She was heavy and for years had tried to lose weight. She had attention deficit disorder and battled depression. Back in third grade she had talked about suicide, and ever since had seen a therapist. But things were going exceptionally well. She was on the volleyball team, and had a new crush -- Josh Evans. Josh was 16 years old and had contacted Megan through her MySpace page. Even though she had never met him, she begged her mother to allow her add him as a friend.
For the next six weeks Megan and Josh - under Tina's watchful eye - became acquainted in the virtual world of MySpace. After school, Megan would rush to the computer. Megan had a lifelong struggle with weight and self-esteem, and now she finally had a boy who she thought really thought she was pretty. And then on Sunday, Oct. It said: "I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends.
The following day was rainy and bleak. At school, Megan had handed out invitations to her upcoming birthday party. When she got home she asked her mother to log on to MySpace to see if Josh had responded.
Why did he suddenly think she was mean? Who had he been talking to? Tina signed on. But she was in a hurry. She had to take her younger daughter, Allison, to the orthodontist. Before Tina could get out the door it was clear Megan was upset. Josh still was sending troubling messages.
And he apparently had shared some of Megan's messages with others. Tina was pressed for time. She had to go. But once at the orthodontist's office she called Megan and asked: "Did you sign off? Fifteen minutes later, Megan called her mother. By now Megan was in tears. Megan Meier is fat. Megan was sobbing hysterically.
Tina was furious that she had not signed off. Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people. Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, "You're supposed to be my mom!
You're supposed to be on my side! On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron. I told her it's OK. I told her that they obviously don't know her. From that night, her dad went back to the house to see was there a note? Was there something? How did we miss this? We were right there. I couldn't go back to the house. And he said that there was no note, no nothing.
But he did see on instant messaging at the time, that the last messages to Megan that I did not see the night before said, the world would be a better place without you. And have a [blank] rest of your life. Those are things that people don't understand how others can interpret it. They don't know what they're feeling, what they're going through, their self-esteem.
And when they say that to Megan, unfortunately, she felt that everybody felt this way, everybody was against her. And unfortunately Megan made a permanent decision for something that could have been temporary. Five weeks after Megan passed away on Thanksgiving weekend, we received a call from a neighbor down the street - I didn't know her very well - saying that we really needed to come to a meeting about Megan's death. We were extremely confused, but we went to this meeting.
And at the meeting we were informed that that cute boy Josh Megan had been talking to was fake. Josh never existed. Josh was in fact a mother, Lorie Drew, who lived four houses down the street, who was 46 at the time. Her daughter Sarah, who was 13, who had been friends with Megan since the 4th grade and another 18th year old girl Ashley who worked out of that mom's house part time.
These three created the Josh Evans account. And they created it because Megan and Sarah's friendship fell apart in the 7th grade. And they wanted to know if Megan was talking about her daughter behind her back now in 8th grade. So they decided that they would create this account, gain Megan's confidence, and they would see was Megan really talking about her.
I always explain to people. I don't think that 5 weeks prior to Megan's death this family knew that Megan was going to take her own life. I think they thought it was a joke, it was funny, ha ha we're going to show her. And she's talking about you. We're going to let her know that it's not okay. But these things that you think are funny and a joke can turn into tragedies. And this went on for five weeks. I will tell you the amount of sadness and the amount of anger I felt inside, literally I almost felt like I was going to bust.
Of course when somebody you know that has intentionally done something to harm your child whether it's physically or emotionally, you feel like you are strapped, that you can't do anything, and that's how I felt. I knew that we couldn't go physically do anything to them. Nothing we did was going to bring Megan back. And we had another daughter. And her parents who were always her parents are not her parents anymore because they are so stricken with grief, they're walking like zombies.
And we are grateful that we had support from family and friends that said, listen, go through the judicial system. Do not go near them. Stay away from them. And as hard as it was laying in bed four houses down the street from them, it is what we did. So we contacted an attorney. And then they put us in touch with the FBI. The FBI did do a lengthy investigation, and found that in the state of Missouri that there were not any laws. That they could not charge her. We did not have anything to do with electronic communication.
Our laws were harassment, stalking, and child endangerment. But again, electronic communications were not part of that. So we were told, listen, get the laws changed. Do something if you want to do something in the name of your daughter. And I thought, well that's great. How do you even begin to do that? What do you do? It took probably another months of really coming out of this fog trying to figure out how did this happen and we felt there is no justice. Something has to be done.
And we did one newspaper article. And it's truly because of the grief that you're going through. Everybody handles grief differently. And you can't be there to support each other, because you're just trying to breathe every day, to get through that day.
So we did, were in contact with a journalist by the name of Steve Poken, and he was just a local journalist. And our thought was maybe if we do one story now, because we had to keep it quiet for that year before, maybe a legislator, a representative will pay attention and realize we want to get laws changed.
From that one newspaper article that we did, that is when the entire media world came knocking at the doors. It was local at first, and then it quickly went to national and then it was international news. And everybody was at our doorsteps. And I think that society knew that these things could happen.
And they understood sexual predators. They understood that. But understanding that a neighbor 4 houses down the street would create this fake account acting as a boy, to people it was unthinkable. How could this happen? And I think that's what really took hold. From that we did have a governor at the time that really wanted to do something.
And he issued an internet task force. I was part of that task force, and I went and testified several times. And we did get the laws in the State of Missouri changed. And it was Senate Bill , and that was in August of , which really amended the harassment and stalking laws to include electronic communications.
Even with that, we knew that this was not going to - it wouldn't go back and prosecute Lorie Drew. So we knew that we had to move forward, and I knew that I had to do something to help kids. And I could not just keep quiet with what happened. Now in the midst of all of this, we received a call from the LA Times. And they informed me, did you know that Lorie Drew is being indicted on 4 federal charges in Los Angeles.
I said no. I had no idea. And I was rushed to the airport to fly out to LA to speak on the Today Show to talk about this indictment. I really had no clue what was going on. The Los Angeles prosecuting attorney at the time, Thomas O'Brien, heard about the story, and felt it was unjust that nothing was done.
And they realized that MySpace's headquarters were based in Los Angeles. And what they did is they really - I am grateful to every single person who worked on this case. Because they really took the chance of saying, this isn't okay. And the federal grand jury indicted Lorie Drew on four federal charges.
And it was violating the terms of service. We knew it was a long shot. But at the end of the day for somebody to finally stand up and say, listen, we're going to make a statement, we're going to stand up, we're going to do something about this. And that's really what we wanted to do. And we did go through with the trial.
In November of , almost two years after Megan passed away, we did have the trial, and it was about five days long. The jury came back, and unfortunately they found her guilty on three misdemeanors. And they were deadlocked on the fourth. The judge continued the case several months And in July of he overturned the case stating that it was unconstitutional to convict Lorie Drew. Brooke Ellison, 43 other. Psalm Isadora, 46 other. Steven Avery, 59 other. Sean Spicer, 50 other. Influencer Opportunity If you are a model, tiktoker, instagram Influencer We connect brands with social media talent to create quality sponsored content " Join Here ".
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