<p>I don’t understand why the mother didn’t know her daughter was corresponding for weeks with a boy that they didn’t know. Her daughter was a disturbed 13 year old. Her mother should have had access to the Myspace page and read everything on it and put a stop to her daughter communicating with a boy no one in the family knew.</p>
<p>I would bet that the girl “met” the boy through her friends on myspace. It is common for kids to communicate with friends of friends. They “meet” on the myspace page of their common friend. I watched the interviews with her parents, and I didn’t get the idea that anything out of the ordinary was going on with the girl. Kids meet their friends’ friends all the time in real life; it stands to reason that they will meet this way on myspace, as well. </p>
<p>I guess I don’t get the impression that “Her daughter was a disturbed 13 year old.” There have been many cases of suicide among people who would not be considered “disturbed,” aside from the suicide as a reaction to the stress in their life.</p>
<p>She was a 13 year old on antidepressants who had talked about committing suicide before. They had to take her out of one school because she had been teased and didn’t fit in. All of these added up to heightened supervision. The excuse that they couldn’t talk on the phone because his family didn’t have one definitely is a red flag that something fishy was going on. I might not have suspected a mean mom on the other computer, but I would have been suspicious enough to stop the communication.</p>
<p>In a way, the part that shocked me the most was this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Drews knew that the Meiers had lost a daughter to suicide which they at least acknowledge they “contributed to,” yet they felt a need to complain to the police about the damaged foosball table, which of course led to public knowledge of what they did. The chutzpah of that leaves me speechless.</p>
<p>Garland:</p>
<p>I had the same reaction as you. But I was also appalled by the statement that Ms. Drew did not feel "‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out Megan had tried to commit suicide before.” Anybody with an ounce of humanity would have been dismayed at having driven a vulnerable girl over the edge instead of feeling exculpated. </p>
<p>The woman’s hide is so thick that I don’t know whether community opprobrium will penetrate it.</p>
<p>No doubt she has already convinced herself that Megan somehow deserved what happened and brought it on herself. She will make herself the victim now and she will have her supporters. I hope for the sake of her children that she can find it in herself to show some remorse - it is frightening to think that they are growing up being shown that cruelty is acceptable.</p>
<p>What an ugly story. I am sick thinking that the Meiers trusted the Drews enough to allow Megan to join them on family vacations, where Ms. Drew learned that Megan was on antidepressants. So she knew that Megan was vulnerable when she hatched and carried out her sick plot. </p>
<p>It sounds to me as if the Meiers were doing everything they could to help their daughter. She was clearly getting professional help if she was taking meds, and they’d arranged a transfer to another school where she’d been happier.</p>
<p>Wow, after reading that NY Times article, I am shocked. It seems as if these two families were really close, at least the daughters were, before this all happened.</p>
<p>What strikes me to the core is I can remember being a 13 year old girl, which was awful at the time. Going to school could be a landmine field, you never knew from day to day if you were going to be “in” or “out”, and it was all determined by a select few who made it their goal to be cruel, like a pack of dogs.</p>
<p>I am glad that there was no MySpace back then, or internet, because I am sure that those taunts aimed at me would have had a greater venue than just the school play yard. </p>
<p>I think the parents sound like they were doing the best they could trying to get their daughter through a difficult part of her life (of many girl’s lives - junior high is HEL*). This story is just so sad…</p>
<p>Sometimes we don’t see toxic when its right in front of us…that family, the Drews, hid it very well…but I bet, in hindsite, there were signs of the warpednes, and cruelty, and snoobishness there</p>
<p>If the mom who played the horrid “joke” is embraced by ANYONE, it just shows what a sick community those people live in</p>
<p>This is when shunning, if there is no legal recourse, is appropriate</p>
<p>the fact that woman even went to the funeral is galling</p>
<p>Yes, they were </p>
<p>ag54: “doing the best they could trying to get their daughter through a difficult part of her life”</p>
<p>when their “friends” down the street went to great lengths to push her over the edge. And the woman’s first response when learning of the suicide was to call the girl who’d been told of the hoax and tell her to “keep her mouth shut” ?? </p>
<p>This story is haunting. I have several good friends with MS/HS aged daughters, and I hear incredible “mean girls” stories. I can’t imagine any of the mothers getting involved and egging these cruel girls on.</p>
