Cyberbullying made illegal by new law
In Dardenne Prairie, Mo., town officials have passed a measure making online harassment illegal. It’s a different kind of Megan’s Law, made in response to the death of 13-year-old Megan Meier. She hanged herself last year after receiving a malicious message from a friend she met online. Megan became friends with Josh Evans on the social networking site Myspace.com. Josh claimed he was 16 years old and being home-schooled in a nearby town. But one day, Josh sent a message to the young girl, saying she was “a bad person” and “everyone hates you.” The cruelty and magnitude of the messages led Megan to hang herself in her bedroom closet on Oct. 16, 2006. Weeks later, her parents learned that Josh was not a real person. He was just an online identity created by a parent of a former friend of Megan’s and her mother who lived down the street in their St. Louis suburb.
The two teenagers had argued, and the girl’s mother wanted to find out whether Megan was saying negative things about her daughter. Using clues from a journalist’s article, bloggers not only identified but began to harangue the friend’s mother, hurling epithets and referring to the girl’s family as “psychos who pushed a teenager to suicide.” The mother’s contact details and a photo of her husband were also posted online, as if to invite the online community to take justice into their own hands. At least a third of all teenagers say that they have been victims of cyberbullying at some point. But victims of online harassment that doesn’t escalate to physical harm sometimes do not pursue legal action. So no cursing about English at RLSLOG anymore or we’re gonna sue you, got that?
Source: ABC News
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