When Adolescent Women Attack

Like so many--so many--other people, I was mortified by the news that a young girl, an overweight, emotionally troubled, 13 year old named Megan Meier, committed suicide after a hot "boy" (and a few others) talked smack about her on MySpace. The horrible thing was that her tormentor-in-chief was an adult woman, the mother of Ms Meier’s former friend, who posed as a cute 16 year old named “Josh Evans” on MySpace. “Josh” lead Ms Meier on, and then told her--abruptly--that she wasn't worth being friends with. She was a “slut,” she was not a good friend, and, allegedly, the world would be better off without her. A few hours later, the 13 year old was found in her closet with a belt around her neck. She died the next day, just short of her 14th birthday. There is much more to the story than my feeble synopsis, but I won’t go into further details here--Lord knows, the story’s been told and retold numerous times over the past week. If you want those details, you can read:

The story that broke the news. You'll note that the reporter’s paper decided not to publish the adult woman’s name. Others, however, didn’t mind doing so.

Bluemerle discovered the name of the woman who originated the MySpace page and promptly “outed” her--home and business address included. Since then, someone has decided to do the same to Bluemerle’s author (fair enough). Then there's Jezebel. And Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts. And the forum at HitsUSA.

"Josh Evans" herself, the other girl’s mother, filed a report about the Meier episode on 25 November, 2006. The report includes her admission of setting up the MySpace profile. You can read the police report on The Smoking Gun. Oddly, even when the conversation between Megan and “Josh” became sexual (as the report asserts), the adult woman chose to continue the communication.

There are a few thousand other sites that relate the story and readers’ outrage, but I’d like to draw your attention to Leonard Pitts’ poignant editorial titled “If You’re Looking for a Good Laugh, a Real Sidesplitter, Read On.”

Many folks have posted the other family's personal information online. I don’t agree with this tactic; I do think that the woman should be held accountable--an adult deliberately winding a child up and then devastating her to the point of suicide? It’s all so lamentable. And cruel.

Now that the public is vocalizing its response (an outrage that, at times, borders on hysteria), the other family's supporters have come out with their own ‘blogs to try and refocus the debate onto Ms Meier in an attmept to justify the mother's actions. I won’t publish links to those here. If you’re interested, you can Google “Megan had it coming” etc.

My thoughts are with Megan Meier’s family, and with Megan--a girl who didn’t have the opportunity to move beyond adolescent turbulance and discover, well, herself.