When Megan Meier logged on to MySpace a little over a year ago, she was seeking a new start with new friends. She'd had some hard times: She considered herself overweight, had been bullied in school and had low self-esteem.
Still, things seemed to be getting better. She had just started eighth grade at a new school in Dardenne Prairie, Mo., had lost 20 pounds and made some new friends. Her parents had recently restored her Internet access. (She had lost that privilege when she and a friend had created a secret My- Space page.)
Shortly after getting her access back, Megan was contacted on My- Space by a boy named Josh Evans. He said that he was 16, that he was home-schooled and that he recently had moved to nearby O'Fallon. He was a dream: He played the guitar and drums; he was handsome; and he told Megan that he liked her a lot.
Josh went into detail about his own difficult life and immediately struck a chord with Megan. For six weeks they corresponded. Then, when her infatuation was at its peak, Megan received a well-planned, well-timed blow. Josh suddenly told her, "I don't know if I want to be friends with you any longer because I heard you're not a very nice friend."
Josh then apparently passed her messages on to others, unleashing a torrent of insults from others in an Internet pile-on. She was called fat and a slut. However, according to her father, the last message from Josh was the worst: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a s----y rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."
Megan fell apart. She went to her room, tied a cloth belt around a support beam in her closet and hanged herself.
Perhaps the only shock that could rival Megan's death was the news (given to her parents by a neighbor) that Josh had never existed -- he had been created by adults who lived nearby. These neighbors, supposed friends of the Meier family, had apparently laid the trap in retaliation for Megan's treatment of their own daughter, the girl who had created the secret MySpace page with Megan.
Megan is only the latest victim of cyber-bullying. In Florida, Jeff Johnston, 15, hanged himself by his book-bag strap in 2005, and in Vermont, Ryan Halligan, 13, hanged himself in 2003 -- both victims of Internet harassment.
