I have mixed feelings about it. I’ve seen the parents’ home address posted in the comments of a couple of blogs, and I worry that it will encourage vigilantism. On the other hand, I find it extremely frustrating that the parents who so clearly took advantage of a child (who they knew had a history of mental health issues) are seemingly going to get away with their behavior with no repercussions.

Another thing that disturbed me were comments calling Megan’s parents stupid for letting her anywhere near MySpace. It looked to me like they were really trying to monitor what was going on there, and blaming her parents for her suicide (and not the people who were trying to torment her) is really unseemly and adds insult to injury, IMHO.

My sister monitors the oldest niece’s MySpace page. All of her friends had one so the sis allowed her to get one after a lot of Tween begging occured.
Ironically, once she got one, she didn’t really care about it anymore. In the spirit of disclosure, I didn’t want her to have it as she is not 14.
But the sis goes to it more than the niece and I’ve struggled with if I over reacted about it.
I think her parents were deceived as much as Megan was because the interaction was all based on false information/a lie.

I read that story this morning on MSNBC. What a terrible situation. In hindsight, this girl clearly needed some help. How evident was it to her parents? No one can say, so I agree with Rachel that blaming her parents is futile.

The people who did this to her ought to have been charged with something, but what? What adults get their kicks from making a 13-year-old girl miserable? From my experience once being a 13-year-old girl, it’s not hard to do. Can the parents file a wrongful death suit? Any lawyers out there have an opinion?

Our oldest has a MySpace page. It is monitored pretty regularly by his mother and I. Even more so in the wake of the Megan Meir story.

Curt and Lori Drew should be treated as pariahs.

[…] Cruelty Just Never Goes Away I posted about the Megan Meir suicide over at Music City Bloggers. […]

Sarcastro, I agree that the Drews should be held accountable and are pariahs. It won’t happen in court, but it can happen in the blogosphere.
And those are the lines that traditional journalism outlets are facing as well (this story has a lot of different levels).
Squirrel Queen and I wondered if the paper didn’t print the names due to possible fear of litigation.
I guess that’s a question for Abramson.

Looking for some (any) satisfaction in the aftermath of this tragic event is going to inevitably end in disappointment. This cannot be “righted” no matter what. The people who perpetrated this cruel joke on this child are already suffering beyond belief, even if they are not aware of it. Everyone involved, even the people just reading about it, are suffering as well. It is an ugly reflection of us as a society. Hard as it is, I say “fix the problem, not the blame.”

Very true, Mack.
There is no “fixing” this. You are absolutely right about that.

Newscoma! Good post. This is just one of those stories that sticks with you, isn’t it?

I honestly think the paper did the right thing by not outting the family. They weren’t charged with any crime and their daughter (and it’s hard to tell from the stories I’ve read just how involved the daughter was; it seems mostly to have, at first at least, been her mom and her mom’s employee) still has to go to school in that community.

I also think, though, that the blogosphere was right in outting the family. I mean, this is a risk we all run when we play around anonymously and we all know it–that someone’s going to find out who you are and try to hold you accountable for some perceived wrong. It sucks if your perceived wrong is just that you differ in political opinions. But if you bully someone until she kills herself and then get outted? Well, welcome to how the internet works.

I, too, have seen some people ask why Megan’s parents let her have a MySpace account, but again, from the stories I’ve read, it seems like they were facing a choice every teenager’s parent faces. She was going to get an account one way or another (I mean, come on) and they could either “give her permission” and then try as hard as they could to monitor it (and it sounds like they did monitor it as closely as they could) or they could have told her she couldn’t have one and they wouldn’t have been able to monitor her activity at all.

The whole thing is just very sad.

I think the paper was right not to print the names, based on some of the comments to their article. Not only did some of the commenters seem to be encouraging vigilantism against the parents — even worse, a few of them seemed to be encouraging harrassment of the guilty parents’ daughter, who had nothing whatsoever to do with her parents’ actions. Any responsible newspaper would want not to be enabling that, I would think.

