MEGAN MEIER: INTERNET BULLYING

M is for Modern

E is for Enthusiastic

G is for Goofy

A is for Alluring

N is for Neglected

 

This is how Megan Meier described herself on her MySpace page. Her interests included swimming, boating, rap music, horror movies, her Chihuahua, Barry, and boys. Megan, however, battled depression and self-esteem issues, especially her weight. She also had recently transferred schools at the beginning of eighth grade. She also suffered from attention deficit disorder. In the third grade she told her mother she wanted to kill herself. Since then, she has seen a counselor who prescribed Concerta (for A.D.D) and Geodon (a mood stabilizer). Tina Meier, Megan’s mother, felt that Megan’s issues all dealt with her weight. “Megan always just felt like she was never enough. Even in kindergarten, she made a comment about how she didn’t like her legs compared to the other girls’ legs”[1].

Middle school at For Zumwalt West started out fine. Tina says sixth grade “wasn’t so horrible”[2], but Megan had some issues between her and other girls in her class. According to Tina, however, when seventh grade came along “that’s when it was just a mess. Megan was trying desperately to fit in.”[3] She tried adapting to what Tina called the “instant maturity look”[4]. Megan and another young girl living in the neighborhood (her last name is Drew, but her first name is still unreleased to the public for her own personal safety) were friends on and off throughout the whole year. According to neighbors, the other girl was proper, quiet, and respectful, while Megan was more wild and in-your-face. They would have period of time in which they were and weren’t friends. Tina says “They would do all day Friday, do all day Saturday, and by the time Sunday came, Megan needed her space. Lori and Curt [Drew, the girls’ parents, got] ticked off”[5], and their daughter was hurt. The tension between the two girls heightened and Megan’s parents felt it best to transfer her for eighth grade.

Megan started school at Immaculate Conception Dardenne in 2006. Tina and Ron (Megan’s father) were thrilled. There were smaller classes and uniforms were mandatory. Tina says the change of scenery was “wonderful” for Megan who was “not paying attention to her hair as much, not worrying about undereye concealer”[6]. But Megan soon began begging her parents to let her open up a MySpace page in order to keep in contact with her new friends.

The Meiers had many reservations about this. Just a year earlier, Megan and the Drews’ daughter, her former friend, had started a MySpace account together. They included pictures of attractive females on their site, hoping to meet boys. A cousin of Tina’s found the site, which had a flashing Playboy bunny picture on it, and showed it to her. Megan’s parents ordered her to get rid of the site and did not tell the Drews about what they found. Lori Drew states that there were a series of calls to New York on her cell phone bill and that her daughter told her Megan was the one who made the calls to a boy they had met online.

Megan, however, got her way, about getting her own MySpace page with four rules set by her mother: “1. Your dad and I are the only ones who know the password 2. It has to be set to ‘private’ 3. We have to approve the content 4. We have to be in the room at all times when you’re on MySpace.”

Megan got her account on September 13, 2006, just a little over a month shy of her fourteenth birthday on November 4 (fourteen is the minimum age to have a MySpace account). MySpace does not require users to have a first and last name, so Megan was known on the site as ‘Megan Babi’[7].

In mid-September, Megan got a friend request from Josh Evans. He was sixteen, six-foot-3, loved pizza, hated sushi, and was “adorable,” according to Megan’s mother, Tina. “Can I add him Mom, please, please?” Megan asked her mother, following her rules of approval. Eventually, Tina allowed Megan to accept his friend request, “but if there’s one cross word delete him,” she demanded.

For the next month, Megan thoroughly enjoyed MySpace and keeping in touch with all of her friends. They occasionally talked about inappropriate subjects, but most of what they talked about was just silly, goofy, and fun. When Megan asked Josh for his phone number he told her he didn’t have a cell phone and his single mother didn’t have a landline. He also asked Megan if she wanted to touch his pet snake, leaving Tina quite alarmed. Megan thought her mother was just being disgusting and overreacting.

 Tina was unsure about Josh, however, so she called the police in order to see if he was who he said he was. Tina became concerned when Josh responded to Megan telling him of this with “She’s probably just trying to protect you”. Tina thought that “usually a sixteen-year-old would just say ‘What a bitch’.”[8]

On October 15^th, 2006, Megan received a particularly incriminating message from Josh. It read “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you any longer because I hear you’re not nice to your friends”[9]. Megan replied asking him who told him that and why he would say such a thing. Tina was in a hurry, having to take Megan’s sister, Allison, to the orthodontist. She told Megan to sign off. “I will Mom, just let me finish up,” Megan said.

