Are Online Threats Crimes or Free Speech?

(U.S.A.)  The Supreme Court of the United States may soon decide whether or not to hear appeals of two cases in with people were convicted and sent to jail for making online threats, even though they later said they didn’t mean any harm.

In one case, Anthony Elonis of Pennsylvania, wrote on Facebook about killing his estranged wife. According to the Associated Press, he said:

 “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.”

The woman testified in court that she feared for her life. Elonis was sentenced to almost four years, and was released on February 14, 2014, according to The Express-Times. 

Email to talk show 

 In the second case, Ellisa Martinez of Florida sent an anonymous email to a talk show host. According to the Connecticut Law Tribune, Martinez said she was:

“planning something big around a government building here in Broward County, maybe a post office, maybe even a school, I’m going to walk in and teach all the government hacks working there what the 2nd amendment is all about.” 

As a result of the email, Broward County schools were locked down for three hours.

Martinez pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced Martinez to two years in prison, and ordered her to pay more than $5,000 as restitution to the police.

In both of these cases, the appellants are arguing that their statements, regardless of the threatening nature, should be protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Threats and custody battle 

A similar case was appealed to the Supreme Court last year. Franklin Delano Jeffries II, an Iraq war veteran from Tennessee, posted a YouTube video in which he played a guitar and sang a song that he wrote about his 13-year child custody battle. The lyrics included:

The best interest ain’t of the child anymore. The judges and the lawyers are abusing ‘em. [Pointing at camera]. Let’s get them out of office. Vote ‘em out of office. . . . ‘Cause you don’t deserve to be a judge and you don’t deserve to live. You don’t deserve to live in my book. 

Watch Jeffries video on Wired.com.

Jeffries posted a link to his video on Facebook and sent links to 29 Facebook users, including a state representative, a TV station. Twenty-five hours later, he removed the YouTube video.

Jeffries was arrested. According to KnoxNews.com, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office determined that Jeffries made “veiled threats” to the Knox County chancellor, his ex-wife and her husband.

Jeffries was convicted for using the Internet to transmit a death threat and sentenced to 18 months in jail, KnoxNews.com stated. Although he had been freed in 2012, he was in trouble again for using cocaine and making threats of suicide and murder on Twitter.

Read: Tweets land ex-soldier convicted in YouTube case behind bars, on KnoxNews.com. 

 Jeffries appealed his conviction for making the YouTube video and lost. Last year he appealed to the United States Supreme Court. His appeal was rejected.

Threatening language online 

In the two new cases, according to the Associated Press, “the Supreme Court is being asked to clarify the First Amendment rights of people who use violent or threatening language on electronic media where the speaker’s intent is not always clear.”

The American Bar Association has published more detail about the Anthony Elonis case, and it’s pretty scary:

After his wife of seven years and two children left him, Anthony Elonis was having a tough time at work, and was even sent home on a few occasions for being too upset to work. He was employed at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. One of the employees that Elonis supervised, Amber Morrissey, had filed several sexual harassment complaints against him. Elonis then posted a photograph on his Facebook page, taken at the Dorney Park Halloween Haunt, of him holding a knife to Morrissey’s neck with the caption, “I wish.” A supervisor saw this and immediately fired him. Two days after he was fired, Morrissey began posting violent messages about his former employer on his Facebook page. He also posted Facebook messages about killing his wife. Based on these statements, a state court issued Elonis’ wife a Protection From Abuse order. Ms. Elonis testified at trial that she took the threats seriously, and feared for her own and her children’s lives. Elonis’s Facebook threats kept escalating to a point where he was threatening police forces and elementary schools. By this point, the FBI became involved and, when they went to his home to interview him, Elonis refused to speak with them, and posted a message about it later on Facebook. 

I hope that the Supreme Court understands that online threats can be precursors to serious violence.

By declining to hear the Jeffries case, the Supreme Court let his conviction stand. It could do the same thing with the Elonis case, which would mean his conviction would stand as well.

But perhaps the Court should hear the arguments, and then declare, once and for all, that online threats are crimes.

original article found here

Online Romance Ends Violently

by Suzanne Goldenberg

An Israeli teenager went to the West Bank to see a young Palestinian woman he had met on the internet, and ended up dead, his body full of bullets. Opinions were divided last night on whether the couple was a modern Middle Eastern version of Romeo and Juliet or whether the boy was lured to his death.

