Accountability

I was reading this article (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,356435,00.html) about charges being brought against the mother who created a fake myspace page and harrassed a teen to the point of killing herself. It seems they found a loophole in the "myspace agreement" we all clicked on to create a profile saying her giving a fake name/info violated the terms and therefore she was accessing the myspace servers without consent. This gives authorities some leverage for charging this woman.

I feel this woman was wrong on many levels for what she did, but as a parent, I am dumbfounded that the parent of the dead girl is not being held accountable for the fact that she KNEW and ALLOWED her emotionally vunerable 13 yr old to converse online with this 16yr old boy named Josh(who was really the woman being charged now).

Is it me or do you find this a bit one-sided? My teen gets on myspace, but I monitor her and if she were talking to a 16yr old(at 13), I better know him personally or I'm yanking internet connection! Why is it ok to throw one mother in jail for being malicious busybody and not the other for being irresponsible enabler?

On top of that, I also worry about them using this "loophole" to charge her. How many have used fake info on the net for various reasons, including protecting privacy? Have to start reading those "agreements" more carefully before clicking on them in the future.

Food for thought.

I never monitored my son's computer activities. I would just pop into his room and see his MSN chat going and I would leave it at that. I, however, observed closely his moods, school grades, relationship with me and other adults, and relationship with his peers. Any negative change in those and I was cutting him off activities, internet and allowance.
It worked.

I'm not a parent...but the way i see it...all teens are emotional...this girl was just an extreme case.

the only reason she killed herself was because of the actions of the other mother which was uncalled for.


what kind of sick human gets a kick out of harassing and tormenting a little girl?

Just cause the girls mother let the girl chat with a 16 year old...i don't see anything wrong with that. but like I said...I'm not a parent so i may have a different perspective.

Let me preface what I'm going to say with the following disclaimer...

"Myspace is about as useless as tits on a boarhog."

Quite frankly, pretty much everyone is at fault in this one...

The mother of the dead girl is at fault for not monitoring her daughter's computer usage better. I mean, come on...I'm a computer geek...but even my computer, from when I was young on up...was placed squarely in the family room...with the monitor facing EVERYONE. That way, my parent's could see what I was doing. Into my teen years, it was the same...you could see what I was doing.

Should the mother be charged? No, I don't think so. The verbal beating she is taking/will take because of her daughter's death is punishment as is...add to that the fact that, she did indeed lose her daughter. Me thinks this woman will never be the same....and of course she won't be the same. And, I suspect the guilt that she feels is going to knock off many years off her life and I would not be surprised if we read that she is dead in her 40's or 50's.

And yes, the woman charged is guilty as well. I don't think I need to explain it.

Myspace is also guilty in this whole ordeal too. I know, I know...too many users...no one can monitor every account...etc...etc. Once again, I'm biased. I mean, I had a myspace page or two in the past...and quite frankly, once I got to look at the big picture? I truly come to realize that Myspace is a really BIG black mark on the internet....

More negatives come out of that black hole than good. Myspace has facilitated in under-age teens showing more skin on the internet, showing things that even my past gf's would not show me until they got to know me better. Think I'm over-reacting? Sit back and take a long hard look at the type of people that generally inhabit myspace. You'll see I'm right.

I think what it comes down to is you have an irresponsible parent, a parent that has the brain matter and maturity level of a damn retarded sperm cell (the one that is being brought up on charges) and a dead girl...

the only reason she killed herself was because of the actions of the other mother which was uncalled for.

I disagree with that. Kids are subjected to all kinds of verbal abuse in real life and on the internet and they do not all run off and kill themselves. I think what the mother did was wrong, but I don't think she is responsible for causing that girl to commit suicide. Any person, teen or otherwise that would commit suicide over something someone said is already in a pretty screwed up state. Emotional is one thing, upset enough over something that someone said is far beyond that.

