Cyberstalking and cyberbullying legal if you profile correctly

[Atash Hagmahani]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009412467_cyber03.html

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge Thursday tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide.

No surprise. Ms. Drew has connections. If she had been less connected and less of a sympathy figure to elites anyway  (she seems to be widely hated among the internet posse that has harassed her ever since her scheme was exposed), she would be sitting in prison doing hard time.

However, just for the sake of accuracy, it was ASHLEY GRILL who explicitly taunted Megan to commit suicide ("the world would be a better place without you"). She was never even charged--and contrary to deceptive publicity, she was 18 and an adult. One nasty young woman.

[Dame]

If Ms. Drew has been the victim of what she was charged with and initially found guilty of, even though she was not the perpetrator and known to not be the perpetrator; where is the justice in her doing hard time?  And why would connections to any elite or not need to have anything to do with it?

As for Ashley Grill, how and why she is not involved with the justice system, if she is known to have been the perpetrator?

[opsec]

The way I see it, Ms. Drew had psychological control over this girl and used that control to rob the girl of her life.

[Dame]

By doing or saying what if this other person actually suggested suicide?

[Atash Hagmahani]

It was Lori Drew's idea to stalk the girl, and it was her idea to pretend to be a handsome popular boy. It was a whole gang of women and girls who primed her by giving her what she thought was friendly attention of a popular boy. It was Ashley Grills who then mysteriously "turned" on her after ostensibly "hearing about how she treats her friends" (which wasn't true--Megan was the one being bullied, not the other way around), and then taunted and bullied her horribly.

Megan was a bit--chunky--and had a bad self-image. I think that's why they were bullying her--she was an easy target. She was known to be depressive. They knew that, which is why they baited her with attention from a made-up boy calculated to make her feel good about herself--until they pulled the rug out.

If I had done that--which is unimaginable (totally the opposite of my personalty--I am wracked with guilt if I think I so much as ACCIDENTALLY hurt someone's feelings...)--I would be sitting in prison for it doing hard time, and the media would have gone into a frenzy. Cyberstalking and cyberbullying are taken seriously in some cases, but apparently not others. It was because of Lori Drew's connections and sympathy that she totally got off the hook--except insofar as her neighbors started stalking HER (put up signs, picketed her house, sent her hate mail and flooded her phone with hate messages, etc) when they found out what she did. When the greater internet community found out what she did, and how she got away with it, cyber-vigilates started publishing her home address, phone number, email, and totally wrecked her business with bad publicity. It was the cyber-vigilantes who got the case the publicity it got--not the original case of cyberstalking and cyberbullying.

What enraged them was that she showed absolutely no remose and tried to cover the whole thing up--and was ALMOST successful. The mother of one of the girls involved was suspicious, interrogated her daughter, and met Megan's parents at a high school cousellor's office to inform on Drew and Grills. Cyberinvestigators recovered the evidence that Grills tried to hide by deleting the account, and recovered the sick, nasty messages she was attacking Megan with, including the one that pushed her over the edge, which her father had recalled seeing before the account was deleted.

It totally wrecked her parents' lives. They were so distraught they couldn't function, and ended up divorced and financially ruined. And Drew had deceived them and pretended to be their friend, at the height of her scheming. That was part of their emotional trauma--to learn that a "friend" had done this to their daughter.

[Dame]

Thanks Atash. 

Looks like the entire community has behavioral norms I do not relate to well; and do not want to relate to.  I am not supportive of the vigilante behaviors either. 

I withdraw previous comments. 

[Atash Hagmahani]

It is a notorious case that has created a lot of publicity already, so I had not bothered to post details.

The reason that I have been following this story so long--well for one thing I have a long memory and a stubborn personality--but what hit a raw nerve is my own dark memories of being bullied and stalked.

I was bullied a lot as a kid. The geek syndrome. What really enrages me is the "blame the victim" mentality which I remember so well (Megan's tormenters thought she had it coming). I don't think I ever did anything to provoke my attackers. Although I suspect I am more emotionally resiliant than Megan was, it was bad enough to provoke a nervous breakdown at the age of 9.

I was also stalked as a young adult, by a sadistic vampiress named "Gwen". It was so traumatic that it changed my personality forever. I am slightly paranoid ever since.

Her modus operendi is to lure people into her confidence for either exploitative or predatory purposes. Her prey is geeky men such as the software industry is full of. She has bullied many but always one at a time, always picking one out of the crowd and singling him out, typically by cultivating corrupt and exploitative relationships with bosses to gain power over her targets.

She then uses that power to spread humilating and insulting slander, ritually humiliate her target both in public and private, coerce her victims into disclosing personal information about themselves under various threats in order to gain more leverage for blackmail and slander, stalking them, calling them at home and being inappropriately "familiar" while intimating threats, and implied physical threats (including one towards my then-infant son when my back was turned and I had not realized she was in the building). At the time she outweighed me handily, and had the physique of a man (still sort of does, but is now flabby), although the last year of our predator-prey relationship I filled out, resulting in her having a "tiger by the tail". I got fired, and she then stalked and harassed my successor the same way.

