A 13-year-old girl in Missouri named Megan Meier committed suicide in 2006 after a boy she’d been flirting with on MySpace rejected her and hurled insults at her online. It turned out that this boy was actually a hoax, the creation of Lori Drew, whose daughter Sarah used to be Megan’s best friend. Lori, Sarah, and Lori’s assistant Ashley Grills (who was 18 at the time), created the fake MySpace account together. According to Wired, who has done a great job covering the case (notable for being the first-ever federal charge of ‘cyberbullying’):
Prosecutors alleged that Drew and the two others used the profile to lure Megan into an online relationship with “Josh” to find out what Megan was saying about Drew’s daughter online. Midway through the ruse, prosecutors said Drew changed the plan and wanted to print out the correspondence between Megan and the fake boy in order to confront her with the pages in public and humiliate her.
That confrontation never occurred. But after “Josh” turned on Megan and told her he wanted to sever their relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom in October 2006.
Lori Drew was charged after Ashley Grills (pictured) was given immunity in exchange for testifying against her former boss.
Testimony in the case offered by prosecution witness Ashley Grills under a grant of immunity showed that nobody involved in the hoax actually read the terms of service. Grills also said that the hoax was her idea, not Drew’s, and that it was Grills who created the “Josh Evans” profile, and later sent the cruel message that tipped the emotionally vulnerable 13-year-old girl into her final, tragic act.
Drew, unfortunately, was found not guilty of cyberbullying. She was convicted of several smaller misdemeanor crimes and will most likely get probation rather than serve prison time. As for Ashley Grills, it seems that the now 19-year-old will go back to her regular life, whatever that is.