The boy's body was handed over to Israel, more than 24 hours after it was discovered near the city of Ramallah. Reports on Wednesday had suggested that the body was that of a Palestinian. The dead teenager is believed to have been 16, and to have run away from his home in the coastal city of Ashqelon on Tuesday, carrying a large sum of money.

He becomes the 367th victim of the violence that has engulfed Israel and the Palestinians. But this death appears to have badly shaken the authorities on both sides. The Israeli prime minister, last night described the murder as "cold-blooded". A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority said it condemned all killings of Israeli civilians. Israel army radio reported that the boy may have been deliberately lured to the West Bank so that he could be robbed and murdered. The radio said that no money was found on the body.

Israel's Channel Two television reported that soldiers had seen the boy walking on the edge of Ramallah with a young Palestinian women. It said a car had pulled up alongside the couple, carrying several men in civilian clothes who opened fire.

original article here

Facebook Threats Trial Begins

by Peter Hall

(PENNSYLVANIA, USA) Anthony Douglas Elonis' alleged Facebook threats to attack Dorney Park, kill his wife and slaughter a class of kindergartners scared some and terrified others, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

But when a jury weighs the evidence against Elonis, it won't have to consider whether he intended to threaten those people, but rather that he knew it could be perceived as a threat.

Testimony in Elonis' trial on five counts of making threats under the federal cyber stalking law began Monday, with FBI Special Agent Denise Stevens explaining how Elonis attracted the agency's attention.

Elonis, 28, was arrested in December after authorities executed a search warrant at his parents' home on Schwab Avenue, Lower Saucon Township.

Shortly after Elonis was fired in October 2010 from his job at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in South Whitehall Township for making a Facebook post that his co-workers perceived as threatening, the park's chief of security, Daniel Hall, contacted the FBI.

He was concerned, Stevens said, about Elonis' subsequent Facebook messages under the user name Tone Dougie describing himself as a nuclear bomb, and warning that his employers had "[expletive] with the timer."

Another message, which included a "disclaimer" that the words were fictitious lyrics and an exercise of the constitutional right to free expression, described Elonis' fantasy of a pair of twin-engine Cessna aircraft crashing into the amusement park in an apparent reference to the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

Questioned by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Stephan, Stevens said the disclaimer, and similar language in a post Elonis made about killing his estranged wife, did little to ease her worries.

"To me, it made them almost more threatening," Stevens said.

Stevens read each of Elonis' messages from Facebook screen shots displayed on TV screens for the jurors.

In a Nov. 6 post about his wife, Elonis wrote it was illegal, under the terms of a protection-from-abuse order, to say he wanted to kill her. He noted it was also illegal to describe the best way to launch a mortar attack on her home.

In a Nov. 15 post, Elonis wrote: "Fold up your PFA and put it in your pocket. Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?" It ended with a declaration that he had enough explosives to "take care of the State Police and the Sheriff's Department."

The next day, Elonis wrote, "That's it, I've had about enough. I'm checking out and making a name for myself. Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined. And hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a Kindergarten class. The only question is which one?"

Stevens, who had been monitoring Elonis' Facebook posts, alerted the Lower Saucon police and surrounding school districts, she said.

In his opening argument, Elonis' attorney Benjamin Cooper asked the jury of seven women and five men to consider the context of Elonis' writing. He had recently lost his job and his wife had filed for divorce and taken away their two children.

"Mr. Elonis felt the impact of all that and he wrote about it in this medium called Facebook," Cooper said, noting that rap music contains similar violent imagery.

In an August court filing asking U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel to throw out the charges against Elonis, Cooper argued they are unconstitutional because they criminalize speech protected by the First Amendment.

He argued that Elonis' Facebook posts don't fall into one of the narrow exceptions to constitutionally protected speech called "true threats," in which the writer intends to place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.

Rather, they were crude lyrical expressions of his frustration about life.

In response, Stephan wrote that the federal law prohibiting the transmission of threats -- the cyber stalking law -- doesn't require the government prove that a writer intended to make a threat, only that he knowingly made a statement that made the recipient fearful.

