This is ridiculous, teens these days can be so emotional. Sounds like she may have hung herself also because her mother was not on “her side”. If this girl can hang herself over some boy on the internet, she could have done it any time for any reason. My 13 yr. old daughter has “boyfriends” also, the boys are not always so nice. The girls however can be downright nasty, spreading untrue rumors on myspace, “calling out” girls whom said thing of them at school. I see all kinds of things all the time on this web site. Sounds to me like her mother should have been aware of what was going on. Aren’t we teaching our kids to not have a relationship with an unknown person on the net, because of these kinds of things. A mother has to know what their children are doing. Sounds like the mother in trouble was posing as a young kid but nothing else. I have done this with my childs profile to speak to her friends (them not knowing it was her mother) to try and find out any little detail I can about my child or the kids she hangs out with. They play commercials about this kind of thing on TV. Be aware of what your children are doing. Any time something bad happens, blaming somebody else usually seems to be an easy way of dealing with the real issues. In this case the real issues is that a young girl with emotional issues should have been getting help since the mother said it had been going on since childhood. If she could do this to herself, she may have been a threat to others as well. My brother tried to kill himself over a girl a long time ago, did not succeed, but a couple months later was thrown in jail for trying to kill the girlfriend. Funny how the tables can turn for people whom do not hold human life precious, theirs or anybody else’s. My heart goes out to the family who lost their child, I’m sure the mother feels terrible that she could have ran after her child to help her feel better but did not, ending result death. My heart also goes out to the other family who could lose a mother because she lied on the internet. Something that happens all the time, every day on the net. We warn our children of these predators, Meier’s parent should have done something about it before it got out of hand. Two weeks is a long time for a parent to have not investigated anything about this person she was talking to. I check my daughters online accounts everyday or two, have setting on her computer to save all (IM’s), emails or messages so I can read them the next morning while she’s at school. I can honestly say some of the things I’ve read are very disturbing, but atleast i know what she is doing, saying, or being told by her friends. The moment I find somebody on there I don’t know I investigate, any way I can. If i had to pose as a teen to get info about my child i would do so, and have.

Justice! I hope Lorie Drew gets at least 10 years in prison. She deserves it and her conviction would have a chilling effect on those who engage in cyberbullying.

That is a point to the longer poster above.
This isn’t about what teens do to each other, which is brutal enough.
This is about a /full grown adult/, a parent of the other girl, who took part.

But what did she conspire to do? She didn’t conspire to murder the girl, so what was she charged with. This is the problem with reporters, shouldn’t someone have asked?

She conspired to basically trick, humiliate and harass the girl. It was something that /led/ to the suicide. (Given the last message involved ‘the world would be better without you in it’, I’d say there’s a connection.)
The conspiracy wasn’t to cause a suicide. It was to, as stated, ‘inflict emotional distress’.

WOW! Although this woman’s actions are totally cruel and reprehensible (and very immature!) – there is truly no way to tell if this was the actual cause of the suicide, is there? This girl was obviously troubled to start with. She invested her entire self esteem in an online romance never met. Where were HER parents during this???? Was the girl on Psych drugs by any chance – there are so many suicides being related to that class of drugs. I think all the wrong things are getting targeted here. Why not close down MySpace in that case? Thanks for the post!

Hmmm… On a purely constitutional level, I don’t think this woman committed a definable crime. I mean, what if she’d just verbally abused the girl to the point of suicide? This is a totally new situation, and maybe we need new laws to cover it.
That being said, this person is so abominably beastly that she deserves to be put away. Trump something up or lynch her if you have to.

Wow – I love watching good Christians jump to the defense of a scumbag like this just because it involves the US Court system.
You’d rather someone like this get away scot free than to give the court the power to decide whether people like her get to live free in this society.
Do you think such a decision will limit your ability to conspire and harrass? Hits a little too close to home, does it?

“Do you think such a decision will limit your ability to conspire and harrass? Hits a little too close to home, does it?”
Are you insane? What in the world are you talking about?

I agree with the poster above – get a rope and string this woman up, it’s all she deserves -