Fat Slut

13 year old Megan Mier kills herself because she thinks her “boyfriend” on Myspace doesn’t like her anymore. The “boyfriend” was actually the 47 year old mother of a former friend of Megan. The mother was mad that her daughter and Megan were no longer friends, so she created a fake Myspace page to “mess with Megan.” The 47 year old new Megan was on antidepressants. There is a team of experts exploring the facts of this case trying to figure out if anyone did anything “legally” wrong.
Who is to blame? Obviously the neighbor mother is sick and should be at fault ethically, but is cruelty a crime? Megan’s parents? They claim to have been supervising her use online, they had her on antidepressants; could they do more? MySpace? What did they actually do wrong?
Aside from the tragic results of Megan’s situation, what struck me as so awful is that the cruel taunting that invades every Jr. High and High school is no longer just in the lunchroom or confined to the hours of a school day. The harassing that once happened in the hallways follows kids home to their living rooms and permeates their lives. What is there to do? Is this something that can be monitored? Should it be monitored? Furthermore, in this situation Josh the “boyfriend” didn’t even exist. Kids are making “friends” w/complete strangers? Online sexual predators are nothing new, but elaborate schemes created for the very purpose of deceiving and humiliating? There is no one right answer, but it’s interesting and perplexing to think about.
No formal charges have been filed yet in Megan’s situation because no one knows what to do yet.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html