**Dennis Kucinich, or, as I like to call him, the Li’l Engine That Couldn’t, has received the endorsement of… wait for it… Larry Flynt. I’m not sure which part of this story deserves the most ridicule: the fact that the Hustler helmer has been friends with Kucinich “for 40 years” (??) or the fact that Flynt hosted a fundraiser with Woody Harrelson, Sean Penn and Melissa Etheridge. That’s either the world’s most fascinating or most frightening dinner table. Possibly both.
**Osama bin Laden is a whiz at manipulating the Interwebs, at least according to an Israeli professor. It seems that terrorist Web sites are becoming adept at targeting niche groups, including children, with comic books and contests, and women, with pink suicide-bombing manuals (Jesus Mary, do I have to fight gender stereotypes with Al Qaeda now too?) No word yet on his messaging for the gay community.
**Have you heard the story yet of Megan Meier, the Missouri teen who killed herself after being cruelly spurned by a boy she liked on MySpace? The “boy” turned out to be the parents of one of Megan’s classmates, with whom she’d had a falling-out the year before. “His” last message to Megan was, “The world would be a better place without you.”
**Julia Roberts parks in handicapped spaces.
**After all that, you need a drink. Gird yourself for the familial onslaught this week with hangover-free vodka. You’re welcome.
November 23, 2007 at 11:16 pm
On Wednesday, October 21st, city officials enacted an ordinance designed to address the public outcry for justice in the Megan Meier tragedy. The six member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.
Does this new law provide any justice for Megan? Does this law provide equitable relief for a future victim or actually weaken the current law?
I reject the premise of this new law and believe it completely misses the mark. The reasoning behind this opinion is that city officials have consistently treated this case as an Internet harassment case instead of a child welfare/exploitation case.
Classifying this case a harassment issue completely fails to address the most serious aspects of the methods Lori Drew employed to lead this youth to her demise. The Vice disagrees that harassment was even a factor in this case until just a couple of days before Megan’s death.
Considering this case a harassment issue is incorrect because during the 5 weeks Lori Drew baited and groomed her victim, the attention was NOT unwanted attention. It was not harassment at all. It was invited attention. Megan participated in the conversations willingly because she was lured, manipulated and exploited without her knowledge.
This law willfully sets a precedent that future child exploiters and predators can use to reclassify their cases to harassment issues. In effect, the law enacted to give Megan justice, may make her even more vulnerable. So long as the child victim doesn’t tell the predator to stop, even a harassment charge may not stick with the right circumstances and a good defender.
Every aspect of this case follows the same procedural requirement used to convict a Child Predator. A child was manipulated by an adult. A child was engaged in sexually explicit conversation (as acknowledged by Lori Drew herself). An adult imposed her will on a child by misleading her, using a profile designed to sexually or intimately attract the 13 year old Megan.
Lori then utilized the power she had gained over this child to cause significant distress and endangerment to that child. She even stipulated to many of these activities in the police report she filed shortly after Megan’s death.
We can go on and on here, but the parallels between this case and many other child predator cases that are successfully prosecuted bear striking similarities.
Child Predator laws do not require much more than simply proving that an adult has engaged a minor in sexually explicit conversation. Lori Drew has already stipulated that her conversations with Megan were sometimes sexual for a child Megan’s age.
City officials who continue to ignore this viable, documented admission and continue to address this issue as harassment are intentionally burying their heads in the sand, when the solution is staring them right in the face. Why?
On June 5th, 2006, Governor Matt Blunt signed into law stiff penalties for convicted sex offenders. The Vice believes that officials continually reject a child predator classification of this case in order to keep the penalty of this offense out of this harsher realm.
Opponents of this law are active in defeating this law not by changing it, but by disqualifying cases like Megan’s from ever being heard.
There are several other child exploitation laws on the books. To date, none of them have even been considered by City, State and Federal officials in this case. I’m outraged that a motion was never even filed, so that the case could at least be argued before a judge or jury.
Those satisfied with this response out of Missouri officials need to think through the effect this law will truly have. It quite honestly has the potential to directly undermine Jessica’s law. It quiet easily gives prosecutors a way out of prosecuting child endangerment and child predator cases in the future.
Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing here.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com