LOS ANGELES -- Two months before she committed suicide in 2006, a 13-year-old girl at the center of a landmark cyberbullying case was the happiest her parents had seen her in a long time.
Tina Meier, testifying in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon, described to jurors how her daughter Megan was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and depression in the third grade and had spent years taking prescription medication and battling low self-esteem exacerbated by bullying schoolmates.
Megan's spirits lifted when she switched schools in August 2006, her mother said. The teen's outlook improved even more a month later when a "hot" 16-year-old boy named "Josh Evans" contacted her out of the blue through her MySpace page and told her he wanted to become her friend.
Less than a month later, "Josh" turned on Megan. He joined others taunting her with cruel and venomous comments. After he sent her a message saying, "the world would be a better place without you," Megan responded, "You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over." Thirty minutes later, she hanged herself in her bedroom closet with a belt.
The defendant in the case, 49-year-old Lori Drew, is charged with violating MySpace's terms of service by conspiring with her daughter and an assistant to set up the hoax "Josh Evans" account and torment Megan. Ashley Grills, a then-18-year-old woman employed by Drew and her husband, has admitted sending the final message to Megan while posing as Evans. Grills has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her cooperation with the government, and is scheduled to testify against Drew.
As Meier described her daughter's end, several family members sitting in the courtroom's front row -- including her ex-husband Ron Meier, and aunt Vicki Dunn -- sobbed and dabbed their eyes with Kleenex. Two of the male jurors brought their hands to their chins, listening intently, but there was little to indicate how the jury of six men and six women absorbed the testimony.
Defense attorney H. Dean Steward called Meier's testimony "totally improper in a computer fraud case."
Meier took the stand Wednesday following opening statements, and testimony by another witness. Susan Prouty, a 34-year-old former business client of Lori Drew, said Drew confessed to her that she had created the MySpace profile used to harass Megan. According to Prouty, Drew also admitted writing some of the messages "Josh" sent to the girl.
Defense lawyer Steward maintains that Drew did not use or create the MySpace account, and on cross examination, he challenged Prouty's testimony, zeroing in on the notion that Drew would have shared so much information with a purely-professional associate. He asked if Prouty might have confused what she'd heard from other people, or in media reports, with what Drew told her. Prouty said she had not confused the two.
Then Meier took the stand. Asked to describe her late daughter, Meier called Megan "bubbly" and "energetic" with a "huge sense of humor."
But Megan also had problems. She took prescription medication for ADD and depression, and saw a psychologist on a regular basis, right up until her death. Megan also suffered from self-esteem and body-image issues, believing herself to be fat in comparison to other girls. In 2005, Megan scratched "small marks" onto her wrists, Meier testified.
The medication and counseling didn't entirely address problems that Megan was having in the world. Her mother testified that she was taunted and bullied at school and that she stopped eating lunch because boys at school would stand behind her and call her fat.
When prosecutor Thomas O'Brien asked if Megan liked boys, Meier smiled for the first time on the stand and said she "definitely liked boys," and had pictures of them on her walls.
She described how Megan and Sarah Drew -- Lori Drew's daughter -- became friends in the fourth grade; the two families lived only four doors apart. Megan joined the Drews on at least three family outings and vacations to visit their relatives. But as they got older, their relationship ran hot-and-cold in a manner typical for teenage girls.
Significantly, Meier said that Drew was aware of Megan's mental health issues, because they discussed them a number of times. Furthermore, when Megan accompanied the Drew family on outings, Lori Drew was responsible for ensuring that Megan took her medication.
In eighth grade, the Meiers decided to remove Megan from her public school and send her to a private Catholic school instead. Drew was "not happy" about the move, Meier said. But after the change, Megan's grades improved, as well as her attitude, and she was allowed to open a MySpace account to stay in contact with friends -- though under strict restrictions.
