Oh yeah AUSTRALIA. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get this either. Violent misogynists all over seem to be slipping by unnoticed! I think I am going to go back to sleep now and have some really nice dreams.

It actually took all I could to get that much of the story out, because I am feeling unbearably nauseas right now, which mayyyy have something to do with the subject material. But there's so much more: Seth maybe met Phyllis on the sex party circuit, her psychic may be framing her as the killer just for fun, Phyllis may have tied up and abducted a gay stripper named Tiger in a jealous rage. Either way, none of that is the point. The point is, hello, yeah, everyone involved in this whole creepy tale is completely terrible, but this woman managed not only to get four separate individual men to marry her, but after bilking, abusing cheating on and divorcing one of them, got him to represent her in the murder of guy she left him for. Happy Valentine's, guys!

The Sordid Death Of Hedge Funder Seth Tobias [NY Magazine]

And well, we read it because we spend a lot of time writing about rapists on this site, but we never seem to get the perspective of the rapist. We'll call alleged rapists Pure Evil and the governors who offer them clemency The Worst Person In The World, and sometimes we'll even knock men who have been cleared of rape, sure they are guilty of some sort of terrible, misogynistic offense, and it's hard to blame us: high-profile case after low-profile case after anecdotal unreported case seems to suggest that a "culture of impunity" has rendered rape practically legal in this country.

But it's not. Rape is so very very illegal that once convicted, you're a Sex Offender, object of unbelievable fear, quarantined from the community, and anyway, while it's nothing you hadn't thought of before, it's still a question worth asking. What do you do with sex offenders? If normal straight dudes in prison go gay — and rapey — almost immediately upon entering prison, why do we foist isolation among all sex offenders without regard to the nature of their offense? Or more to the point, why don't we spend more time investigating the nature of sex offenses?

John doesn't take part in group, but he participated in a six-month sex-offender-treatment program in prison, then worked as a peer counselor for another eighteen months. Of all the men in the house, he is the most candid about his crime. His victim was the wife of a co-worker. "I assaulted her, tied her up, and forced her to perform oral sex on me," he says, repeating a sentence he'd said countless times before. The facts of his crime may be no more horrendous than those of his housemates, but discussing it so frankly with him — and realizing I was about the same age as his victim — made the conversation especially chilling. Yet the more we spoke, the more I realized his willingness to discuss his crime so openly seemed to suggest a different sort of future.

The House Where They Live [New York Magazine]

Drew felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel "as guilty" because at the funeral she found out "Megan had tried to commit suicide before." Drew explained the neighborhood has recently found out her involvement in Megan's suicide and her neighbors have become hostile toward her and her family. Despite the recency of the suicide and several neighbors recommending she not confront the Meier family (especially on Thanksgiving), Meier stated she and her husband attempted to contact the Meier family three times, "banging on the door" although Mr. Meier had already told them to leave. Drew wished the current tension in the neighborhood be documented in case any of her property is damaged. Further, Drew insisted on contacting the Meier family to "inform them of what she knows." Drew stated she "just needed" to tell them to relieve herself of the "responsibility" and apparent guilt.

And since that's what we're dealing with there really is probably no satisfaction to be had, which is why I hope you "Burn in Hell" advocates out there have cooled down and seen the case for what it is: a reminder to treat people in the way that makes them want to treat others better. I'm not sure how you do that with Lori Drew, but I can think of a few methods that are probably not productive.

Megan Meier Police Report [The Smoking Gun]

The newspaper does identify the couple, Curt and Lori Drew. The Drews do not comment.

It's easy for some blogger in New York City (who likely doesn't have to deal with these kinds of decisions and their real-world impact) to shoot his or her mouth off.

I would also urge everyone to think about Bob Steele's three key values/principles related to ethical decision making: 1. Seek truth and report it as fully as possible 2. Act independently 3. Minimize harm Clearly, there is a conflict between principles 1 and 3 in this story. So how do you resolve them? You think carefully and consider all of the ramifications and options. Then you make the best decision you can. In this case, they felt minimizing harm was more important than a full and complete report. I tend to agree. What public interest or good would be served by publishing their names other than satisfying a collective blood lust? The public interest here was warning parents to be vigilant and aware, and identifying a potential legal loophole or problem. Revenge and punishment aren't our business.

To say that "warning parents to be vigilant" is the lesson the world can learn from all this is such utter bullshit. Read the story again. The Meiers are divorced now, because Tina Meier blames herself for her daughter's death, even as she obsessively monitored her daughter's use of MySpace. The whole point of this is that parents cannot protect their children from 95% of the bad shit out there. They can never be as vigilant as they would like. And the truth is, while the internet has certainly exacerbated this dilemma, parents never really could protect their kids from the sources of life's most devastating blows: the clashes of the neurons and hormones, the quickness with which so many people sacrifice their independent thought in groups, getting dumped.

