MySpace Suicide: A Mother’s Testimony Part II
When Tina Meier took to the stand to testify in the case of her daughter’s suicide, it was immediately obvious that this would be one of the defining moments of this landmark trial.
According to Meier, her daughter’s life was on the upswing when it took a turn for the worse. That turn began shortly after Megan Meier’s online flirtation with a boy named “Josh Evans” went from friendly messages to sexual innuendo to cruel, degrading attacks. Shortly after Megan’s relationship with “Josh” went from bad to worse, Megan took her own life.
Meier testified that it was less than a month after Megan and “Josh” began to communicate that the supposed teenage boy and others began to taunt Megan mercilessly with vicious, venomous, personal attacks. It was approximately 30 minutes after Megan’s last correspondence with “Josh” that she took her fatal steps toward the bedroom closet where she ended her own life.
Meier referred to Megan as “bubbly” and “energetic” with a “huge sense of humor.” Family members - including Megan’s father and aunt - sobbed in the front row of the courtroom as Meier’s described her last moments with her daughter.
Her account unfolds tragically on Wired magazine’s website:
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.”
Those were the last words they shared. Tina Meier never saw her daughter alive again.
