At least now that everyone knows it’s Lori Drew, they can keep their children away from Lori Drew’s daughter. I wouldn’t allow my own daughter to befriend this girl. Not with a sicko like that for a mother. I’d worry about her safety. And I’m sure daughter will be just like mother before long. Using tricks and deceit against anyone she deems to have done her wrong.

I think killing your self is not good.

[Disclaimer: Despite the harshness of this note, I wish nobody any harm. None of the "bad' players here can have much happiness in their hearts and that is sad for them. I truly feel they are beyond redemption, but I take no joy in that. As events have shown, their damage bleeds over to us all. Harming them further will do none of us any good. Similarly, it is hard to imagine much redemption for many in that community. However, living there must be hellish enough without our piling on even more damage. Things rest badly right now. A family needs help and a community has a dangerous predator on the streets. We should bring pressure to bear to correct that. Other than that, we should all wish them god-speed in making what they can of what they have and let them be.]
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Oh boy. Some of the comments here seem to be plants. Perhaps the perpetrators themselves made them.

Who is responsible? Everyone is responsible depending upon their ability to influence these events - both before and after. The media was shameful. It was not until the world at large became aware of and outraged by this that anyone local saw fit to take action. Most of that action was cynical damage control. It was window-dressing; more salt in the wound. Predictably, that has enraged the world even more.

All that evil needs to prosper is for good people to do nothing. Evil prospered. It did so, not for a day, a week or even a month. It prospered for more than a year and flourishes still. After that length of time I would say that they ‘aided and abetted’ this crime by continued failure to act. They aggravate things even further by a studied effort to deny their role in this.

This should go to a jury trial. Someone took an action. It caused a death. The charge should relate to that. The local community in question appears to have made “littering’ the charge for such cyber-stalking crimes. That is an outrage. I think most of the world would find a homicide related charge more appropriate. Charge them, and let a jury decide upon guilt or innocence. The jury might well return a verdict that gives the lie to the complacency of that entire local community.

A crime was committed. I am not aware of a single jurisdiction under common law that would not allow a prosecution of some kind for this crime. That the family has had trouble bringing even a civil suit is beyond comprehension. I am sure the larger community will correct that, no matter how hard the local community tries to stop it.

So many entities had some type of duty here. They all failed to do that duty. An adult stalked, SEXUALLY harassed, and drove a child to her death. You heard me right. They stalked her. An adult sexually engaged a child over the Internet. The child subsequently died. The order and temporal proximity of events shows clearly that the child died due to the actions of that adult predator. The perpetrator further harassed the grieving family after the fact. That included making a complaint to the police against the family of the dead child. If this were a movie, it would be hard to swallow the premise it is so outrageous.

I believe that a sense of remorse has an influence on sentencing. When a jury finds this predator guilty, that person’s persistent lack of remorse should inform a sentence sufficiently punitive to act as an effective deterrent. The consensus in the “blogosphere’ seems to be that the main perpetrator should go to jail and stay there. I agree. Why allow them to do it again?

What happened here, and then dragged on for so long without a just resolution, did not happen in a vacuum. That entire community sat by and watched this unfold with hardly a whisper of dissent. Arguments about what they could and could not do and what they actually did do only add fuel to the fire. A child is dead. We know who many of the responsible parties are. The most responsible party has admitted at least a portion of their role to the police and there exists a record of this. The entire community is aware of what has happened. Some members of that community have been aware for long enough to prosecute, convict and imprison the main perpetrator. Instead, they did NOTHING. The only official action appears to have been on a complaint AGAINST the grieving family. A child is dead, her family is destroyed and that family has seen NO comfort or redress from their local community. The only penalties extracted from the perpetrators have resulted from the widespread visceral revulsion of the world at large.

This is telling:

http://www.memberservicecenter.org/irmweb/wc.dll/mostccoc?id=mostccoc&doc=rol/rol1

As of this writing, the link above allows a search of the St. Charles Chamber of Commerce. You will find them proudly promoting the business of the predator. Search for “Family Savings Magazine” and there they are in all their gory glory. How monstrous is that? Would you do business with members of that Chamber of Commerce? I would not. I wonder what other disgraceful self-serving lies exist on that site?

