Why Lori Drew Should Be Imprisoned

Lori Drew is a near-50-year old woman with a near-12-year old mind, but her inarguable stupidity does not excuse her actions because she is not - technically - mentally retarded.

In case you are unfamiliar with the story, Lori Drew is the mother of a young girl who befriended one Megan Meier. As many young girls are wont to do, the two had a falling-out and no longer socialized, but they both had MySpace accounts and both apparently continued their adolescent feud on the popular social network.

Lori Drew decided she was far more clever than a 12-year old girl and would prove it. According to the police report, she set about to deceive Megan Meier in order to "...[find] out what Megan felt about her daughter." To do this, she created a fake account with an unnamed (and innocent) boy's picture and gained the victim's confidence - which she admits was her very intention.

With the fake account ("Josh"), Lori Drew fooled Megan Meier into believing she was actually this boy, Josh, who thought Megan was "sexi." Employing online tactics usually reserved for pedophiles, "Josh" engaged her romantically and then cruelly humiliated and harassed her, which led directly to Megan Meier's suicide.

While state prosecutors failed to charge Lori Drew because there was no applicable state law, federal authorities finally stepped-up in response to national outrage and indicted Lori Drew on charges usually reserved for hackers:

Lori Drew is charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of illegally accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information. The latter charge is usually reserved for hackers and the major difference is that, in this case, the information is outgoing, not incoming (as with cases involving hackers). But that's all semantics; the bottom-line is that Lori Drew illegally impersonated someone in order to gain access to someone else's personal information! She used that personal information against said person. And her doing so directly led to the person's death.

She should be charged with murder.

While some are afraid of the decision to prosecute under this law, others - myself included - believe this to be a very fair and perfectly legitimate application. Of course, I completely agree that it could be abused, but if this is the best we can do to combat cyberbullying, then it's what we'll have to work with; God forbid anyone should have to develop laws specifically for such crimes!

An employee of Drew's has since admitted to creating the profile and sending the message which is believed to have pushed Meier over the edge, but the girl (an Ashley Grills) would have been a minor at the time the crime was committed, so I don't buy it. She should also be charged with conspiracy, but regardless of what happens to her, Lori Drew deserves to go to jail.

What the living fuck does a 50-year old housewife care what her 12-year old daughters' friends are saying or doing on MySpace?

Unless said daughter were the victim of the kind of harassment Lori Drew is guilty of.

Lori Drew has pleaded not guilty.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008