Update March 2009:
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause is prosecuting a Missouri mother charged in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led to a 13-year-old girl's suicide.
I've seen teachers bully students, but that is considered okay by most people, particularly people who have power in schools. It's okay for adults in schools to tell children that they are "losers," "future criminals," etc.
Everyone seems to agree that the adult who tormented Megan Meir went too far.
How much would you be willing to pay if you could save the life of a troubled teenager like Megan Meir? Schools need more counseling services for kids. Vote for your next school bond. And go easy on the teenagers you encounter. Sadly, there are more than a few adults who delight in battering the egos of children. Some are parents, and some are teachers (who actually get paid for their actions!)
Here is part of the ABC News story on Megan's death:
Nov. 22, 2007
13-year-old Megan Meier... hanged herself last year after receiving a malicious message from a friend she met online.
Megan became friends with Josh Evans on the social networking site Myspace.com. Josh claimed he was 16 years old and being home-schooled in a nearby town.
But one day, Josh sent a message to the young girl, saying she was "a bad person" and "everyone hates you." He said he didn't want to be friends with her any longer because he had heard she was not nice to her friends. Others in the online community joined in on the verbal abuse.
The cruelty and magnitude of the messages led Megan to hang herself in her bedroom closet on Oct. 16, 2006. Weeks later, her parents learned that Josh was not a real person. He was just an online identity created by a parent of a former friend of Megan's and her mother who lived down the street in their St. Louis suburb.
The two teenagers had argued, and the girl's mother wanted to find out whether Megan was saying negative things about her daughter.
"That's the biggest tragedy of the whole thing," Megan's father, Ron Meier, said. "An adult did it."
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