<p>From what I read, I gathered that Megan’s mom was suspicious, but hadn’t figured out a way to verify the boy’s identity. I think this My Space stuff, the texting, etc., the new ways that people can communicate, it has caught a lot of us off guard. Some people don’t allow their kids to have My Space. Many of us allow it, trying to set guidelines for safety, but really, one can’t safeguard against everything.</p>
<p>The deception that is possible with this new technology, the twisted ways that people can use it – mind boggling.</p>
<p>I’m sure that Megan’s mom never in a million years would have thought that a kid’s mom was playing a part in something like this. That is what makes it so horrible. We all know about mean girls, and that kids, particularly at a certain age, can be thoughtless and cruel, but the idea of a grown woman doing this sort of thing to a child is unbelievable, incredible.</p>
<p>Remember the Texas cheerleader story some years back? I wonder how many more cruel and devious parents are out there who don’t get caught. </p>
<p>I guess mean girls have to come from somewhere! (And grow up to become mean neighbors?) Maybe all those folks who are concerned about “helicopter parents” doing terrible things like helping their kids choose good colleges can re-focus their attention!</p>
<p>binx, I thought of the cheerleader incident right away too. I wonder what happens to adults that causes them to be emotionally and behaviorally stuck in middle school when it comes to their kids. I’d love to know what kind of relationship the cruel mother had with her mother. This stuff brings out the armchair psychiatrist in me.</p>
<p>I’ve been debating about adding another sad story to the myspace collection. In the interest of protecting children, here goes:</p>
<p>4 years ago, when they were 14, a friend of my D devoloped a crush on a myspace boy she had never met in person. A few weeks into the “relationship” the girl’s parents left town overnight. The girl invited the boy over, late at night. He turned out to be almost 18, and not the “cute boy” she had fallen for on line. The evening resulted in a date rape. She did not tell her parents, but shared this event with friends, and also wrote very disturbing and sad poems about it on her myspace page. Parents who were watching their own children’s myspace conversations became alarmed, the school was notified, and legal action was eventually taken by the parents. </p>
<p>Of course, there are several glaring problems here: unsupervised myspace use, and parents leaving 14 yo home alone overnight are two. </p>
<p>It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and I DO blame the improper use of myspace. In my experience, the most vulnerable users are girls between the ages of 12 and 16. Many simply don’t have good enough judgement to resist a man who knows how to flatter and use them.</p>
<p>I agree. I don’t think any 13 year old should have a Myspace or Facebook without parental supervision - meaning that the parent reads everything on there. If you don’t have time to read it, don’t let them have one. I let my D have a Myspace, but she knew I checked it daily. I saw things on other kid’s pages that horrified me. Access to my D’s space gave me access to my niece’s space so my brother was informed if I saw inappropriate things there too.</p>
<p>I once was wondering around myspace when it first became big…I saw some postings, about some girls who were going to “get” this other girl (some icky boy was involved I guess)</p>
<p>Anyway, when I first saw the posts, the conversation had been going on for a few days- talk of pulling her hair out, beating her up, weapons, getting more people involved, its</p>
<p>I didn’t know the girls at all- it was following a stream of conversation that my D pointed out initially while she was looking at posts for people at another school, who in turn where talking about the threats (seems those kids did nothing to stop the harrassment, just passed along the juicy stuff)</p>
<p>So after printing out all the suspect pages- which included pictures of the posters, the threats, etc., and figuring out what school these bullies went to, I faxed copies of all the pages to the school…something about seeing the threats and horridness in print forced the school to do something</p>
<p>I just sent along a note, saying who I was, and that I was alerted to the posts, and felt I needed to report it to the school, and that these threats were bad enough to involve the police- it was almost like girl gang stuff- it was really ugly- and the threats were sick</p>
<p>next day, all those myspaces had been deleted (I reported the posts to myspace as well- but not until I printed out everything)</p>
<p>I don’t know the final outcome, but at least I knew I did something</p>
<p>ps- from what I could figure out, the girls were freshman and sophmores</p>
<p>Sigh – an adult was behind this. </p>
<p>I should write “adult” – because clearly this mother never got beyond the emotional/intellectual age of maybe 12…</p>