Mother Pleads Not Guilty in MySpace Suicide Case
You probably remember the Megan Meier case, in which a teenage girl
committed suicide after a MySpace romance went bad. The romance itself
and the boy involved were in fact fictional, perpetrated as a
vindictive prank by the mother of a former friend who lived down the
street.
A Missouri woman who prosecutors say drove a 13-year-old neighbour girl to suicide with a cruel MySpace hoax pleaded innocent to federal charges on Thursday in the unprecedented case.
A Missouri woman who prosecutors say drove a 13-year-old neighbour girl to suicide with a cruel MySpace hoax pleaded innocent to federal charges on Thursday in the unprecedented case.
Lori Drew, who is accused of creating the fake MySpace persona of a 16-year-old boy to woo and then viciously reject neighbour Megan Meier, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and accessing a protected computer to obtain information.
She was ordered to stand trial on July 26 in the case, which legal experts say stretches the bounds of the federal statute on which it is based, a law typically used to prosecute defendants who hack into government computers.
It's true, in that the charges are a stretch. Still, Drew as an adult should have known better than to do this, and whatever it takes to get her into court - we approve of.