Like it has been said, the parents need to take some responsibility in this. Not only because they weren't monitoring her, but it is obvious they had little interaction with their daughter. I probably don't have the closest relationship with my daughter-I am sure there are things she hides from me, but whenever she is upset she always comes to me to talk. How could these parents not have a clue what was going on?

It is beyond fathomable to me what the mother did. Did she forget to grow up? That's something that a 16 year old would do. What kind of punishment is right for her? I don't know. Hopefully the guilt that she will feel the rest of her life will be the worst punishment anyone could ever hope for.

okay here is MY take..
this lady knew this girl...that was said before..AND she does this to see if she likes her kid and so on..KNOWING this girl had some mental isues...she does this..she pushed the girl OVER the edge

THEN lied about it...saying OH I am soooo sorry and so on..

yep I think she should get SOMETHING for these actions..she is a grown adult and acting this way to a child who had issues and she knew it

sick sick person

When my daughter was about that age she wasn't allowed to give out her phone number, but she could give out her email address. My reasoning was that it's a lot easier to block an arsehole from an email than the phone, and he couldn't phone all hours of the night and day.

I didn't monitor my daughters useage, but I didn't feel I had to. The few times there was something hinkey going on she showed it to me and we wiped it out.

The mother who lost her daughter, I don't think, should be blamed for not montioring her childs useage of the internet. I think that the loss of her child will give her enough guilt without us putting our two cents in. However, as stated above, montioring your child in general...school, grades, demenor...there are always warning signs.

The girl herself has some small amount of blame here, for allowing someone whom she had never seen to have such control over her, for asking asking for help from a trusted peer or adult, or letting MySpace know she was being harassed. They do delete accounts for that. Again it comes back to the parent for not enabling her child to take steps. Low self-esteem like this doesn't occur overnight.

Lastly, the woman who commited these acts should be charged with at very least manslaughter in my humble opinion. She chose a target and had made a plan to inflect harm unto death, even if she herself didn't pull the trigger (per say). In my book that's premediated murder.

The internet is not a babysitter and there are no excuses for allowing unmonitored internet access for children whether they are emotionally stable or not.

The woman who tortured this girl is also has serious issues.

Not being terribly familiar with the law in their state I cannot say whether this behavior was legal or not, but regardless of the law it's deplorable.

My son (who is three) loves to "surfweb" as he calls it, and I took measures to severely limit his "surfweb" experience. Being what I am, I have a PC in my home office, one in my garage, a laptop on my dining room table, and in my son's bedroom there is a PC as well. All of these are networked, but since I control my own network, I can and have implemented severely limiting controls.

While my son can log into any PC in the house (which he can do - username and password!), his login is valid only between 3:00pm and 3:30pm, and upon successful login he has exactly 30 minutes from that time to play flash-based educational games on http://www.noggin.com.

Any links on the noggin educational game site that STAY on the noggin site work just fine, and any links, buttons, favorites or bookmarks that go off noggin (normally anyway) revert right back to noggin. This also applies to manual typing in the URL bar. So he can type http://www.agelesslove.com and he gets noggin every time. Not an issue yet because he's three, but as he learned to type this has already been addressed.

While 99% of the time he's "surfwebbing" I'm right there at his side cheering him on encouraging him to spell, read, count and add, sometimes I do have to take or make business calls and step out of his room so the customer doesn't hear "zap!", "Bing!", "Good job!" and "Ooops, try again!" in the background.

Since he can only use the computer during a very small time window and only go to one website no matter what, I don't have to worry about problems now or in the future.

Since these controls are network-based and not part of any of the PC's in the house, they apply across the board and cannot be changed AT any of the PC's.

When he gets older and has to actually use the web as a reference, I'll add websites he's allowed to view as necessary - such as dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, and any encyclopedia type websites.

No AOL, no MSN, no Yahoo, no MySpace, No Youtube. If he must view that stuff he can go to a friend's house where I cannot control it.

