Outcast by Absolution

Only more heartbreaking than the fact that a 13-year-old girl took her own life when bullied by her supposed MySpace boyfriend is the fact that there was an adult who knew what was going on.

Lori Drew was a woman who probably had a lot of the things that middle-aged women expect to have: a husband, a family with the obligatory two children, a middle-class house on a road with an idyllic name in a neighborhood where kids know each other and neighbors wave as they pick up their morning paper or go for a jog. A life, it seems, that any 40-year-old woman might have dreamed when they were a teenager.

Yet now, that woman has been (voluntarily) confined to her home, for it seems that due to her actions, or non-actions, against a cybermystery boy named "Josh" has created the social version of excommunication: Lori Drew's house has been marked with the so-called X as the media swarms like black flies, searching for a juicy tidbit, while neighbors themselves have been either avoiding the whole issue or, to even add more drama, have been hearing about the acts of hatred upon the Drew household. Bricks through windows, changing their phone greeting, candlelight vigils in front of her house remembering Megan, you name it - they are being preyed upon as she had known that her child had preyed upon an innocent teenager.

The story goes that a teenage employee of Drew's, and her daughter, wanted to concoct a false profile on MySpace and pretend to be Megan's boyfriend, and Drew knew about it, but warned to only send "nice messages" to Megan. Since when do middle-school kids do that? What teenage child knows better than to even think that making up people on the Internet in order to gain personal access to another teenager's life?

What fascinates me most, however, is the role of the two mothers: Lori Drew and Tina Meier, Megan's mom. While Lori Drew allegedly knew of the messages that "Josh" was sending to Megan, Tina Meier was busy telling her daughter to not spend so much time on the Internet, and reiterating this directive when "Josh" started sending nasty messages and finally told Megan the world would be better off without her.

This last act of parenting was Tina Meier's regret: Megan was found hanging in her closet soon thereafter. There was nowhere to place the blame. Prosecutors are not bringing charges. Megan put blame equally on everyone, probably figuring there was no one left to love her. Megan had depression, but she had suffered from it for years. Tina Meier figured to take the blame herself, since any kind of damage to child, no matter how great or small, is naturally taken on by the parent, whether those around them are aware of it or not.

So vigilantes are placing the blame as a smashed window in Lori Drew's house, taking the steps that the government refuses to (as there was no law truly broken) and playing the act of a kind of social police (decency police? moral police? What's the best word?). What a study of human nature! We have taken advantage of our innovative minds by creating lives isolated by our jobs, houses and cars, and yet still operate as a pack, lashing out against those that fray the delicate social weave that we still are required to tend. Tina Meier says she couldn't care less about what is thought of Lori Drew, and she is right to ignore the woman, especially if she were to have any chance to heal from this tragedy. Where her parenting mistakes have mistakenly, indirectly, caused the suicide of a child, Lori Drew is now truly an outcast, not imprisoned by a judicial system, but one much crueler and unforgiving.