In a ruling from the bench Monday, Stengel agreed.

The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday with testimony from Elonis' wife and Dorney Park employees.

original article found here

10 Internet Daters Die After Flying to Africa with Money

By Adam Boulton

Families fear victims have been poisoned by gang
'Bride' claims new husband became ill and died

Ten men who emptied their bank accounts and flew to Africa hoping to marry women they had met on the internet have died suddenly.

The victims, who did not know each other, all flew to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, after falling in love with local women online.

Their families in Belgium later received phone calls from Cameroon in which a sobbing woman told them their relatives had died from a mysterious illness.

Belgian police suspect the men were tricked out of the money they took with them to start new lives with their 'brides' before being poisoned by fraudsters.

One of the victims was named yesterday as Mikael Pietquin, 30, from Brussels, who vanished after falling in love with a woman nicknamed the African Bomb. His father has told police his son phoned home before he disappeared to say his future bride had made him eat a 'love plant' to improve his sexual performance.

'We heard nothing more until the sobbing woman phoned us and said: "Mikael is dead",' the father said yesterday.

'The bride said my son was sick when he arrived and took an overdose of medicine from Belgium. We did not believe her.'

Another victim was reported to be a former Belgian airline pilot from Hastiere in Southern Belgium.

original article here

Australian Lured to Her Death on Facebook

By Richard Shears

An Australian teenager was allegedly lured to her death by a man she met on Facebook after he offered her a fake job protecting wildlife.

Nona Belomesoff, 18, was found dead in a creek south west of Sydney after going to meet a Facebook 'friend'.

Christopher Dannewig, 20, allegedly set up a bogus profile to pose as an animal rescue worker and enticed his victim to the isolated spot.

Nona, who is described as a animal lover, was told she first had to go on an overnight camping trip that would be part of her initial training for the post.

Filled with excitement, she headed off to a railway station to meet 'Jason Green' - the fake identity allegedly set up by Dannewig.

The teenager told her family, who also believed the offer was genuine. Her body was found on Friday night after she failed to return home.

Dannewig, who also has profiles on My Space and Bebo, was charged with murder yesterday and was refused bail after appearing in court.

Homicide Squad detective inspector Russell Oxford warned about the dangers of Facebook and other social networking sites.

'It's an area where predators and perverts and other people just get onto. You just don't know who you could be talking to,' he said.

'This young woman had a passion for animals and was led to believe the overnight camping trip would lead to a potential job with an animal welfare group,' Inspector Oxford said.

'She told her family and they thought it was a genuine training area she was going to. That was part of the story to encourage her to go out there.

'And it wasn't until later on that we found out there is no such training facility like that and the people aren't affiliated with that place, so it was a bogus ruse to get her out there.'

Nearly 30 police officers searched bushland before the teenager's body was found in the Campbelltown Creek, although her cause of death has not been revealed.

Inspector Oxford said: 'I have been doing this for a long time, but we're very upset. To go outside in the dark and find a young girl lying in the creek bed...'

Comments her accused killer, Christopher Dannevig, wrote on social networking sites hinted at a troubled life.

'Life is full of s*** sometimes,' he wrote earlier this month. In April he wrote that 'a broken heart will heal in time but some wounds won't'.

Nona Belomesoff's grief-stricken mother, Nina, said through her tears today: 'She was scared she was going to lose the job she really likes, so she went - and never came back.'

Her brother Gary, warning young people not to trust strangers they meet over the internet, told Sydney's Channel Seven News: 'I can't believe such a human being would do this. It's so cold hearted.

'Be careful - you can't trust anybody over the internet.'

Dannevig, who appeared before Parramatta Court, west of Sydney, via a video link from prison at the weekend, has been remanded in custody and will appear in court again on Thursday.

original article here

Protecting Yourself Against Cyberstalking.

By JOSH LANDIS

Another alleged stalking incident has led to another death.

Nimzay Aponte knew her alleged killer, but she didn't know who he was. When Raymond Dennis met her online and cyber-stalked her, he said his name was "Mike."

Police said that Internet encounter ended with Aponte's death.

"Once we start talking to someone online we tend to forget they're strangers. We really don't know who they are. That cute 30-year-old guy may not be 30, may not be cute, and may not be a guy," said Parry Aftab of wiredsafety.org

Aftab said it isn't just people looking for relationships who are at risk.