I am a web professional. I taught networking. I have been a denizen of cyberspace since before the web was born. Friends and family of mine are psychologists and educators in the schools at all levels. I am also the parent of happy healthy young girls approaching the age of the child in question. I have devoted considerable time and had expert help to make our Internet environment a safe one for my kids. I have trained the kids well to protect against such things as happened here. Even MY children could be vulnerable to such a predator. No parent, however well prepared can entirely protect his or her children when a predator attacks. We all have a stake. We must stop these predators on as many fronts as we can.

Of the litany of shameful acts here, perhaps the vilest is the continued vicious assault on the victim and her surviving family. The post-mortem defamation of the murdered child is repulsive. The attempt to make excuses for the predator is shocking. It is inexcusable. Apologists suggest that the parents should have done more. They suggest the child was somehow at fault, or defective. This is false. Any young girl could be vulnerable to such a thing. Any parent, no matter how vigilant, could have been the victim of such an act. By all accounts, the murdered child’s mother did everything in her power to prevent this. She is without blame by any standard of measure. This was a brutal act of sex-related violence on a child. Attempting to minimize or justify this by laying a shred of blame at the feet of the grieving family is disgusting. It is disgusting because it is wrong. It is doubly disgusting because they know it is wrong. It is trebly disgusting that they promote these lies for their own benefit at the expense of the victims. This family has already paid the ultimate price. Every single adult in that entire community should be ashamed that they allow this injustice to continue. Clearly, those blaming the victims are beyond shame. Nothing can redeem them. Perhaps, though, a few others have a sense of shame. They were complicit in making the family no longer able to defend themselves. Will they finally, FINALLY after more than a YEAR, stand and defend this stricken child and her broken family? I will not hold my breath.

What have any of them done to heal this family? It breaks my heart to think of that poor man sitting in his darling daughter’s room alone. I am a father, and I am simply unable to imagine it fully. My mind will not allow itself to go there. Without aid, he will likely come to even further harm. What has the community done about this? All that seems to come from that community is more self-serving excuses. They have not even the human decency to apologize. I challenge the other fathers in that community to reach out and help that grieving father. I challenge the mothers in that community to reach out and help that grieving mother. I challenge clergy, social workers and other “helping professions’ to reach out and help heal what is left of that shattered family. I challenge that community to stand up, take care of its own and show a little backbone and dignity to the world outside their doors.

Apologists seem to think that it was to be expected. It was not. They seem to expect it to happen again. It should not. They feel no sense that they should even TRY to prevent it in the future. Any future event like this is doubly on their heads.

Who allows an adult to stalk a child and drive them to their death? Who deals with such an event after the fact by attempting to minimize their responsibility? Who, when subjected to public scrutiny for such disgrace, attempts to escape by trying to vilify and further injure the victims? We are talking about a dead CHILD here. What kind of monster attempts to blame a child for her own murder at the hands of a predatory adult? It is disturbing to see someone attempt to gain a tiny advantage when it comes at a great expense from another.

Surely, there must be SOMEONE with moral courage in that community. If they exist, they should champion real action to right this wrong and prevent it in the future. Here is a hint: Step number one would be to FINALLY admit that it was wrong and accept your share of responsibility. Most would have been unaware before the fact, in the days, weeks, or even months (!) after the fact. Can anyone in that community claim to be unaware NOW?

Proposing to make a similar thing a misdemeanor insults the memory of this child and shames the community all the more. The sex-related murder of a child is not a misdemeanor. Claiming that they meantime cannot prosecute the existing murderer is just smarmy damage control. It does not play well with me. I doubt it plays well with anyone in the rest of the world either. I pray for the sake of that community that it sounds discordant to at least a few of those that reside there.

The people there that are responsible for law enforcement lack the skill and moral rectitude to make this right. They have amply demonstrated that. The community should replace them. They should do so before anyone else gets hurt. These incumbents can do nothing about the sex-related homicide of a child. They are not likely much use for anything else. Get rid of them right now. Whoever was sitting at those desks are plainly not as good as empty desks. Even if you do not replace them, you will be better off.