Squirrel Queen and I have talked about this a lot this week.
Would we have run it?
I’m not sure if our publishers would have let us as we have a policy that we must either have A.)Documentation to back up criminal behavior (the Drews weren’t charged) and B.)Although I see the Drews as the instigators of the situation, there child, who is a minor, would have also been implicated.
With that said, I agree with Aunt B. that I have no problem with the parents being outed on the blogosphere although I’m not sure why I feel this way. I’m going to have to think about that but I go back to my mantra that communication outlets (blogs, digital news, citizen journalism) is changing the rules.
With that said, this creates possible credibility problems at that newspaper in not telling the “whole” story but I think there is a responsibility to vigilantism against the Drews which the paper may have been trying to avoid.
With that said, there are no easy answers to this as I said in the post.

The whole thing is tragic. Just tragic.

I seem to remember a time, not so long ago, when someone would commit a heinous crime, the news outlets would show the perp’s home mailbox complete with street name. That has changed and probably for the best.

The Drews have to face their neighbors and friends now that their names have been revealed. That should be satisfaction enough for “the blogosphere”.

This story is so harrowing, I’m afraid I’ll have to stay around the edges for now.

Our children, so far, have not shown any inclination to use social networking sites (besides Webkinz, which is really just a marketing tool for collectibles). The day is coming, I know. And, as kids get older, my belief is that parents do their kids no favors with outright prohibition (of any legal thing). So, when they are ready, they will be allowed to post at these sites, under supervision and some pretty strong ground rules.

I’m thinking that the fact that uncool dad has facebook and myspace pages (and a couple of blogs, for that matter) will mortify them to the point that they just avoid these sites, for fear of embarrasment. But, if they choose to go in that direction, all I can do is hope that I’ve given them the best possible guidance so far, and pray that they have the strength to overcome their teenage demons.

That last one is most important. They’ll be insulted, maybe even in a racist way, or their hearts will be broken by some young girl or boy, whether online or in real life.

If such an event would cause either of them to contemplate suicide (and I’m not going to say I didn’t at that age), then the mental state of the child is the actual problem that needs to be confronted with every resource possible.

Not to excuse the inexcusable - such cruelty I have a hard time even imagining.

But, I stand here on the edge of the storm, I can feel the first winds on my face. I am expecting the worst, and hunkering down, just hoping I can help my kids survive the next 8 years or so with some semblance of love for life.

Whatever happens, good or bad, I know the 80% of it I have no control over whatsoever. All I can do is pray, and be there.

My teens do My Space. The people they “network” with are mostly people from their school.

Because there is a double standard, I monitor my daughter’s activity way more than the boy. The boy is almost 16 and bigger than most grown men, physically. I don’t worry about him like I do my girl. That said…they do not have their own computers in their rooms. The computer is out in the open so we can see what they’re doing.

I read the comments on the original story the day Aunt B posted about it but I haven’t read anything since then. At the time I thought the commenters had totally justified the paper’s decision to not print the names.

W, if you are so inclined, check out the comments on several of the sites, including the ones Jack Lail listed.
The one at the paper sparked those, I believe.

I’ve some blame for the parents. They should have been more aware of their daughter’s emotional state, on that fateful day. The clues to their lackadaisical parenting was that the child was overweight, for one, and allowed near an online venue at her age.

Some people just shouldn’t be parents.

Wait, so now we can freely say that it’s a clue that parents suck as parents if their kids are fat? Did you read the story? Did you see that she’d been diagnosed with depression? Did you ever think that her weight might be related to the medications she was taking?

Also, I eagerly await your insights into how to keep a determined pre-teen off the computer. Do you never let her go to her friends’ houses? To school? How do you work that?

Hmmmm…lessee…the child has depression, is on medication, is overweight, has few friends, her only outlet is her box and a few fishing trips with Dad (I wonder if he let her bait her own hook?) and you wonder if questioning the parent’s parenting skills is even on the table?

Why, of course the idjits who played Sims with her persona are the bestest target, but the parents are culpable and deserving of some blame, too. Aren’t they getting a divorce? Just goes to show they weren’t much to begin with.