"More adults are cyber-stalked and harassed than kids are cyber-bullied. They just don't talk about it as often," Aftab said.

Real estate marketer Amy Taylor said she was harassed by someone who might have found her number on the Internet.

"Somebody pretty recently was calling me from a blocked number. I reported that to the local police department here so they had that information on file just in case something should happen to me," Taylor said.

If you're one of millions of Americans who visit sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and Twitter, you're sharing more information about yourself than you realize. And it wouldn't take long for a determined stalker to track you down.

"This is a phenomenon that's with us to stay," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

"The Internet is a great place, but it is a vast billboard and don't put anything out there that you wouldn't put on a billboard on Route 80," Aftab added.

If you do become a victim of cyber-stalking, three steps: stop responding to the sender's messages, block their e-mail address and tell your boss or the police. (Take this article to the police with you if you think they won't believe you, demand they make a report and don't leave until you get a copy of the report.)

Authorities say more than a million women and nearly 400,000 men are stalked each year -- many of them online.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Mississippi Hospice Director Goes to Trial for Cyberstalking & Threats

Sound familiar? Exposed medical director then CYBERSTALKS & THREATENS the people who turned him in!! Sounds like Yidwithlid, Jacoby to name a few. Attack those who tell the truth. It's almost a fait-accompli that a guilty party will attack those who tell the truth about them! At least this guy's being brought trial over these cyberthreats, though of course, he has a lame 'excuse.' - Fighter

Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does.
~ Whittaker Chambers

Esther Lee Evans was suffering from diabetes and breathing problems before she died in a north Mississippi hospice in 2006, and her family had no reason to think her death was anything but natural.

So her daughters were stunned when authorities told them they were investigating Evans’ death and numerous others at the Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo.

“It was like somebody playing a bad prank on you,” said Evans’ daughter, Rebecca Dillard. “It was unbelievable. It just tore us apart.”

The hospice’s clinical director — charged with 11 counts of administering narcotics without a license — had been scheduled for trial Monday in Lee County Circuit Court, but a judge postponed it until next year.

Dr. Paul White, the facility’s medical director, and Marilyn Lehman, the clinical director, were charged in a 33-count indictment in April. White has pleaded guilty.

Lehman’s trial was postponed until February because her lawyer, Ronald Michael, had a scheduling conflict. Michael did not respond to messages this week, but has said Lehman is innocent.

Authorities, however, say the doctor allowed Lehman to determine doses and administer narcotics and then backdated the orders she had written.

Evans, 88, was admitted to the hospice in September 2006 suffering from diabetes and smoking related breathing problems. She had not been in the facility long when a nurse gave her medication to “help her relax,” Dillard said. The next day she couldn’t function. In a few days, she was dead.

The hospice’s attorney has repeatedly said that Evans’ death is not surprising or suspicious because she was terminally ill just like other hospice patients. The attorney, L.F. “Sandy” Sams, is emphatic that hospice employees did not hasten patients’ deaths.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood was not convinced.

Hood, whose office handled the investigation, has said some patients were “prematurely dying” because they were given such massive doses of morphine that “it was like a poison on the body.”

Hood would not comment this week because of the pending trial. He has told The Associated Press in the past that a grand jury was presented with several options, including that the hospice deaths were deliberate. They settled on misdemeanor charges of neglect, practicing medicine without a license and aiding and abetting.

It’s not clear if White will testify against his former employee. He struck a deal with prosecutors in June and pleaded guilty to six counts of aiding and abetting the practice of medicine without a license and one felony count of cyberstalking on the day his trial was to begin. He was sentenced to two years of probation and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The cyberstalking charge was for sending obscene computer messages to people he thought caused the investigation, and included a threat to “disembowel” the facility’s former chaplain.

He blamed the messages on sleeping pills and alcohol.

Still, the relatives of some people who died at the hospice are angry that Lehman and White were not charged with more serious crimes. Some of them believe White and Lehman are directly responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. That allegation has been repeated in at least one federal lawsuit.

“This has devastated us. It has torn our family apart,” Dillard said. “You just stop and think if it was your mother or your dad. How you would feel? Do you understand what I’m saying. It’s just like a horror story that came off television or something.”