Low self-esteem like this doesn't occur overnight.

Lastly, the woman who commited these acts should be charged with at very least manslaughter in my humble opinion. She chose a target and had made a plan to inflect harm unto death, even if she herself didn't pull the trigger (per say). In my book that's premediated murder.

Very good points.

Very good points.

yes indeed..i could not agree more with gabby to sheila!

I still dont understand parents who dont monitor their kids when there is ANY KIND of way for an ADULT to come in contact with them through some means. I dont care if it's pc, a game console or anything like that. I monitor. I have passwords to emails, myspace (my 14 and 16 year old have one) any game consoles. If i see any adult on a site that I dont know theyre deleted, after I have a few things to say about them and how they should leaving my child alone. Theyre adults they dont need to talk to a 14 or 16 year old kid, and really there are so many freaking adults who try that sometimes I wish I knew some people who can just break a few bones...too many sickos out there. sigh. violent yes, but there was 1 adult female that wouldnt leave my son alone recently and I finally had to "speak with her", they also cant add any friends on their messenger, if they try I know about it, because it generates an email that is sent to me.

The mother of the child is guilty of bad parenting and being neglectful of her duties. The other mother who decided to drive this child to suicide is a vicious amoral witch that needs to go to jail for a long long time, Im sure the women prisoners who are victims of abuse in all forms would love to get their hands on her.

I agree with strwberries and I'm guessing the parents of the child who commited suicide probably would change that if they had it to do over again. Unfortunately because of the horrible, unconscionable actions of the other mother, there won't be an opportunity to do it over.

So, sadly, the rest of us get to nod our heads and say, "I would never," and maybe some of us would never... for this particular subject. Personally, I do what Dan's parents did when he was a kid. I'm looking at our desktop computer monitor as I type. It's right here in the living room, facing out for all to see. I have my kids' facebook and myspace names and passwords, giving me full access. And I believe that's how it should be for any minor child.

That said, I have yet to meet a perfect parent and every one of us who has living, breathing children has gotten lucky or had a guardian angel watching over the ones we love at one time or another. I'd just hesitate to point fingers and say "shame on you!" when not one of us makes perfect decisions 100% of the time.

I read that the mother being charged created the fake profile, and enlisted a 19yr old she worked with to maintain the fake relationship. When the 19yr old felt it was going to far, she told the deceased teen that "the world would be a better place without you" to make her end the relationship, never intending to push her over the edge. There were others who had access to this fake profile also, and used it to send messages.

I'm not saying the charged mother is justified for her actions, but she wasn't alone in making this tragedy occur. She started a ball rolling and there were others that pushed it along, but she is the only one being charged. She faces 20yrs in prison for her part, while the others get nothing?

In the meantime, the mother of the dead teen is pushing for the maximum penality. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, and I'm sure the mother who lost a daughter is suffering terribly. I just don't know if I sat on a jury, if I'd sign off on a maximum penalty knowing that several factors played into how this went down. I don't see it as a black/white situation where someone clearly pulled the trigger.

I just wonder where it would end if this case goes as planned. Let's say a teen lies about their age on myspace(they all do) and sends a message to another teen telling them how ugly/gross they are. The recipient kills themself. Now the teen who sent the message is held legally responsible for causing the other teen to committ suicide?

Maybe I'm loony for thinking about how a case like this can change the face of the future. A future where the phrase "sticks and stone can break my bones, but words can never hurt me"........ maybe your words(no matter your intent) will land you in jail if said to the wrong person.

With all that rambling, don't think I'm defending the adult who toyed with that child's mind... I'm just looking at the bigger picture and asking "what ifs".

I read that the mother being charged created the fake profile, and enlisted a 19yr old she worked with to maintain the fake relationship. When the 19yr old felt it was going to far, she told the deceased teen that "the world would be a better place without you" to make her end the relationship, never intending to push her over the edge. There were others who had access to this fake profile also, and used it to send messages.

