Are The Parents Who MySpace-Tormented Megan Meier Into Killing Herself Ready To Atone? Um...

This is Megan Meier, who is now dead. She hung herself at age thirteen after the parents of one of her former classmates used MySpace to create a character named Josh Evans, who spent a few months flirting with her before abruptly turning on her and calling her a "slut" and a "bad person" etc. etc. And while we generally try to do this job without actually performing what might be termed "fact checking" — you know, because sometimes actually talking to people makes them harder to villify! — we felt compelled, in this case, to attempt to call Curt and Lori Drew, the Missouri couple fingered by internet sleuths as the perpetrator of the torment. Not surprisingly, the phone rang and rang.

So I called the school I assumed Megan Meier had attended with their daughter, Dubray Middle School in O'Fallon, Missouri:

Me: Hello. I was wondering if this is the school Megan Meier attended?
Secretary: Who is this?
Me: I work at a website called Jezebel, and I was just calling because our readers were very interested in the case.
Secretary: I can't say anything.
Me: I was just trying to figure out what the schools were doing to teach kids about how to stand up to bullies, or to teach parents how to instill in their kids the ability to ignore mean people, stuff like that.
Secretary: I really can't say anything.
Me: Seriously?
Secretary: I'm sorry I can't say anything.
Me: Don't you care?
Secretary: I can't say anything.
Me: Oh, fuck you then.

Dear secretary: I am sorry. That was so unnecessary. Also, who do I think I am, Michael Moore?

Anyway, then I had a conversation with Steve "Pokin Around" Pokin, the columnist who broke the story of Megan's tragic story after her aunt called him up upon reading his slightly-less-disturbing tale of a teenage Myspace tormentor who eventually got charged with "littering."

Steve didn't really want to go too deeply into things, though he claimed that he was pretty sure not naming Curt and Lori drew was the right decision, to which I said, "Um, those fuckers will be named SOON ENOUGH." And when I asked him whether the Drews — he confirmed the names, though I'm not sure he meant to — seemed ready to take responsibility or atone for their actions in any way, he said, "I don't know. All I know about that is in the story."

I'm thinking that's a "not so much."

Now, the laws don't hold them responsible, though I'm pretty sure the laws would find a way of holding them responsible if they happened to be Allah-worshipers, though that's neither here nor there. In the end, if these people are just plain evil, the only thing you can do is try and teach your kids, "Hey kids, this is evil, so please do think about that next time you see a popular kid fling a booger on some harmless fat kid, or whatever this generation of kids do to pointlessly torture their peers, and fail to call him out on it."

In other news, Pokin informed me that Megan's parents were being interviewed this afternoon by CNN, so we'll watch for them in hopes they at least get their chance to pass this lesson along.

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