Held responsible for 13 year olds suicide?

mrhobbie's picture
Suicide

I'm a little late on this story as I have never heard of it until recently. I forget what town this happened in but if you are from these parts or really pay attention to the news you may know the city and heard about it. Anyways, what happened has to do with a 13 year old little girl who had a friend who was probably around the same age. The mom of the friend decided she was going to mess around, joke, or whatever you want to say with the 13 year old girl so she got on the internet and started chatting to the 13 year old girl all the time pretending like she was a 12 or 13 year old boy. This apparently went on for months and the 13 year old girl became attached thinking that she had a little boyfriend or something. After the couple of months the mother lady decided that it was enough and tells the little girl via text on the computer that they should not talk anymore. The 13 year old girl then gets heart broken and goes and commits suicide. Now many are crying to punish the friends mother saying that she should be held liable for the 13 year old girls death. The host on the radio show was in favor of this but I say that you can not punish this lady. What she did was really wrong but there is no law that states that you can be liable for punishing someone for anything like this. As an example: If a baseball coach were to yell at a player for a mistake he did and the player went and killed himself because he got his feelings hurt should the coach be held responsible? Certainly not! Don't get me wrong here, what this lady did was really wrong but if this sort of thing had a law then we would all be very careful what we say and do to people cause if they killed themselves we would be responsible. Just my thoughts here.

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ammorton's picture

A little info on this suicide story

The woman who pretended to be this boy that Megan liked on Myspace lived down the road from her and intentionally created the myspace page just to see if she could catch Megan talking about her own daughter. So I think the fact that this woman intentionally set out to be fraudlent about who she was for the reasons she did, which did result in the death of this girl makes her somewhat liable.

Legally I dont know if there are any laws that will see that she do any kind of time or be punished in anyway,
but this isn't right to me. I just dont know how this kind of thing should actually be handled. But a girl is dead because of her, and if she hadn't of done this and been so deceiving, the outcome wouldn't have been this girl hanging herself in her closet.

mrhobbie's picture

Megan - 13 year olds suicide

I understand you completely, the lady was deceiving and it does seem she should get punished some way. But how? No one has an answer. Lawfully, we know you can't. Please don't think I'm ever defending the mother but I was just thinking.

If you think about it. The little girl must have had other issues in her life though because chances are she would have soon gotten her heart broken by a real boy and what would have happened then. Would she have killed herself? No one would ever know but if she did it now she probably would have did it then too. I mean, we all have had our hearts broken and for some reason when young it seems to hurt 5X worse. But to kill yourself? I just think there were some other issues in her life. What's up with her parents too. Letting their 13 year old on My Space. I think it might have started with them, of course I'm speculating. Don't know anything about them.

ammorton's picture

you do have a point also

I have always thought that too, I think that it's not what your kid is listening to or watching, or being on Myspace...there are deeper issues and things that the kid just didn't know how to handle. And yes , mabey she would have done the same thing if it had actually happened with someone she actually spent time with, but we will never know that now, thanks to this woman. I really wouldn't want to be this lady with this on my conscience either.

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