Other people who lost loved ones in the facility were angry, too, but for different reasons.

Relatives of several people whose loved ones were named as victims in the indictment were outraged, saying the hospice provided excellent care. And accusations of euthanasia polarized the community.

The nonprofit hospice opened in 2005 as a pilot project to provide affordable care to rural areas and was intended as a model for other communities. Millions have been donated to the facility and some of the most prominent people in north Mississippi have worked on its behalf.

Dozens of people packed the courtroom for White’s trial, with several people standing because they refused to sit among the families of the alleged victims.

JUSTICE FOR MEGAN MEIER - SIGN THE PETITION

CLICK HERE TO SIGN

DEBBIE JOHNSTON OF FLORIDA HAS BEEN TRYING FOR 2 YEARS TO GET A SIMILAR LAW PASSED. What can we do to help her? write your ideas to: cyberpaths@gmail.com and we will publish legitimate, lawful ideas here.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!:

Here's a list of the addresses to contact, in order to make sure that Mrs. Lori Drew is punished appropriately by authorities & the business community:

A brief letter to lawmakers, sheriff's department and other people -- even an email or fax -- will show that we will not stand for this harassment, goad them to change legislation to make this kind of online harassment illegal.

Megan Meier is not the first kid or adult to be hurt by online harassment, and she won't be the last. It is the best chance for Lori Drew to see jail time she so richly deserves -- and get her child some counseling.

Write and/or fax a letter to:

Jack Banas, Prosecuting Attorney
Courts Administration Building
Room 601
300 North Second Street
St. Charles, MO 63301
~~~~~~~~~~

Tom Neer,
St Charles County Sheriff Department
101 Sheriff Dierker Court
O' Fallon, MO 63366
Fax: (636) 949-3078
E-Mail: sheriff@sccmo.org

Mrs. Lori Drew, the ADULT woman who started it all, actually had the gall to file a complaint against the parents of the girl she tormented, for destroying a "foosball table" she asked them to hide for Christmas.

The Meier family, when they learned of Drew's harassment of their daughter months after her death, destroyed the foosball table and drove its remains onto the Drew lawn. The police filed a report about the property damage -- but not about Drew's harassment and goading of Meier?!

Tell the police to drop the property charges and file new ones against Mrs. Drew.
~~~~~~~~

Rep. Doug Funderburk
MO House of Representatives
201 West Capitol Avenue
Room 236B Jefferson City MO 65101

Congressman Todd Akin (St. Louis)
District Offices 301 Sovereign Court, Ste. 201
St. Louis, MO 63011
314-590-0029 voice
314-590-0037 fax
EMAIL CONGRESSMAN AKIN - CLICK HERE

If you're not from Missouri, also write your own senator and representative. Ask them to work on a federal law that would make online stalking and predation, punishable by mandatory community service, mandatory counseling and/or jail time.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - CONTACTS - CLICK HERE
SENATORS - CONTACT - CLICK HERE
~~~~~~~~~~

Ed Weeks
President and CEO
The Saint Peters Chamber of Commerce
1236 Jungermann Road, Suite C.
St. Peters, Missouri 63376
Fax 636-447-9575

Mrs. Lori Drew is a member of this above Chamber. Make sure the Chamber knows that using a business temp to harass someone, albeit a 13 year girl, using their office equipment, goes against all ethics. Ask that Lori Drew and her company's membership be suspended immediately.
~~~~~~~~~~

United States Attorney (Eastern Missouri)
Catherine Hanaway
Thomas Eagleton U.S. Courthouse
111 S. 10th Street, 20th Floor
St. Louis, MO 63102
Fax: 314.539.2309

Carrie Costantin
Assistant United States Attorney
Project Safe Child Coordinator
Cybercrime Task Force
Fax: 314-539-2309

Ask the US Attorneys to take on this case and punish the Drew family for causing this girl's death.

DON'T LET JUSTICE DELAYED BECOME JUSTICE DENIED!