Precious few in that community seem to have any moral compass. Perhaps they can take a hint from the torrent of outrage in the larger community. What happened was wrong both during and after the fact. It continues to be wrong now. Each day they fail to act takes them further in the wrong direction.

I pray that everyone in that community with a shred of decency will DEMAND that this be resolved respectably and that they will back their demands by action.

The furor will die down, but some have indelibly etched their shame on the memory of the Internet. Anyone with the name of that community attached to their names should be able to point to effective action they have taken to correct this injustice. Otherwise, they will carry this stain with them forever. Making amends at some point is better than doing nothing. However, the longer they continue to deny their part and fail to act, the harder it will be to cleanse them of shame.

Good luck with that.

My heart goes out to that family. What happened to them is the unthinkable. They deserve help and healing. Fortunately, they have an enormous “mind-share’ in the world now. They can use it to get aid, even if the local community continues to resist it. Literally millions of people are aware of this now. I can find no credible evidence of anyone in the real world that does not see the mother, father and child here as blameless victims. For their daughter’s memory, I hope that mother and father can find the strength to heal and carry on. It would be the best way to honor their daughter’s memory and keep it alive.

As trite as it sounds, true healing cannot happen without forgiveness. The entire community of perpetrators does not deserve forgiveness. They are beneath it. However, the family deserves the healing they will get by taking the moral high ground. Forgiveness will help them heal. That goes for thee and me. This is not a call for the mob to descend. It is not a call for revenge. It is a call for justice to aid in the healing. Justice helps us to forgive; forgiveness helps us to heal.

Justice calls for punishment that acts as a deterrent and sends a message. What happened was very wrong. We should acknowledge that with vigor. However, vengeance, per se, is an empty thing. It always does more harm than good. I hope the family will try to turn their hearts away from thoughts of revenge. No action they can take will be mightier than the storm that swirls around the villains now. All of those creepy people were nearly as diminished as creatures could be before this began. The people in that community that turned their backs on the injured family will not likely give comfort to the perpetrators and their supporters. They all began small, went down from there and the world diminished them even further. They are just so many insects now. There is no comfort to get from these miserable creatures. Let justice take its course, if it will. The family should cast attention to healing and honoring the memory of their beautiful child.

The world would be a better place if the people in that community were to make amends through action. That action should show genuine contrition for (to be charitable) a job poorly done. As huge a tidal shift as such a thing is, I sincerely hope that the mother and father can find forgiveness in their heart for one another and heal the rift in their marriage. They will not find more than a decade of shared love and care for their beautiful child with any other partner. They owe themselves and each other a second chance.

Finally, though it might seem that such a thing is beyond the power of prayer, I say a prayer for the mother, the father and the child and I hope anyone reading this will join me in that. Even if you do not believe in the power of prayer, the gesture has meaning.

I just read about this C*** in the Los Angeles Times. (What a way to start Thanksgiving Day.)

Lori Drew is a SOCIOPATH. She manipulated a 13 year old girl into believing her evil constructed scheme. Lori Drew should be put to DEATH by a guillotine…publicly so that she will get all of the attention she is craving. She doesn’t deserve to live a full life. She deserves to be falsely led to a beautiful castle in France where she will be granted freedom for life….then shot to death by a troop of hundreds of men skilled in archery.

Lori’s daughter will probably committ suicide too. Who could bare growing up knowing your psycho mother caused the entire world wanting your whole family dead?

I say ship this family off to wherever Bin Laden is hiding.

I feel so sorry for Megan and her family as well as the children of a mother who would do something like this to another child. No wonder kids are killing each other in record numbers. We are living in a country where many children raise themselves, with little supervision by one parent, let alone two. And when the input they get from a parent is comparable to what Lori Drew did, we can only expect worse things to happen. This absolutely sickens me. I remember being thirteen. It wasn’t easy for me, and I wasn’t clinically depressed.

To those of you who are criticizing Megan’s mother: She followed all the precautions recommended to keep her daughter safe. If you think you know everything YOUR teens do online, think again. These kids are a lot more computer savvy than the majority of parents. Besides while Megan thought she was communicating with a cute teenage boy, she was probably happier than she had been in a while. It wasn’t until he “dumped” her, that she committed suicide. And to find out that an ADULT woman was the one messaging her all along, is disgusting. Why did Drew pretend to be a “good looking boy” to find out what Megan was saying about her daughter? Why not pretend to be a girl? To inflict as much emotional pain and damage as possible, that’s why. Lori Drew’s children should be removed from her “care.” She is the definition of an unfit mother. I sincerely hope she is at least held accountable in civil court for her immature and immoral actions. No criminal charges??? What a travesty.

