still unaware that "Josh" did not
> exist.
>
> The indictment charges that after Meier killed herself, Drew had the
> phoney MySpace account deleted and warned a girl who knew about it
> that she should "keep her mouth shut."
>
> After the incident became widely known, the Drew family was shunned by
> members of the community, targeted for abuse on the Internet and their
> small advertising business was vandalized.
>
> Drew, who faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison if
> she is convicted on all of the charges, was expected to surrender to
> authorities in Missouri.
>
> (Editing by Philip Barbara)
My mistake. She was indicted. Not yet convicted or sent to slam.
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