How many times can these cretins project their evil back onto us before the rest of the world takes notice; how many more Megan Meier's does there have to be? (from our private support board)

OPEN DISCUSSION BOARD FOR THE MEGAN MEIER CASE

PUBLIC OUTCRY ON MEGAN MEIER CASE

EOPC SUPPORTS THE MEIER FAMILY & CALLS FOR JUSTICE FOR MEGAN!
EOPC highly recommends you take a look at this blog (click link below):

THE WEEKLY VICE

'Dan Vice' is right on target with his assessment of this case.









We encourage our readers to please read our other post below (originally published 11/20/07) and write, email and/or call those listed at the bottom and make your outrage heard.

We believe charges can & should be filed against Lori Drew immediately for her sociopathic and deadly actions against a vulnerable 13 year old.

WE DO NOT CONDONE VIGILANTE JUSTICE. Calls and pressure on lawmakers however are encouraged. We also believe letting the Drew's advertisers know the sort of people they were doing business with was right. CLICK HERE FOR MORE

And Mrs. Drew, when you answer the charges against you - we want you to tell the judge to "Give it a rest."

THERE'S A LIST OF ADVERTISERS THE DREWS DEAL WITH HERE - CHECK THE COMMENTS. Write and tell them what you think!

- EOPC

MEGAN MEIER SUICIDE ROUNDUP

MEGAN MEIER - REACTIONS TO THE REACTIONS TO THE REACTIONS

HOW TO PUNISH A CYBERBULLY

CYBERPATH PUSHES GIRL TO SUICIDE

MORE INFORMATION

MYSPACE HOAX VICTIM'S FAMILY SEEKS JUSTICE

(This can happen to adults too! And this hoax? was being DONE BY AN ADULT WOMAN!! Their cry, like all victims of cyberpaths is for JUSTICE NOT REVENGE! Please read and forward this widely. Our prayers and sympathy go out to Megan's parents.

Our comments are in purple - Fighter)

‘No apologies’ over teen who hanged herself over failed romance, kin say
By Mike Celizic

The parents of a 13-year-old Missouri girl who hanged herself after a failed MySpace romance — later uncovered as a hoax — say they have yet to receive an apology from the family they blame for their daughter’s death. (PREDATORS and CYBERPATHS never apologize! They have no empathy! CLICK HERE TO READ OUR POST ABOUT THE LACK OF REMORSE)

“They’ve absolutely offered no apologies,” Ron Meier told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Monday. “They sent us a letter in the mail, basically saying that they might feel a little bit of responsibility, but they don’t feel no guilt or remorse or anything for what they did.”

Rather, said Tina Meier, the people are upset with her for going public with their story. Last week, while shopping, she ran into the woman who invented the hoax, Tina Meier said.

“She asked me to stop doing all of this,” she told Lauer. “I told her that we would not stop, that we were going to continue for justice for Megan because we knew what they did.”

(sounds exactly like these predators - Click on each name for more information):

• "It was all just a game" Beckstead
• "I'm the victim here" Langley-Guy
• "If you loved me you'd stand by my lies" Thomas
• "They went in with their eyes wide open" except I lied to them - Gridney/ YidwithLid
• "It's all false - my wives set me up" Hicks
• "all women are whores" Dorsky... etc!

Even when its done to VULNERABLE adults its WRONG. How dare you expose their cruelty! Right on Mr. & Mrs. Meier for speaking out on behalf of your child!)

The Meiers’ daughter, Megan, hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006.

The Meiers have not named the people because they do not want to identify their teenage daughter, who had once been a friend of Megan’s.

After the two girls had a falling out, the mother invented a 16-year-old boy, “Josh Evans,” created a MySpace account for him, and made Megan believe he was new in town and thought she was cool.

‘Oh, Mom, you don’t understand’
Megan, a girl who had battled attention deficit disorder, depression and a weight problem for much of her young life, believed him, despite her mother’s warnings to be cautious.

“That was always the talk,” Tina Meier told Lauer, repeating the conversations she had with her daughter: “‘Megan, c’mon, we don’t even know this person. Let’s not get too excited.’ She’d say, ‘Oh, Mom, you don’t understand.’ So I did talk to her daily about that. But children at this age, they don’t think that.”

And then the boy turned on Megan, leading a campaign of vilification and online name-calling that ended when Megan took her own life.

For a year, the Meiers kept quiet at the request of both the FBI and local law enforcement officials while they investigated the incident.

