Missouri Woman Arrested Under New Cyber Bullying Law
Missouri Woman Arrested Under New Cyber Bullying Law
Posted 08/20/2009 at 8:36am
| by Paul Lilly
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Got a beef with a 17-year-old girl? If so, one way not to settle it is to post a fake "Casual Encounters" Craigslist ad posing as the person you're peeved with. That's the lesson a Missouri woman is learning the hard way, who now faces felony cyber bullying charges for said ad.
A little history is in order here. After MySpace harassment led to a 13-year-old to commit suicide in the "MySpace Mom" case, Missouri changed its anti-harassment law to include cyber bullying, becoming the first state to enact such legislation. Violations are normally a misdemeanor, but Missouri's legislation allows for charges to be upgraded to a felony if the victim is under 18 and the suspect is over 20, a move intended to prevent adults from bullying minors.
In this case, 40-year-old Elizabeth Thrasher got into an argument with her ex-husband's current girlfriend on MySpace. The girlfriend's 17-year-old daughter got involved in the spat, and Thrasher ultimately ended up creating a fake personal ad on Craigslist and included the girl's photo, email address, and cell phone number.
If convicted, Thrasher could face up to four years in state prison and a $5,000 fine.
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D3lt4
August 20, 2009 at 5:11pm
Bunch of pussies, if you can't take a little bullying and you kill yourself for it, somehow I see it as a great thing, but those are my two cents.
D3lt4
August 20, 2009 at 5:11pm
Bunch of pussies, if you can't take a little bullying and you kill yourself for it, somehow I see it as a great thing, but those are my two cents.
winmaster
August 20, 2009 at 11:13am
I like how the picture shows the computer running Windows 7.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
DBsantos77
August 21, 2009 at 5:50pm
Actually it might be straight OSX, if you look at the first icon you'll see the Finder.
DBsantos77
August 20, 2009 at 3:55pm
Lol! It's not 7, it's probably ObjectDock or RocketDock, I think RocketDock personally, I know this because I run it too :)
Tekzel
August 20, 2009 at 9:17am
Good, throw the bitch under the bus. People have to learn that they can not harass folks like this. I don't care what penalty they come up with this, as long as it is harsh.
Devo85x
August 21, 2009 at 1:17pm
If someone is not old enough to deal with cyber bullying, they are not old enough to be using the internet
I Jedi
August 20, 2009 at 4:35pm
I couldn't agree more with you. In fact, we should probably give that woman the death pentalty and sentence all of her family members to 25 years hard labor at jail.
dag1992
August 20, 2009 at 8:53am
Seriously. how hard is it to click block on msn or myspace? Honestly... As for this case, it was pretty immature to attack the 17 year old daughter, but that's just my two cents.
dag1992
August 20, 2009 at 9:35am
I should clear up that I meant in general cases of cyber bullying.
jwalch.hawk
August 20, 2009 at 4:39pm
My guess is that you've never been a 17-year-old girl. I haven't been either, though I did date couple... Anyways. It's not as easy as just "blocking the bitch" so to speak. I seem to recall that in one case (maybe it's the MySpace one referred to in the article, I didn't look) a mother posed as a guy of similar age and played some rather insiduous mind games with a girl. If anything, it's even harder for someone of that age to deal with bullies online than it is in school, because social networking sites enable bullies in a lot of ways (not that social networking itself is all bad - that's not what I'm saying at all). The idiotic nonsense that goes on between teenage girls is bad enough; the last thing we need is adults that should absolutely know better on there screwing with kids' (mostly girls') self-esteem and the like. I think four years could be a bit severe for this one (since most personal information is pretty publicly available anyway - it was just where she posted it that's the issue here), but adults (especially parents) that show this kind of judgement deserve to have the book thrown at them.
I Jedi
August 20, 2009 at 4:36pm
Well, I agree in the instance that this woman should have been charged with something because she did post personal info along with her "over-harsh" cyber bullying. However, where does one moderate such actions.
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