:rolleyes: :dubious: 
Now I know you do have teenagers. This strategy works great with a 2 year old. Twelve years later, not so much.
Trying to raise a child this way is a great way to get a kid to never do jack shit.
Why take out the trash, dad will do it when he gets pissed enough. Why pick up my dirty clothes? Mom will do it on laundry day.
I assume this was a result of me **stupidly and erroneously ** implying that maliciously doing something like this was common and no big deal- I did not mean that. Surely though, you don’t think a good non threateneing practical joke between friends is either insane or assholish?
Hey, thanks. I agree with your post and you’re right; I certainly would not call for charges to be brought against the parents. I’m not blaming them even though I can see how it may sound like I am. And Lori Drew is all kinds of crazy evil. Whatever I think of the parents I have already said that none of it absolves Lori in any way. I’m glad she’s being charged and hope, for the sake of Megan’s family, that the whole thing gets wrapped up without too much trauma for them.
I am surprised that, in this group of people especially, nobody has said anything about the Meier’s own account of that day’s events. As I said, if a friend came to me and told me her daughter didn’t listen to her and, as a direct result of that, became emotionally distressed to the point that the girl was sobbing and the parent’s first (and possibly only) outward reaction to that was anger, I’d find that unsettling.
To expand on my previous post, which you quoted, if it’s not important, as in your examples, I can either harp on the kid until they’re willing to do as I’ve said or I can come up with alternate methods of compelling them to listen and that’s fine. If it’s something that is important and the issue is time sensitive (we’re going to be late for school and you’re not putting your shoes on; I need to leave RIGHT NOW and do not want you on the computer while I’m gone) I see nothing wrong with a parent performing the necessary action himself and taking care of any noncompliance issues with the kid later.
I have a 10 year old nephew who acts in a way similar to your post (e.g., he still doesn’t pick out his own clothes each day) and wouldn’t dream of doing every single thing for a kid, just because she doesn’t feel like it, for that reason. I do think there is a difference between a kid not doing something that is not important and not doing something that is important. If Megan’s mom thought it was that important that Megan not be on the computer while her mom was out, she should have ensured that Megan would not on the computer while she was out. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Let’s not make this a bigger dispute than it is…I was principally responding to the “malicious” portion of your post - but also, to some extent, I don’t think mistaken identity/identity spoofing jokes really are funny even if they aren’t malicious. I guess, by definition, it’s not “assholish” if the jokee doesn’t find it such. I do. YMMV.
I think it’s wrong what she did, but she didn’t kill the girl. This sounds like a case of, “I want someone to pay, anyone !” She does need to pay for any crime she committed, but if anyone is going to imply she caused this girl to kill herself, they’re crazy.
Well, I am not a lawyer.
Can a lawyer speculate here?
Is there a chance at being able to prove some form of “reckless endangerment” on a manslaughter charge? (Or do I watch too much Law & Order?)
I’m not defending Lori Drew. As others have said, she’s a vile, self-obsessed, pogrocket who has no excuse for what she did, and the website she ran for a few weeks after the story first broke was all that I needed to see to believe she is evil, and has no remorse.
But, the details of this indictment are almost as insane. I understand the legal reasoning involved that has her crime being prosecuted for having occurred in California, but it just doesn’t pass the sniff test. It smells like court shopping, and that’s disturbing. For that matter - while setting up an email account under a false name is something that I’ve never understood the appeal to - especially if the purpose is to harass someone else - I wonder just how many Dopers here haven’t filed false information with web servers?
Does no one else use bugmenot, for newspaper registrations, for example?
I’ve only skimmed the indictment, and much of the legal wrangling with this thread - it’s possible I’m missing why this sort of prosecution couldn’t be shoehorned to punish people who just want to read a newspaper story without giving up their vital statistics.
I was very disappointed when the local prosecutor decided that there was no way to make this a criminal case, just because the standards of proof required for a successful prosecution would be so hard to meet. But I understood, and even approved of the prosecutor’s decision, as much as it galled me. Sometimes it’s just a fact that evil people will get away with shit, and people will get hurt, even killed.
And while I’m not sure I agree with Sampiro in thinking that Lori Drew has been punished enough for her idiotic actions, I can’t pretend she hasn’t been punished. To claim that Lori Drew has, until now, suffered no consequences from her actions is not supportable, in my opinion.
Possibly true. But I won’t be heartbroken if she suffers some more.
No, she didn’t kill her. She just devised and executed a plan to emotionally torture a thirteen year old girl. Via MySpace. The first part makes her an evil fucking nutbar. The second makes her a trashy waste of human DNA.
Nothing that happens to this woman short of physical harm is going to make me say “She’s suffered enough.”
Again, IANAL, and I will defer to one’s professional opinion, but I was going off of this:
If they don’t find her guilty, then it seems likely they’re finding that no crime occurred, thus no conspiracy.
Two possibilities:
- Jury concludes that the parties agreed to commit a crime, but didn’t complete their agreement. Guilty of conspiracy.
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/pjury.pdf (pdf page 70)
- Jury conlcudes that the parties had an agreement, but whatever they agreed to do was not criminal. Not guilty of conspiracy.