Ultimately, investigators told the Meiers that while the hoax was cruel, it was not criminal. (bull!! It was criminal in intent and hopefully will be prosecuted! They caused someone to kill themselves!)

‘Continue to monitor your children’
The case remains open, though, and the Meiers continue to hope that criminal charges can be filed under a federal law passed in January 2006 that prohibits online harassment.

“We are still continuing on with the fight on the criminal and the civil side,” said Ron Meier.

The family’s story is, Tina Meier told Lauer, a cautionary tale about the trouble that lies in wait for kids on the Internet, a tale made more painful because they had monitored their daughter’s Internet use closely and had talked to her about “Josh” and the events that ended so tragically.

“It was monitored highly,” Tina Meier said of her daughter’s MySpace account. “We had the password. She couldn’t sign on without us. We had to be in the room” when she was online.

They have not filed a civil suit against the people who invented Josh, but are not ruling that out.

And they also want to warn other parents and children to beware of people online who claim to be their friends. (and EOPC warns adults too)

“Continue to monitor your children,” Tina Meier told Lauer. “Take an extra step. Ask the question. Look at their computers, know what they’re doing. To kids, don’t trust anybody online that you do not know is your true friend.”

Tina Meier has said that she doesn’t think anyone involved intended for her daughter to kill herself.

‘Absolutely vile’
”But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile,” she told the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, which first reported on the case.

Tina Meier said law enforcement officials told her the case did not fit into any law. But sheriff’s officials have not closed the case and pledged to consider new evidence if it emerges.

Megan Meier was described as a “bubbly, goofy” girl who loved spending time with her friends, watching movies and fishing with her dad.

Megan had been on medication, but had been upbeat before her death, her mother said, after striking up a relationship on MySpace with Josh Evans about six weeks before her death.

Josh told her he was born in Florida and had recently moved to the nearby community of O’Fallon. He said he was home-schooled, and didn’t yet have a phone number in the area to give her.

Megan’s parents said she received a message from him on Oct. 15 of last year, essentially saying he didn’t want to be her friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn’t nice to her friends.

Megan seemed upset
The next day, as Megan’s mother headed out the door to take another daughter to the orthodontist, she knew Megan was upset about Internet messages. She asked Megan to log off. Users on MySpace must be at least 14, though Megan was not when she opened her account. A MySpace spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Someone using Josh’s account was sending cruel messages. Then, Megan called her mother, saying electronic bulletins were being posted about her, saying things like “Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat.”

Megan’s mother, who monitored her daughter’s online communications, returned home and said she was shocked at the vulgar language her own daughter was sending. She told her daughter how upset she was about it.

Megan ran upstairs, and her father, Ron, tried to tell her everything would be fine. About 20 minutes later, she was found in her bedroom. She died the next day.

Her father said he found a message the next day from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

Another parent, who learned of the MySpace account from her own daughter, who had access to the Josh profile, told Megan’s parents about the hoax in a counselor’s office about six weeks after Megan died. That’s when they learned Josh was imaginary, they said.

Creator of fake account not charged
The woman who created the fake profile has not been charged with a crime. She allegedly told the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department she created Josh’s profile because she wanted to gain Megan’s confidence to learn what Megan was saying about her own child online. (she should be charged with MALICIOUS MISCHIEF or COERCION)

The mother from down the street told police that she, her daughter and another person all typed and monitored the communication between the fictitious boy and Megan. (Why was the mother, an adult, doing this? WHY?)

A person who answered the door at the family’s house told a reporter on Friday afternoon that they had been advised not to comment.

Megan’s parents had been storing a foosball table for the family that created the MySpace character. Six weeks after Megan’s death, they learned the other family had created the profile and responded by destroying the foosball table, dumping it on the neighbors’ driveway and encouraging them to move away.

Megan’s parents are now separated and plan to divorce. (STRESS and anger! A few of EOPC's victims are divorced now because what happened - and a handful are the victims of smear campaigns by the exposed predators! At least one of our victims ended up in the hospital and one in court, six divorced and all traumatized - some with PTSD.)

Aldermen in Dardenne Prairie, a community of about 7,000 residents about 35 miles from St. Louis, have proposed a new ordinance related to child endangerment and Internet harassment. It could come before city leaders on Wednesday.

