Cyberbullying Suicide Can't Be Prosecuted
Local and federal prosecutors say there is little they can do in the case of a Missouri couple accused of making up an online boy who romanced then taunted a 13-year-old girl until she committed suicide.
Now authorities fear neighbors will take the law into their own hands, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
The couple, Lori and Curt Drew, is accused of making up a boy named Josh Evans to find out what Megan Meier was saying about their daughter after the two girls had a falling out. Meier hung herself, driven to suicide, her parents say, by the online messages.
Those who are angry about the incident have targeted the Drews, making threatening phone calls, throwing a brick through their window and attacking their home with paintballs. Recently police stormed their home after receiving a false report of a fatal shooting there.
A county sheriff’s department spokesman told the newspaper the Drews could not be charged under current laws. “There does not appear to be a violation of any state statute, any federal statute,” said the spokesman, Lt. Craig McGuire. “We looked at it. The prosecuting attorney’s office looked at it, and the U.S. attorney’s office looked at it, and there did not appear to be a charge.”
Jack Banas, the prosecutor of St. Charles County, Mo., says it’s difficult to track the origin of threatening online messages. “It may not be your neighbor who is sending it to you,” Banas said. “It may be someone from another country.”