Again, some people just should not be parents. Many, many, many people, to be sure, but these in particular seem custom-made poster-board dead-child types…

And since when has attacking parents been off-limits to liberals?

THE Link to read…from comments…

Nah. So far Sarah’s a hero to bloggers and journalists for reporting the truth and not shielding the woman who doesn’t deserve to be shielded. If Lori offs herself, her little anonymous friends can come on here and whine about how their b*tch friend is GONE, WOE, but you won’t find this particular anon giving two sh*ts. Lori Drew can eat a 10-gauge bullet for all I care. I’d probably throw a cyber party in celebration.

There’s much anger in blogworld for Lori Drew, it seems…

[blockquote]I’ve some blame for the parents. They should have been more aware of their daughter’s emotional state, on that fateful day. The clues to their lackadaisical parenting was that the child was overweight, for one, and allowed near an online venue at her age.

Some people just shouldn’t be parents.[/blockquote]

Oh, come now. Unless you have lost someone you care about to suicide, you are completely out of line, though I realize people who have never been on the survivor left behind side of the fence often don’t realize what sh*tty and ridiculous things they sometimes say.

As for the “allowed near an online venue” statement, given the fact that probably well over 90% of the teens in this country are on MySpace or Facebook, your statement is another ridiculous one. And by all accounts of the now three news articles I’ve read on the case, it would appear that the parents were not only vigilant but almost hypervigilant beyond what would normally be necessary in the case of monitoring the girl’s online activities. Granted, a lot of parents do these days, but a lot still don’t, and it would appear these parents were monitoring her online activities not only carefully but far beyond the necessary.

To blame these people (or the overwhelming majority of those left behind by suicide) for their daughter killing herself makes about as much sense as blaming me if it rains on Monday.

No blame should be on anyone but the Drews - and their case there was no excuse good enough for their behavior as full-grown adults - period.

I have to agree with Lynnster and Aunt B. here. The parents were monitoring Megan’s activities on the computer.
And, in the beginning of this, Megan wanted to be “normal” like the other kids by having a MySpace. They did what they could to make sure their child was protected. It was the deception and downright mean-spiritedness of the Drew family that is in question here.

No one anticipates a loved one committing suicide.
No one.

Ummm, Newscoma, that’s incorrect.

According to the NMHA, four out of five people who attempt suicide have given clear warnings.

There are clear warnings, available at this link »http://tinyurl.com/35duxz« (hopefully that will pass the moderation filter; I’m one who wants immediate gratification, without waiting for a link to be approved…and, semi-moderation tends to confuse posters, given a reply is delayed past the time of ‘interest’ that might remain in a topic. Captcha, Turing Tests, Registration?)

Ummm, Newscoma, that’s incorrect.

According to the NMHA, four out of five people who attempt suicide have given clear warnings.

The link fell into moderation, which is a buzz-kill for posters. I’m one who wants immediate gratification, without waiting for a link to be approved…and, semi-moderation tends to confuse posters, given a reply is delayed past the time of ‘interest’ that might remain in a topic. Captcha, Turing Tests, Registration?

So, G00gle Jason Foundation dot com, suicide facts dot html.

Moderation sucks.

Well, I’m talking, and I admit this, from an emotional position.
My great-grandfather committed suicide. It haunted my mother for years. She said there was no indication regarding this. He left no note. (I was not born then, so I don’t remember.)
What I do remember is how it impacted her and my family for years.
They all said there was some signs, but they marked those off as depression because he’d been diagnosed with cancer.
More recently, we had a family friend who’s nephew committed suicide. There were, once again, signs of depression but he had displayed some positive signs. Apparently those positive signs were false.
I also had a friend in college who killed herself. We never saw it coming.

Now, with this said, these are personal things that have been in my life. I’m not disputing what you are saying, I’m just talking about what I’ve experienced.
As for the comment moderation, thanks for letting me know. I’m the same way actually.
And, I post but I don’t have access to some things here at MCB.
Apparently it was handled though by the Powers That Be.

