More on the Meier Case

I refuse to name this after the woman who has been indited simply because of a statment she made through her attorney back in December. When it was decided that no charges would be filed locally, the accused essentially said that she had nothing to do with the page, no knowledge of it, and that she wasn't even there when the last messages were sent. But here's the kicker: she also said that "the Drew family is also sorry that their family, friends and neighbors have had to endure the stresses associated with the harassment directed toward the Drews." I'm pretty sure that her neighbors who are participating in this "harassment" aren't feeling particularly stressed about this family's harassment. I just think the statement was tacky; if you want to come off like you are not the scum of the Earth, you may want to not talk about yourself and your stress when some 13-year-old is dead and there is at least one source out there that quotes you as saying that you didn't feel so bad that she died because the girl was already suicidal [and I will find that article when I'm not writing these entries at work]. They also say in this article that the police overstated her involvement in this tragedy.

If that is the case, then why were charges brought against this woman if she had nothing to do with it? This second article brings up some of the concerns I have with this case; do they have enough evidence to convict? Are these charges overreaching? I hadn't even considered the possible slippery slope that this could begin. My stance on this is that the accused did have something to do with creating this MySpace page, but I'm not sure going after the adult who had this page created is enough. There should be punishment for the individual(s) who participated in contacting this girl. We have to show people that bullying is wrong and can have dire consequences, because while this may punish the adult for what she did, how do we get young people to not do this to each other?

That, and I hope that parents out there will do the minimalist thing when it comes to MySpace and obey the age limit set by the company. You are supposed to be 14 to start a page and while I understand that the parents were monitoring her participation, it was still breaking the rules. I remember all of the flack that MySpace got for not protecting young people against predators [Especially from Dateline: NBC who kept implying that their child predators were caught on MySpace despite the fact that not a single one of their predators was contacted or caught through the service, which is why they stopped bringing up MySpace in their subsequent reports], but it defeats the purpose of getting on these services when you allow children who are not supposed to be on there to set up accounts anyway.

For the purposes of this case, it doesn't matter if she should not have had a page or not. It's up to the courts to decide if what the adult did in this situation was criminal (ultimately morally bankrupt, yes) and if she broke any laws to which she can be held accountable. As more information becomes available, I'll report when I can.