While at the orthodontist, Tina called home and asked Megan if she had signed off. Megan replied, “No, Mom. They are being so mean to me.” Tina was angry with her for night signing off, “You are not listening to me, Megan! Sign off now!” Fifteen minutes later, Megan called Tina, sobbing, “They are posting bulletins about me”[10]. Bulletins are like polls or surveys that anyone on somebody’s MySpace friend list can respond to. “Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat.”[11] Megan was crying hysterically and Tina was furious with her for not signing off.

When Tina was home, she was disgusted at the vulgar language Megan had used against those who were attacking her. “I am so aggravated at you for doing this!” she told Megan. Megan began running upstairs but paused to say “You’re supposed to be my mom! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

Megan ran into her father on her way up the stairs to her bedroom. “I grabbed her as she tried to go by,” Ron said, “She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn’t understand why. I told her it’s okay. I told her that they obviously didn’t know her and that it would be fine[12]”. He then proceeded down to the kitchen where he and Tina prepared dinner and discussed what had happened. About twenty minutes into the conversation, Tina stopped abruptly in mid-sentence. “I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet”[13]. Megan died the next day, three weeks before turning fourteen. On the day she died, Ron logged on to his daughter’s MySpace account and viewed the final message on MySpace that Megan ever saw. It was from Josh and it said, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.”

The next day, the Meiers walked down to the Drews’ house to comfort the family of Megan’s former friend because the family seemed to be shocked and saddened by the news of Megan’s death. They told the girl that while the two of them may have had their ups and downs, Megan still valued their friendship.  The Meiers also attending the young girl’s birthday party and Curt Drew’s fiftieth birthday party. They even agreed to store a foosball table at their house until Christmas for the Drews. On a Saturday morning, six weeks after Megan’s death, the Meiers received a phone call from another neighbor they didn’t know very well, Michele Mulford, insisting they meet at a counselor’s office in northern O’Fallon. Their grief counselor was there as well as a counselor from Fort Zumwalt West Middle School. While there, Michele, a single mother with a daughter Megan’s age, told the Meiers that Josh Evans never existed. She told them that the account was fake, created by adults. The adults happened to be Lori and Curt Drew. Lori Drew had encouraged Michele’s daughter to join in on pranking Megan. Michele said her daughter only sent one message to Megan. Her daughter, said Michele, felt extremely guilty about not speaking up before, but didn’t speak out sooner because she knew the other family for years and thought that what they were doing must be okay because they were trusted adults. Michele told the Meiers that on the night the ambulance came to take Megan away, her daughter got a phone call from the Drews. She told the girl that something happened to Megan and that she shouldn’t mention the MySpace account.

Immediately after this, the Meiers went home and destroyed the foosball table with an ax and sledgehammer. They put the pieces into Ron’s pickup truck and dumped them into their neighbor’s driveway. Tina spray painted “Merry Christmas” on the foosball box. “I know they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck,” said Tina, “but when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old—with or without mental problems—it is absolutely vile… She wanted to get Megan to feel like she was liked by a boy and let everyone know this was a false MySpace and have everyone laugh at her…I don’t feel their intentions were for her to kill herself. But that’s how it ended”[14].

According to the police report, “Lori Drew stated in the months leading up Meier’s daughter’s suicide, she instigated and monitored a ‘my space’ account which was created for the sole purpose of communicating with Meier’s daughter. Lori Drew said she, with the help of temporary employee Ashley [Grills] constructed a profile if ‘good looking’ male on ‘my space’ in order to ‘find out what Megan (Meier’s daughter) was saying online’ about her daughter. Lori Drew explained the communication between the fake male profile and Megan was aimed at gaining Megan’s confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people…according to (her) ‘somehow’ other ‘my space’ users were able to access the fake male profile and Megan found out she had been duped. Drew stated she knew ‘arguments’ had broken out between Megan and others on ‘my space’. Drew felt this incident contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out ‘Megan had tried to commit suicide before.’”[15]

Tina Meier said that her daughter died thinking Josh was real and that she never before attempted suicide. They blame her suicide on the problems with MySpace and the Drews. Tina Meier went on to say “I feel what they did was absolutely criminal”[16]. It seems that there can be no criminal charges pressed against the Drews in the near future. Lt. Craig McGuire, spokesman for the sheriff’s department, says “We did not have a charge to fit it. I don’t know that anybody can sit down and say, ‘This is why this young girl took her life.’”[17] The Meiers do not plan on filing a civil lawsuit. All they want is a low changed, state or federal, so that what happened to Megan is a crime.

“Ultimately, it was Megan’s choice to do what she did,” says Ron Meier, who is now getting divorced from wife, Tina, “But it was like someone handed her a loaded gun.”