MySpace Mom May Spend 20 Years in Prison

The short story so far goes something like this: a 13-year-old girl who met a 16-year-old boy on the social networking service MySpace fell in love with him after chatting on the website. The 49-year-old mom of the boy got involved into the relationship and posed as her son while chatting with the girl. After several days of chatting, the mother, who continued to claim she was her son, told the girl she wanted to break up with her and sent her several harsh messages such as the one mentioned by The Register: "You’re a s****y person, and the world would be a better place without you in it." As a result of these messages, the 13-year-old girl committed suicide in her bedroom and an investigation was immediately begun.

Today, a long period after the case was opened, the 49-year-old Missouri mom is facing a sentence of no less than 20 years in prison because of cyber-bulling on the social network. What's interesting is that Lori Drew, the mother of Josh, deleted the MySpace account soon after the girl killed herself and even "instructed a juvenile who was aware of the scheme to keep her mouth shut," The Register writes in the article.

Besides all these charges, the 49-year-old woman also infringed the MySpace terms and conditions because users are asked to provide accurate information about themselves and to not publish details belonging to other persons.

It's quite shocking to see that things like these happen but, this time, the social networking service is not at fault because a woman wanted to keep her boy away from a girl. Unfortunately, somebody had to die before the authorities and the administrators of the service decided to take attitude, so all we can do is just hope that such cases won't happen in the future.

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