MySpace Suicide Update: Lori Drew Goes To Trial

ReputationDefender has been covering the Lori Drew/Megan Meier case for some time now, keeping up with the latest developments. First there was the discovery that Ms. Drew was involved, then the filing of the suit in Los Angeles, and now it seems that Lori Drew is going to trial for allegedly participating in the acts that led young Megan Meier to kill herself.

On Friday last week Sarah Drew, Lori’s daughter, took the stand in Los Angeles to defend what her mother may or may not have done with connection to the Meier case. According to the testimony, Sarah indicated that her mother Lori approved of the creation of a fake MySpace account with the intention to discover if Megan Meier was spreading rumors about her daughter.

Meier would eventually receive a message from the fake account (which was set up purporting to be that of a cute young boy) telling her that the world would be better off if she were dead. Megan hanged herself shortly after receiving that message, but according to Sarah her mother had instructed a business assistant, Ashley Grills, to close the MySpace account approximately two weeks prior. While under cross-examination by U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien Sarah admitted that Megan had spoken of suicide to her on at least two occasions, but that she did not tell anyone. “She was like, I don’t know if I could live anymore,” she said of one instance. “I told her not to do it.”

Sarah Drew would go on to state that she never witnessed her mother using the fake MySpace account, statements that directly contradict what Grills has alleged: that she saw Lori Drew, on at least one occasion, type a message from the fake account to Megan Meier.

Lori Drew currently faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization. She has entered a plea of not guilty in what legal scholars are classifying as the first cyber-bullying trial in American jurisprudence.

The Vice President of customer care at MySpace, Jae Sung, testified of MySpace that the site requires users to check a box that indicates a user’s agreement to the rules prohibiting acts like online harassment. The testimony goes to the heart of the prosecution’s argument that Drew violated MySpace terms of service by setting up a fake account and harassing Megan. According to Sung “impostor profiles” such as the account that Drew created in this case are not allowed under MySpace guidelines.

“What happens when they are found?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause asked.

“We generally delete those profiles,” Sung said.

Citing the over 400 million profiles live on MySpace, Sung said that it is difficult to enforce the service rules.

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