*Id. *
This raging narcissitic, unrepetent bitch had the audacity to ask the Meyers family to house the foosball table she’d bought her kids for Christmas in their garage after Megan had committed suicide but before the family knew of her involvement. When the story started to come together, the Meyers parents both took axes to the thing–and the Drews had the cold balls to start to call the police about it. (My original cite is a People magazine article I read at the time the story broke, but there are numerous confirming cites that pop up on the Net with a Googling of “foosball Lori Drew claims court”–here’s one.)
I hope she rots. She cannot be vilified enough as far as I’m concerned.
If they can’t make this…unusual…charge stick, I hope they make up a fucking law that will make it stick at least for some other raging asshole who thinks this is a good idea. I wish they could charge her with manslaughter, but that would probably be hard to prove.
Sounds plausible, I guess, but I cannot imagine what crime they would have agreed to commit and then didn’t, and I further can’t imagine how the prosecution plans to prove it. This whole thing stinks of revenge and not justice to me. As despicable as I find Lori Drew, I care more about the integrity of our legal system. I’m not cementing my opinion yet, but I’m very interested to see how this case plays out.
Here is a link to the indictment on the Smoking Gun website. A quick scan of the indictment states that they are charging her with conspiracy to commit a tort, namely intentional infliction of emotional distress. I think that the family has one hell of a civil action against Lori Drew and I am curious to see how this case proceeds.
They got a U.S. Attorney to sign off on this so someone there is pretty convinced that this case has a chance.
Her defense will definitely be very very costly.
For me, the horror is not just what happened to this girl, but also to Lori’s daughter (and other kids, IMS). How in hell can they be normal, now?
I remember reading about this a few weeks after it happened–either a story online or in a magazine. Mrs Drew showed no remorse; has shown none and continues to show none, as far as I know. This alone is a huge red flag to me–so many people who had any contact with a suicide go through guilt and remorse and the “if onlys”.
I am not sure that she is guilty of a crime in the legal sense (and if she isn’t, I hope the draft legislation to cover this sort of thing), but she is absolutely guilty of immoral, unethical actions and frankly, evil malice toward a vulnerable child. The tort seems to fit (IANAL).
How her kids can look at her (much less her husband) is beyond me. I hope for her sake that she does find remorse, otherwise, isn’t she essentially a sociopath of sorts? Mommy Dearest’s got nothing on her… :mad:
Whether Megan’s parents could have done something differently is beyond moot and rather cruel to speculate on. Does anyone here truly think they haven’t relived that awful day again and again? They are in a particular hell–there is no need to point fingers and say “would have, could have, should have”. We’d all like to have foresight when it comes to raising kids. 
A factual question about the case:
I’m familiar with it of course but I’ll admit I haven’t researched it; I’ve just seen the occasional TV segment or read the occasional Newsweek type article, but I had thought that the meganhaditcoming dot blogspot site was revealed to be a hoax put up by a snarker or by someone who thought that, well, Megan had it coming, and not Lori Drew herself. Has it now been established that Drew did maintain that site?
ETA: Another factual question- How involved was Drew’s daughter in the harassment of Megan? Was it mainly the mother going after her, was the daughter assisting or did the daughter know about it, etc.?
If that’s the case, I’m still not sure she should be prosecuted as it could establish a dangerous precedent, but as with the verdict against Westboro Baptist Church I damned sure won’t have a single neuron spark in sympathy for those punished. (I’d absolutely support a wrongful death civil suit that would hopefully bankrupt the Drews for the rest of their days.)
I remember reading a tabloid article many years ago that was later substantiated by a legitimate source that reminds me of what I think would be a good verdict in this case for Ashley Grills. The headline read something to the effect of “elderly couple spends thousands of dollars to recover a $100 debt”, but the text made it clear it had nothing to do with the money. Years before, this couple’s daughter had been killed by a drunk driver who plead guilty and threw himself on the mercy of the court and the daughter’s parents and was released on probation and with an odd stipulation: he agreed to pay the parents of the woman he killed $1 per week for the rest of his life or until they told him to stop. Each payment was to be made by a money order dated on a particular date and time (let’s say, each Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. or whatever, something to prove it was purchased at that particular same time same channel each week) and personally signed by the man. Their logic was "okay, we won’t prosecute you or seek your jailing, but we want you every single week to write our daughter’s name on the “for” line of the money order, and to recall for however long it takes you to buy and send that order we want you to think about what you did. (The reason for money orders was so he couldn’t just write out a bunch of checks at once and mail them weekly.) At some point he stopped sending the $1 each week, saying when cornered something like “It was just causing me to want to drink” or some boohoo sob story, and after a couple of years the couple took him to court.
Anyway, I always thought that was a brilliant punishment, and would be good for someone like Grills (though strangely the Meiers have said they have no grudge against her even though she wrote most of the messages).
I’m not all that familiar with criminal defense, but I’m guessing that this trial is going to cost Lori Drew at least 100K. You have all sorts of jurisdictional and procedural issues that are going to have to been fought over and that won’t be cheap. You have witnesses who are going to be out of state and then they will need to have someone interview them and conduct depositions. She is denying everything, which means that the defense may want investigators.
Any more knowledgeable dopers have a guess as to what this will all cost her?
Who pays for her to fly to, and stay in, LA?
I’ve not done any research since this came up, so can’t say, for certain. What I recall was that the site claimed, at first, to be a classmate’s of Megan, then Drew’s daughter, then Drew herself. I stopped following the story about then, because it pissed me off so much. If it had been established that the site was a fraud set up to further besmirch Lori Drew’s reputation, I missed it.
I answered this question in post 32 of this thread.