Cyber bullying can take various forms online and through social media. Several high-profile cases are described that resulted in suicide: - Megan Meier (age 13) committed suicide in 2006 after being cyber bullied on MySpace by a fake account created by the mother of a friend. - Phoebe Prince (age 15) took her own life in 2010 after months of in-person and online bullying by classmates in Massachusetts. - Tyler Clementi (age 18) died by suicide in 2010 after his roommate secretly live-streamed Clementi's sexual encounter without consent. - Ryan Halligan (age 17) struggled with bullying for years and ultimately found information online on how to kill himself,

1. Cyber Bullying
Brought to you by:
Alien Ware

2. What is Cyber Bullying?
• Cyber Bullying is the act of ‘....’
• In other countries the most concrete example
of which is the United States, have laws to
combat such violation of rights to others and
therefore, punishable under legal law.

3. Popular Cases of Cyber Bullying

4. Case 1
Subject: Megan Taylor Meier (October 2010)

5. Background of Subject
• Megan Taylor Meier (November 6, 1992 – October 17, 2006),
an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri,
committed suicide by hanging three weeks before her 14th
birthday. A year later, Meier's parents prompted an
investigation into the matter and her suicide was attributed
to cyber-bullying through the social
networking website MySpace.
• The mother of a friend of Meier, Lori Drew, was later indicted
on the matter in 2008, but in 2009, Drew was acquitted.

6. Subject’s Brief History
• Megan Meier was born in O'Fallon, Missouri, to Christina
Laherty and Ronald Meier. She had lived in nearby Dardenne
Prairie during her childhood, with her parents and sister
Allison.
• From the third grade, Megan had been under the care of
a psychiatrist. She had been prescribed with
citalopram, methylphenidate and ziprasidone. She had been
diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and depression, and
had self-esteem issues regarding her weight.

7. Brief Account of Incident
• The account through which the bullying of Meier took place purportedly
belonged to a 16-year-old male named "Josh Evans."
• However, Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend of Meier, later
admitted creating the MySpace account with her daughter and Ashley
Grills, Lori Drew's 18-year-old employee.
• Several people contributed to running the faked account, including Drew.
Witnesses testified that the women intended to use Meier’s e-mails with
"Josh" to get information about her and later humiliate her, in retribution
for her allegedly spreading gossip about Drew's daughter

8. In-Depth
• Soon after opening an account on MySpace, Meier
received a message supposedly from a 16-year-old boy,
Josh Evans, but actually sent by Lori Drew using a
fabricated account. Meier and "Josh" became online
friends, but never met in person or spoke.
• Meier thought he was attractive. Meier began to exchange
messages with this person, and was described by family as
having had her "spirits lifted". This person claimed to have
just moved to the nearby city of O'Fallon, was home schooled,
and did not yet have a phone number.

9. Case II
Subject: Phoebe Prince

10. In-Depth
• On Monday of this week, nine high school students of South
Hadley, Massachusetts were charged in the case of 15-year
old Phoebe Prince who, after months of being bullied online
and in school, took her own life on January 14 of this year.
• The criminal charges range from stalking to criminal
harassment to violations of civil rights (and in 2 cases,
statutory rape).
• It appears many of the egregious acts of those bullying
Phoebe Prince were done at school. While it is not yet clear
to what degree these students harassed Phoebe through text
messaging or on social networking sites, it seems they were
not humbled by their potential role in what ultimately
happened to her. According to the Boston Globe, they “went
on Facebook and mocked her in death.”

11. Case III
Subject: Tyler Clementi

12. Background
• Tyler Clementi was an eighteen-year-old student at Rutgers
University in Piscataway Township, New Jersey, who jumped
to his death from the George Washington Bridge on
September 22, 2010.
• Clementi, from Ridgewood, New Jersey and a graduate
of Ridgewood High School, was a talented violinist, having
participated in the Bergen Youth Orchestra as concertmaster
and the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra.

13. Brief Account of Incident
• The suicide occurred after his sexual encounter with a man in
his dorm room was video streamed over the Internet without
Clementi's knowledge, by his roommate Dharun Ravi and a
fellow hall mate Molly Wei, and after a second attempt was
made by Ravi to record Clementi's sexual encounters.
• Ravi and Wei were charged with invasion of privacy.

14. In-depth
• Clementi had complained to his resident assistant and two
other officials that his roommate had spied on his sex life and
videostreamed it using a webcam. He wrote in detail on
the Just Us Boys message board and Yahoo! message board
about complaints he filed through university channels about
his roommate.

15. Case IV
Subject: Ryan Halligan

16. Background
• Halligan was born on December 18, 1989
in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of John P. and Kelly
Halligan (was an IBM computer engineer)
• His family moved to Essex Junction, Vermont, where Halligan
attended elementary school and, later, middle school. He was
described by his father as a "gentle, very sensitive soul", who
experienced some developmental delays affecting speech and
physical coordination in his early school years.

17. In-depth
• Struggled against verbal, physical and emotional bullying in
school
• His ‘bully’ became his friend eventually, but the bully went
back into bullying him because he was rumoured to be ‘gay’
• Asked for his father lessons on how to defend himself
• AIM-ed a girl, named Ashley who pretended to like him
• Halligan find courage to finally go to the girl (personally) but
the girl called her a ‘loser’, he said to the girl that ‘It’s girls like
who make me want to kill myself.’
• Found a penpal (chat mate) that had the same negative
outlook in life and they exchanged info on how to kill
themselves painlessly.

18. Conclusion