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By Dan WhitcombThu May 15, 8:07 PM ET
A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of pretending to be a love-struck teenage
boy on MySpace and driving 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 neighbor Megan Meier for several weeks, then abruptly
ended the relationship 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 relationship on October 15, 2006.
Several hours after the final message, Meier, who had argued with her mother
over the relationship, 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 phony
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.