I'm not saying the charged mother is justified for her actions, but she wasn't alone in making this tragedy occur. She started a ball rolling and there were others that pushed it along, but she is the only one being charged. She faces 20yrs in prison for her part, while the others get nothing?

In the meantime, the mother of the dead teen is pushing for the maximum penality. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, and I'm sure the mother who lost a daughter is suffering terribly. I just don't know if I sat on a jury, if I'd sign off on a maximum penalty knowing that several factors played into how this went down. I don't see it as a black/white situation where someone clearly pulled the trigger.

I just wonder where it would end if this case goes as planned. Let's say a teen lies about their age on myspace(they all do) and sends a message to another teen telling them how ugly/gross they are. The recipient kills themself. Now the teen who sent the message is held legally responsible for causing the other teen to committ suicide?

Maybe I'm loony for thinking about how a case like this can change the face of the future. A future where the phrase "sticks and stone can break my bones, but words can never hurt me"........ maybe your words(no matter your intent) will land you in jail if said to the wrong person.

With all that rambling, don't think I'm defending the adult who toyed with that child's mind... I'm just looking at the bigger picture and asking "what ifs".

I think that mitigating factor in this case is that the woman (im refusing to call her a mother, she doesnt deserve the title) knew the girl personally. Her daughter and this girl were best friends for years before the girls had a falling out. The parents were friends due to their children's frienship. Close friends enough for 1 set of parents to store a pool table in their garage for the other parent. The mother's talked and so the other woman knew that the girl had problems, had been depressed. This woman used that information and she knew what buttons to push to manipulate the child over the edge. Yes other people had access but those people would never had stalked and harrassed that child if that woman had never made her a point of focus in the first place. When a 19 year old has more sense in her head to try to stop things than a grown adult woman with children then there is something wrong with the adult involved.

She knew that the girl had a bad body image, she knew that the girl was lonely and felt that because of her looks she couldnt get a boyfriend she knew these things from two sources the girls mother and her daughter who use to be the girls best friend. Using that information she went after this child .

At the very least I hope she spends some considerable time in jail, it wont be as long as it should, but the other mother is actually accountable too, she should have monitored, she knew that the girl was fighting online but still she let it continue, she was passive instead of proactive with her kid because being passive was the easiest thing to do. She did what a lot of parents do, she said get off the pc but walked away because actually going in there and disconnecting the thing would require actual parenting because of the mothers lack of involvement this woman will not serve a long sentence. She will be a social pariah from now on but I dont see her serving time.

As for other teens bullying other kids, thats already happened. There is a boy who killed himself because kids at his school picked on him on myspace and at school with rumors circulating that he was gay, he couldnt get away from it not at school and not at home and he went home and hung himself. His mother again, didnt monitor, she was too wrapped up in her life her worries to take the time to parent. None of the kids involved in his harrassment were charged but there are, I think some new laws which will enable police to stop online stalking, harassing and bullying by other people. I dont know if it passed already or they want to pass it. If it hasnt I hope this case gets it going, maybe then ALL parents of bullying teens and of teens who are bullied will actually do the one thing that will stop this...Parent their kids.

Well said Strwbrries. I see your point about the charged woman KNOWING the family/girl and using that familiarity to her advantage. I wasn't insinuating that the mother of the deceased be charged. Her punishment is a lifetime of guilt most likely. I see so many parents pointing fingers when their child takes a wrong turn or something bad happens, when they hold some part in the process. Passively parenting is like climbing in the backseat of a runaway car, and then wondering why you are in the ditch later...and then suing the man that dug the ditch for putting it there.:rolleyes:

Good grief, Gypsy - for the love of all that is holy, do NOT give our litigation happy society any ideas! In this day and age, I can honestly see somebody doing exactly what you said! :eek:

LOL, sorry Kel... just got on a philosophical/pondering train of thought lately. I'll lighten up now. :tongue2: