Myspace Hoax - week 2

In 2006, a neighborhood family created a fake Myspace profile to obtain information about what a girl was saying about their own children. The victim in this story is Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl. The profile was a person named Josh Evans, who told her he was born in Florida and had recently moved to the nearby community of O'Fallon. He said he was homeschooled, and didn't yet have a phone number in the area to give her. So they exchanged messages through myspace daily. The mother of the family who created this fake person created Josh's profile because she wanted to gain Megan's confidence to know what Megan was saying about her own child online. During these events, some messages were sent to Megan saying that he no longer wanted to be friends with her because he had heard she didn’t treat her friends nicely. A later message said that the world would be better without her.

The next day Megan was found in her room and had committed suicide. Through these events, the family responded by saying they had no intent of causing emotional or physical harm to Megan with this hoax . So with malicious intent, the family in question claims that they had no intent for Megan to kill herself and also there were no threats. Considering this statement, Police there, however, have said they didn't file any charges against the family in part because there was no applicable state law. But are being charged with accessing computers without authorization, and also violating the myspace term of service.

My personal opinion is that the family should be found guilty to an extent. The family did not intend emotional harm, but the fact that this went on through a period of over a month caused Megan to become emotionally attached to the fake “Josh” profile, and because of the devastating messages sent to her, caused events for her to commit suicide. They can’t be convicted of murder or manslaughter, but can be convicted of emotional distress to the victim and victim’s family.