The ONLY person(s) responsible for Megan Meier’s “suicide” is Megan Meier, herself, and her parents . . . primarily her PARENTS!

People who breed and yet refuse to accept responsibility for the supervision and discipline of their offspring are sickening.

These people (Megan Meier’s parents) should be prosecuted and jailed for dereliction of duty in their parental responsibilities. And then, we need to move on to a more important topic.

IL has a law: 720 ILCS 135 regarding cyber-harassment. Cyber-harassment or cyber-bullying in Megan’s case is minimized by law enforcement. Law enforcement will encourage you to seek legal representation who will tell you that it will cost you 10s of thousands of dollars to prosecute. When you win, the harasser will not be able to pay back the damages in your lifetime probably. Now maybe Megan’s tragedy will encourage law enforcement to ENFORCE the law!!

Lori Drew and Ashley Grills, alleged harassers, are in clear violation of My Space terms of service #8 conduct and should be charged with a class 3 or 4 felony MINIMUM if not misdemeanor manslaughter. They allegedly created the profile with the INTENT to harm Megan Meier. They KNEW Megan had a mental disability, depression and ADD, weight issues, and social skills problems. The 13 year old daughter should be receive a class B misdemeanor because she came by her poor social skills from her “mother”.

The alleged harassers should be forced to travel around and speak to schools and communities on how their actions directly caused a 13 year old girl to commit suicide. Locking them up won’t solve the problem or bring Megan back. They need to be made accountable for their actions. Adding a felony to their records will show everyone that cyber-bullying and cyber-harassment will NOT be tolerated. Employers frown on hiring convicted felons!

I don’t know the family of Megan Meier but I know that this case is SICKENING! I emailed Rachel Simmons and encouraged her to speak in your town. I encourage anyone who is interested to go to Rachel’s website http://www.rachelsimmons.com and/or http://www.wiredsafety.org. There is information out there that could help your child not be a target of cyber-bullying anymore. If you are an adult, this is cyber-harassment and you will have to check with the laws of your state.

I hope that justice prevails for Megan Meier. She is the 13 YEAR OLD VICTIM who the ball is being dropped on by law enforcement and died thinking no one liked her.

Lori Drew should be held responsible for murder!!!! Maybe when she spends life behind bars for the related death, it will be a wake-up to call to all parents who allow their children to have access to the internet web site MY-Space and what the consequenses will be.

Thanks to Renee who sent along the more in-depth article. I live outside of STL now and just recently heard about this story. While parents are untimately responsible for the actions of their children, it appears that this family did everything they could to monitor her online activity. I encourage everyone who commented and said the opposite to read this article and think about what more they would have done in the Meier’s situation to monitor the myspace account. The majority of the blame has to fall on the other family and the co-worker. I can’t even put into words how angry I am with them.

This is Megan’s mom, Tina Meier, and I wanted to update everyone on the details for the candlelight vigil for Saturday, November 24, 2007.

*We are meeting at 6:00 p.m. at the Fort Zumwalt West Middle school parking lot.

*Please bring a candle, cup to hold the candle and something to light the candle. (If you cut a small X in the bottom of the cup, you can slide the candle through it and then you won’t have wax dripping on you)

*We will then light the candle’s shortly after 6:00 p.m. and start walking from the school down Waterford crystal drive towards Megan’s house and end up in front of the Drew’s house.

*There is a common ground area across the street and we will have pa system and microphone. if anyone would like to speak, read a poem, etc., they are more than welcome.

*This wonderful idea came from students who wanted to see justice for Megan and for that we are so happy. Nothing we can do will bring Megan back, but we can all learn from Megan and take a part of her with us everyday for the rest of our lives to try to be a better person and think about things we say to people before we say them!

*****Remember this is a peaceful candlelight vigil******
We hope to see everyone there!