The best you can do is try and instill in them the importance of loving their neighbors as they love themselves, of forgiving one another as they would like to be forgiven for the shitty things they have done, of being nice to one another and always using condoms. That all men are created equal, some just have shittier parents and you can't do anything about that. That men will fuck mud and all men cheat.

Etc. Etc.

And hope it sticks. But it never does! Because they're kids, and Jesus and Martin Luther King and all them are not showing up at school in Roxy or whatever. It's not real.

This is real. And the realer it can be to a larger audience, the more CNN producers that can descend upon this town and tell it, the more likely it is to make it out to a kid or twenty who could really use a real-life lesson in the pointless damage caused by bullying; the real danger that exists when people
forget their basic human empathy. Without names, the story stays in the realm of "hearsay." And quite frankly, this story is too important for that.

And finally, to the notion of minimizing "harm" — this call was made to minimize harm to the newspaper's reputation in the community. To minimize the extent to which Steve Pokin gets blamed for a "media circus." Because whatever harm might befall the poor 14-year-old daughter of this couple is, sadly, the tiniest speck in the realm of the damage they have already done, and in the long run, if she can come to see their actions with the revulsion the world does, she is better-off.

And they prey on the weak, and the young, and the meek, and the trusting? Fuck, isn't this shit what Law & Order is for? On Law & Order, shits like this guy get sentenced to life and it only takes an hour. When it happens in real life, you start to rethink your position on the death penalty.

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.

The women, to the jurors, were "sour grapes"; they'd been led on by the investigators who contacted them, trolling for victims. "He was a playboy," the juror said, co-opting [defense attorney] Hexstall's language.

Well didn't that just bring me back. I don't want to harp on my date rape, but yeah, it happened to me in Philadelphia, the same summer I was covering some of the city's most gruesome crimes, among them a particularly heinous string of serial rapes, and if the thought had crossed my mind to call the cops on the guy — which it did not — I probably would have abandoned it pretty instantly upon the thought of trying to convince a jury in that town that I was a "rape victim." Fuck, I didn't feel like a rape victim; I felt annoyed.

So yeah, I fought back by talking about it, which is why I don't disapprove of terms like "gray rape" if they enable us to speak more frankly about such douchebags, but then a story comes up like this that is just so horrific and foul and depressing and manifesting of the deep disconnect between what is accepted behavior and what is moral behavior in this country that it makes someone like me, a total know-it-all, think "Fuck, maybe I was wrong." Below, the story's money passage, though you should really read the whole thing, the end especially, because it's fucking fascinating.

Standing in the dark bathroom in her bra and panties, her hand to her mouth, she sobbed. Strange noises came from her, grief unfurling from someplace inside her. And yet, at the same time, her mind was racing. It determined, almost independent of herself, that she must immediately get beyond what had happened. She reasoned that he hadn't threatened her life, hadn't borne a knife or a gun. The city was an unfamiliar place. If she left now, where would she go? What would she do? Most of all, she became instantaneously determined that she would not suffer from this — she would avoid the post-traumatic stress she'd seen firsthand as she studied to become a counselor. She would accomplish this by ignoring, by attempting to discard, the few distinct images that had managed, somehow, to make inroads deep in her mind, into memory.

Her naked feet trod back across the tile. In his bedroom, she pulled back the covers, slid back in bed with him, beside him. ...

In the morning, she awoke once again, finally, fully, if groggily, to sunlight: a bedroom painted white, Ikea furniture, a bookshelf full of medical texts, blue-striped Nautica-brand sheets. And to his face. His green eyes stared across the pillow at hers. He smiled.

He moved his naked body toward her, pulled her closer to him, tucked his body into hers. Once again, his hands crept over her. This time, she says, she let him inside her willingly.

Unprotected, once again, he climaxed. They lay there, side by side. As the room filled with morning light, they talked, enjoyed each other's company. They had sex again. Again he finished inside her. At last, well into the afternoon, they got up and dressed, she in the same clothes from last night, he in a fresh pair of scrubs.

He told her he'd like to see her again, and how much he'd enjoyed her. To the man she was sure a few hours ago had raped her, the man with whom she was about to embark on a three-month relationship, she said Me too.

How, I asked Rachael one day last summer, how could she do it? "I don't know," she said, looking me in the eyes. "He had taken away my power. I guess it was an attempt on my part to regain some of the power I'd lost. But honestly, I don't really know why."

He Said, They Said [Philadelphia Magazine]