Woman pleads in Myspace case
2008-06-17 11:50
Los Angeles - 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.
A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Drew in May
after authorities in Missouri, where she lived four doors away
from Meier in the St Louis suburb of O'Fallon, declined to
prosecute her, saying there was no law under which she could be
charged.
She faces 20 years in prison if convicted.
Drew, who travelled to Los Angeles for her initial court
appearance in the case, did not address the court during the
brief arraignment hearing. She stood quietly next to her
attorney as he entered the not guilty pleas.
Prosecutors say Drew, mother of a teenage girl who had a
falling out with Meier, and several others created a profile
for the fictional 16-year-old boy, "Josh Evans", using the
picture of an unwitting teenage boy.
They contacted Meier through MySpace as "Josh" and spent
several weeks flirting with her before ending the relationship
on October 15 2006, and saying the world would be better off
without her, according to the indictment.
Several hours after the final message, Meier, who had
argued with her mother over the relationship, hanged herself in
the closet of her bedroom - still unaware that "Josh" did not
exist.
Meier's suicide made worldwide headlines and prompted calls
for social networking sites like MySpace to crack down on
cyber-bullying.
The indictment charges that after Meier killed herself,
Drew had the phoney MySpace account deleted and warned a girl
who knew about it that she should "keep her mouth shut".
After the incident became widely known, the Drew family was
shunned by members of the community and targeted for abuse on
the internet, and their small advertising business was
vandalised.