My grandmother’s 2nd husband (my maternal grandfather died before I was born) committed suicide via 12-Ga. in his bathroom, after coming home from the VA Hospital, diagnosed with incurable cancer and emphysema. He left a mess. But for the mess, I think he had the right idea, and should have been allowed to pull the plug with some dignity; that would certainly have been easier on my grandmother, who was there when he did it.

Dignity departed, but so did the pain…

‘Coma, thank you for posting the link to B’s post and the subsequent links. I’ve discussed this with my family and forwarded it to my cousins and other loved ones who have young teens (and who have the computer in the family room, like Sista). By the time Baby Fishmouth gets old enough for this (and they’ll probably have ‘Net access implants in their heads by then), she will be briefed as well.

And Serr8d, my loved ones had no idea I was suicidal until I nearly succeeded with it. They knew I was clinically depressed, they knew I was in therapy and on medication. Some of them lived with me, others interacted with me nearly every day. But they didn’t know I was suicidal. I guess we can blame their lackadaisical interest for my attempt, eh?

In other words, unless someone stood by and refused to help the suffering individual get care or refused to pull the gun/the pills/the car keys out of the suffering individual’s hand, blame rests with the suffering individual. Unfortunately, it’s the survivors who still blame themselves.

“Hard as it is, I say “fix the problem, not the blame.”

How, exactly, are we to fix the problem of cruelty, particularly if we aren’t going to provide disincentives? Sounds like hand-waving to me.

That said, there’s a lot we don’t know about this case and won’t know with any certainty unless it goes to court. What was the girl’s mental state, for instance.

I think the reporter was right not to publish the names in light of the fact that the family wasn’t going to pursue any legal remedies. We’re still not 100% sure of the facts of the case even now. Obviously the story has become much bigger now and people have learned the names, but at the time the reporter had no way of knowing the story would take on a life of its own.

Ummm, Newscoma, that’s incorrect.

But Coma didn’t say that there are never any warning signs, she said that nobody anticipates a loved one committing suicide. Those are two different and distinct ideas. Your link didn’t work, but I’m pretty familiar with the warning signs of suicide from my RA days in college. The fact is they’re not necessarily so “clear” and especially not when it’s a loved one (nobody can view their loved ones completely objectively). How many people exhibit a few of those signs but never commit suicide? It’s easy to look back in hindsight and see the signs that were there, but then again most of us begin to exhibit some of those signs if we’re just feeling a little under the weather or are having a stressful week.

I’m curious, what SPECIFICALLY do you blame the parents for in this instance? You don’t approve of their daughter’s weight (despite having any information at all as to why she may have been overweight), and you don’t think teenagers should have tightly monitored access to the internet (I might argue that preventing a teen who will be entering the work force in just a few short years from gaining familiarity with the internet would be a more prime example of bad parenting). Is that all? Should all fat kids who surf the web be taken from their parents?

The difference between this 13-year-old CHILD and, say, an older man or woman is just that: age.

At thirteen, a child still needs close monitoring. You can’t just turn on a TV or a PC, throw him or her a bag of chips, and say ‘have a nice life’. There are obligations and responsibilities that a parent is entrusted with and should fulfill.

Tell me, in this day and age of rebellious kids, drugs, TV and Video games, that parents should step away from their kids and let them go wild. I read that these parents knew of the online attacks on their child, and didn’t even then pull the plug. WTF? I would have tossed the box out of her 2nd story window, and taken her fishing.

No, but I’m sure there was something better on TV the parents just had to catch…

At thirteen, a child still needs close monitoring.

The parents monitored every message that she received according to the article. Can’t get much closer than that.

. I read that these parents knew of the online attacks on their child

Which is interesting considering that inn your last paragraph you accused them of planting their daughter in front of the pc, throwing her a bag of potato chips and telling her to “have a nice life.” Make up your mind, were the parents monitoring her usages or ignoring it? Pick one story before you respond.

and didn’t even then pull the plug.

Except that they did. They didn’t literally rip the plug out of the wall. But they demanded that she sign off. I think there’s merit to not forcibly taking the child’s body and contorting it into whatever position you think it should be in at the moment. By age 13, parents can tell a child what to do and if the child refuses then the child is punished.