I lack the mirror neurons to identify strongly with someone like Megan, but it doesn't matter because the every time I hear one of these stories I recognize the pattern of bullying and stalking an "easy target" and it triggers memories which then trigger the rage that I still have inside me.

[Dame]

Huge proportions of the population have been bullied at some time in thier lives.  Most are not willing to acknowledge it.  Resiliance around such events is an indicator of maturity and the capacity to be a safe person for others.  Thank you for sharing.

[Atash Hagmahani]

OH NO HERE'S ANOTHER ONE!:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/03/craigslist.girl/index.html

Different motive--"settling scores"--but still bullying because of the age difference!

He described Tannenbaum as "a well-loved woman by both family and friends," and said she was a classroom mom at her daughter's school.

"She's never been in any trouble for anything before," Scharfenberg said. "She's just really upset by the whole thing. Her biggest concern has always been that this not materially affect the victim or her child. She wants to make sure the way it's being handled doesn't make that worse."

Writing a 9 year old girl's name and phone number on a Craigslist sex ad should definitely earn some jail time. Unbelievable. I'm glad the victim's mother answered the phone and dealt with it.

I've heard a lot of cases of this: the kids get into a fight and a parent of one of the kids bullies the other kid. My instinct is to explain to my own kids how to deal with the situation, and protect them from any bullying but not to do anything rash. I just told my son today that he is not allowed to call the Sunday School bully/spoiled brat "stupid", and also told him not to get too physical with her (she was spraying other kids with bug spray--he wrestled the can away from her).

Huge proportions of the population have been bullied at some time in thier lives

Perhaps when they're "down". It's the wounded goldfish thing. Bullies always look for one person to single out. With me it was being a geek; part of the reason we have mirror neurons is to jumpstart the learning process by imitation, BUT, another reason, I suspect, is to "be like everyone else" so as not to draw attention to one's-self. It's like the flock of almost identical-looking flamingos in a huge group, that the eagle actually has difficulty choosing a victim from--and goes looking for one that's "different" hoping that it's young, old, injured, or otherwise easy prey.

But sometimes, even when you think like other people, you still stand out with personal issues you can't or don't know how to control. One advantage I had over the Megans of the world was being able to analyze the problem with a certain amount of emotional detachment. Oh, I HAD the emotions--I am simply able to think about problems without them clouding my judgment--which is itself a potential leverage point for bullies ("he's so detached, he doesn't CARE about people....cold and unfeeling...". Sore point.)

Most are not willing to acknowledge it.

That's called "repression". It happens because they can't or aren't ready yet to deal with it, precisely because they have difficulty detaching from the emotions. If they do remember, they re-live the experience all over again. I've seen it.

The way to deal with past bad memories is to deeply calm yourself, and then think about them with a "sky like" attitude, "as though the memories are clouds floating by in the sky--with neither attachment nor avoidance". Just experience them, "name" them (think of words to accurately, objectively describe what happened), and then LET THEM GO. Not forget or repress, just integrate any lessons learned, and chuck it up to experience.

[opsec]

Huge proportions of the population have been bullied at some time in thier lives.  Most are not willing to acknowledge it.  Resiliance around such events is an indicator of maturity and the capacity to be a safe person for others.  Thank you for sharing.

The reason that most bullying victims are not willing to acknowledge it is because it is so defiling to them that is very much like being raped. Rape victims are not being resiliant or mature when they conceal their damage, they are simply traumatized and go through life stigmatized by their victimization. 

[Lady Lilya]

Opsec, I've been bullied, but I've never really felt victimized by it. 

[opsec]

I suspect that you are a rarity in that regard.

[Dame]

Any given persons capacity for resiliency is dependent on many, many variables.  Sometimes I think it is at least partially genetic.  Different events effect different people differently.  For those who find ways to transcend what impacted on them as traumatic, the process itself is maturing.  No aspersion against thouse who for whatever reason have not found ways past the effects.

The disclosure itself, depending on the listener(s) is often useful.  Social norms generally discourage, particularly males from disclosing negative events and this unconcious and covert support for suppression can in itself prevent the trauma from lessening.  Retribution, individually or at the social level, may or may not be useful for the victim.

[The Future]

This ladies actions are beyond criminal.  I am no proponent of control my any external agency on who gets to have children and who does not.  But when "parents" start taking such ridiculously juvenile yet serious actions, it is no wonder than some people come to propose such regulations.  It is also a shame that they feel the need to portray themselves and anything other than having grossly misconducted themselves after getting caught.  Tannenbaum is really upset about the whole thing?  You made you bed, now lie in it.