No Charges In Deadly MySpace Hoax

The St. Charles County prosecutor said Monday he will not file criminal charges in the case of the teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied on the Internet.

County Prosecutor Jack Banas, announcing his decision at a news conference here, said no charges could be applied under current law.

The parents of 13-year-old Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, who hanged herself last year, said her suicide was the result of harassment after she created a profile on the MySpace social networking site.

They have said an adult neighbor fabricated a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her. The mother is quoted in a police report as saying that she and an 18-year-old employee created the boy's account.

Banas said the fake MySpace page was not created by the mother of one of Megan's friends, as has been reported. He said the page was created by an 18-year-old employee of that mother, though the mother knew about the page.

The messages were being sent by the 18-year-old and by the neighbor's daughter.

The prosecutor's office had been investigating whether any laws were broken or charges could be filed.

Messages to the 13-year-old girl's MySpace page included "Megan Meier is fat," "Megan Meier is a slut" and "the world would be a better place without you," reports CBS News station WBBM-TV.

The neighbors admitted to police that they created the account.

Jayne Hitchcock, 49, understands like few others how devastating online harassment can be. In 1996, someone falsely assumed her identity and posted messages that she liked group and sadomasochistic sex, even circulating her phone number and address. To her horror, strangers started calling.

Even as Megan's hometown, Dardenne Prairie, has adopted a law making Internet harassment a crime, Hitchcock wonders if it has any value.

"In the Megan Meier case, from the messages I've seen and read, they're not considered harassment. They're cruel, yes. Demeaning, yes," she said.

"That law, I hate to say it, is meaningless."

But others disagree.

Dardenne Prairie's assistant city attorney, John Young, said this week that harassment and stalking already are illegal. The town's new law expands the definition to include electronic media.

The law is limited to violators in the small town of Dardenne Prairie, a bedroom community of St. Louis, but officials there call it a starting point. They're encouraging state and federal changes.

Hitchcock, however, says a local change in the law doesn't fix the wider problems.

She would like Web sites to better police themselves, perhaps by requiring identification or small fees via credit cards to register on social networking sites.

Naomi Harlin Goodno, an assistant professor at Pepperdine University School of Law in California, thinks the Dardenne Prairie measure looks comprehensive and well thought out.

Her overview of U.S. cyberstalking law, published in the Winter 2007 Missouri Law Review, was used by lawyers who drafted the new measure, Young said.

She found that as of January, that six states - Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Washington - have state laws specifically dealing with cyberstalking. Four others - Florida, Nevada, Delaware and Virginia - have amended their laws to address aspects of cyberstalking.

Gov. Matt Blunt and a few state legislators have recently sought a review of Missouri law for any needed changes. The St. Charles County prosecutor, Jack Banas, has said he is reviewing Megan's case to see if anyone should be charged under Missouri's existing harassment law.

Goodno recommends that states look at their harassment and stalking law, to see if new law is needed.

"When you think of stalking or harassment, you think of the creepy guy behind the bush who follows you," Goodno said. "But with the Internet, there are whole types of behaviors that people wouldn't normally think of as harassment."

She said cyberstalking differs from other harassment in five ways.

Cyberstalkers can harass someone quickly and widely over the Internet. They can be far removed from their victim, creating jurisdictional problems for prosecutors. They can remain nearly anonymous. They can easily impersonate the victim, and they can encourage people not directly involved in the harassment to harass on their behalf.

In California, a man posed online as a woman, posted her identifying information, and sent messages that she fantasized about being raped. At least six men knocked on the woman's door, saying they wanted to rape her.

The unique features of cyberstalking and harassment require new or updated laws beyond those already on the books, she said.

Both types of law should emphasize that a stalker has willfully and repeatedly acted in such a way to cause the victim to fear for safety. However, many current stalking laws require that the suspect has made a "credible threat" of violence against the victim, and is able to carry out that threat.

That standard can make cyberharassment more difficult to prosecute, she said.

The "credible threat" laws don't protect against electronic communications such as a barrage of e-mails that harass but don't actually threaten.

Goodno advocates instead for a "reasonable person standard," such as the one included in the Dardenne Prairie measure. That measure says harassment causes a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, or a parent to fear for the well-being of their underage child, who is the target of the contact.

There's no question that First Amendment issues could come into play. "We can't criminalize constitutionally protected behavior," Goodno said.

In Hitchcock's case, the writer was harassed after a dispute with a literary agency. Cyberstalkers purporting to be her posted phony messages, forged her name on magazine subscriptions and CD club memberships, and clogged her Internet account with unwanted e-mail.

The couple involved in her case settled a civil suit, she said, and pleaded guilty to charges including mail fraud.

She worked to change Maryland law, where she lived at the time, and lawmakers made it a crime to send harassing e-mails there, though the measure couldn't be retroactively applied to her case.

The Maine resident now runs a site called Working to Halt Online Abuse, to assist victims of online harassment. She's still seeking legal changes.

"I'd rather see a broader cyberstalking law federally," she said. "I've been trying to get that passed for years."