In the case of United States v. Lori Drew, local Missouri court had to pass on this one. The sad fact is that there are no laws in place to address cyberbullying, cyber-harassment, and cyberstalking. Parents are left to their own devices to monitor their children's safety online. Some parents even resort to reverse IP address lookups and installing spyware on their own computer to address this issue.
Quick recap: Lori Drew was a 48-year-old overly involved mother that drove a local neighborhood girl to suicide by posing as a 16-year-old boy and befriending Megan Meier. "He" eventually told the girl that, "The world would be a better place without you." Megan Meier hanged herself on October 16, 2006.
The teenager had battled depression throughout her life. When she told her mother the evening she hanged herself about the 16-year-old boy harassing her, the mother told her to go to bed and quit using inappropriate language online. She had no idea how seriously this had affected her daughter.
The sad reality is that no innovation has such a dramatic effect on human behavior. If you thought that schoolyard bullying and name-calling was detrimental to a child's psychological growth, you should take a look at what goes on in the various social networking websites. Children are targeted by other children (and in this case a grown women) and bullied for millions of online users to watch the humiliation and torment.
In this case, could Megan Meier's suicide have been prevented? Well, seeing that neither Missouri court nor the Supreme Court have clearly stated laws to protect children from this type of abuse, parents have to take matters into their own hands.
Parents are resorting to reverse IP address lookup on record review sites or installing spyware on their own child's computer. If you feel like your child is a victim of anonymous cyberbullying, do a reverse records lookup here.
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