It had to be a private account, so no one could view Megan's profile unless they were approved by Megan and her parents. Only her parents held the password, and Megan was allowed to use the account only when one of them was in the room. Megan's parents also had monitoring software installed to track web sites Megan visited, and instant messages she exchanged with people.
On September 20, 2006, not long after she signed up, Megan got a friend request from "Josh Evans". Meier asked her daughter if she knew him. Megan said she didn't, but thought he might be a friend-of-a-friend, and Meier gave her permission to add him to her friends list.
Megan was instantly smitten. Evans told her she was cute. Coming from an attractive and mysterious boy, the praise was catnip to a young girl suffering from self-esteem issues.
Meier later became suspicious of "Josh" because as her daughter's correspondence with him progressed, he made excuses about why he couldn't meet up with her in perso or call her, and at one point appeared to make a sexually suggestive remark. Fearing he might be an adult, Meier contacted the St. Charles County sheriff department's cyberdivision about investigating the issue, but was rebuffed.
Then on October 15, Josh sent Megan a message saying that he didn't want to be friends anymore. The next day, Josh told her he'd heard she wasn't nice to her friends, and that's why he wanted to sever their ties.
Megan became upset and Meier, who had to leave the house to take her other daughter to an orthodontist appointment, told Megan to shut down the computer. Megan didn't do as she was told, however, and got embroiled in an electronic brawl when at least two other people began attacking her online, culminating in the final message from "Josh".
When Meier came home she found Megan still online and in tears. When she appealed to her mother for support, Meier chastised her for being on the computer when she'd been instructed to shut it down, and suggested that Megan had brought some of the attacks on herself by continuing to communicate with her attackers.
Megan, in mental anguish at this point, told her mother, "You're supposed to be my mom. You're supposed to be on my side."
Thirty minutes later, Megan hanged herself, Meier testified.
At this point in Meier's testimony, Judge Wu called for the proceedings to break for the day. After jurors were escorted from the courtroom, Steward asked for a mistrial. Wu denied the request, and told Steward that if he'd found Meier's testimony objectionable, then he could have objected to it at the time. "I would have sustained [those objections]," he said.
The trial resumes Thursday, when Meier is scheduled to be cross-examined.
Update: On cross examination Thursday morning, Drew's lawyer asked Meier about a trio of medications Megan had been taking at the time of her death. One of them, the antidepressant citalopram, has a reported side affect of contributing to suicidal behavior in children and adolescents suffering from depression, he noted.
Defense attorney H. Dean Steward went on to grill Meier about a different MySpace incident he says occurred in December 2005, six months before the Meiers began closely controlling Megan's internet use. At that time, Megan created a MySpace profile as an 18-year-old woman, and swapped sexually-charged banter with other users, he said, citing notes he'd obtained from Megan's psychologist.
Meier had no recollection of the MySpace account.
"Don't you remember her portraying herself as an 18-year old, ten months earlier?," Steward asked.
"Obviously, I don't," said Meier.
Steward's point: by lying about her age, Megan herself had committed the same terms-of-service violation that Drew is now facing felony prosecution over. He introduced this theme earlier in his cross examination, asking Meier if she'd read MySpace's contract before allowing Megan to establish the MySpace profile through which she befriended "Josh." MySpace doesn't allow users under the age of 14.
Meier answered that she had read every word of the contract, even though it took some 25 minutes. She once worked for a law firm, she said, and had learned to read any contract carefully before agreeing to it. In this case, Meier saw no harm in letting Megan sign up while only 13, because she'd be turning 14 in about a month-and-a-half.
Also in December 2005, Steward said, Megan had been complaining to Sarah that her parents were fighting, and it was depressing her. She hinted at suicide in some of those conversations, according to Steward, who read from an e-mail Megan allegedly sent to Sarah. "I think I'm going to do suicide tonight. I can't take it any more."
Megan, in other words, was a troubled girl with a long history of problems, who had discussed suicide nearly a year before the MySpace hoax.
Meier said she never saw such an e-mail.