“Is this enough?” Mayor Pam Fogarty said Friday. “No, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s something, and you have to start somewhere.”

SEE THE INTERVIEW WITH MEGAN'S PARENTS.
Parents of MySpace hoax victim speak out

SOURCE

OPEN DISCUSSION BOARD FOR THE MEGAN MEIER CASE

JUSTICE FOR MEGAN

THEY PUSHED A GIRL TO SUICIDE YET FEEL NO REMORSE

JUSTICE4MEGAN

CRUEL MYSPACE PRANK ENDS IN SUICIDE

TELLING LIES: DID FRAUD KILL MEGAN MEIER?

ONE SICKO THINKS 'MEGAN HAD IT COMING' (may be Lori Drew's site - still unsubstantiated)

VOICES FOR MEGAN MEIER

To Mrs. Drew (the cyberpath/ perpetrator) - you know what EOPC calls someone who has no remorse; plays with minds of others (including a VULNERABLE 13-year old girl); tries to blame-shift, avoids responsibility and calls it "protecting her own daughter" when she, an adult, emotionally rapes another human being; who's a child? It used to be called MORAL INSANITY. It's the same thing EOPC calls the adults who play with the minds of other vulnerable adults here and then doesn't have the cajhones to take full responsibility & try to apologize to those they've irreparably harmed: A SOCIOPATH!

WHAT YOU CAN DO!:

Here's a list of the addresses to contact, in order to make sure that Mrs. Lori Drew is punished appropriately by authorities & the business community:

A brief letter to lawmakers, sheriff's department and other people -- even an email or fax -- will show that we will not stand for this harassment, goad them to change legislation to make this kind of online harassment illegal.

Megan Meier is not the first kid or adult to be hurt by online harassment, and she won't be the last. It is the best chance for Lori Drew to see jail time she so richly deserves -- and get her child some counseling.

Write and/or fax a letter to:

Jack Banas, Prosecuting Attorney
Courts Administration Building
Room 601
300 North Second Street
St. Charles, MO 63301
~~~~~~~~~~

Tom Neer,
St Charles County Sheriff Department
101 Sheriff Dierker Court
O' Fallon, MO 63366
Fax: (636) 949-3078
E-Mail: sheriff@sccmo.org

Mrs. Lori Drew, the ADULT woman who started it all, actually had the gall to file a complaint against the parents of the girl she tormented, for destroying a "foosball table" she asked them to hide for Christmas.

The Meier family, when they learned of Drew's harassment of their daughter months after her death, destroyed the foosball table and drove its remains onto the Drew lawn. The police filed a report about the property damage -- but not about Drew's harassment and goading of Meier?!

Tell the police to drop the property charges and file new ones against Mrs. Drew.
~~~~~~~~

Rep. Doug Funderburk
MO House of Representatives
201 West Capitol Avenue
Room 236B Jefferson City MO 65101

Congressman Todd Akin (St. Louis)
District Offices 301 Sovereign Court, Ste. 201
St. Louis, MO 63011
314-590-0029 voice
314-590-0037 fax
EMAIL CONGRESSMAN AKIN

If you're not from Missouri, also write your own senator and representative. Ask them to work on a federal law that would make online stalking, punishable by mandatory community service, mandatory counseling and/or jail time.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - CONTACT
SENATORS - CONTACT
~~~~~~~~~~

Ed Weeks
President and CEO
The Saint Peters Chamber of Commerce
1236 Jungermann Road, Suite C.
St. Peters, Missouri 63376
Fax 636-447-9575

Mrs. Lori Drew is a member of this above Chamber. Make sure the Chamber knows that using a business temp to harass someone, albeit a 13 year girl, using their office equipment, goes against all ethics. Ask that Lori Drew and her company's membership be suspended immediately.
~~~~~~~~~~

United States Attorney (Eastern Missouri)
Catherine Hanaway
Thomas Eagleton U.S. Courthouse
111 S. 10th Street, 20th Floor
St. Louis, MO 63102
Fax: 314.539.2309

Carrie Costantin
Assistant United States Attorney
Project Safe Child Coordinator
Cybercrime Task Force
Fax: 314-539-2309

Ask the US Attorneys to take on this case and punish the Drew family for causing this girl's death.

Victims need justice!