ST. LOUIS | A 21-year-old woman accused of sending a vulgar text message to a 17-year-old girl is one of the first cases brought under a law against cyberbullying spurred by the suicide of a teenage girl following cruel messages on the Internet.
The 2006 death of 13-year-old Megan Meier prompted Missouri lawmakers to update state harassment law earlier this year so that it now covers bullying and stalking done through electronic media, such as e-mails or text messages.
A handful of cases related to electronic communication have been filed statewide since the law took effect Aug. 28. Prosecutors do not track harassment cases based on the type of communication method used, so they could not provide an exact count in recent days of how many people have been charged because of the new provisions.
But in one of the new cases, Nicole Williams is accused of using electronic communications to harass a teenager in a dispute over a boy. Miss Williams is scheduled for arraignment Jan. 8 on one count of harassment.
She allegedly sent the text message to the 17-year-old, who she had not previously met, because she had heard the girl had a physical encounter with her boyfriend. The two had just been talking, police said.
The 17-year-old received voice messages with lewd and threatening comments, including some that called her by the name “pork and beans” and threatened rape. Miss Williams told police that others sent those messages from her phone, according to a probable cause statement.
St. Peters police spokeswoman Melissa Doss said Friday that the 17-year-old had eggs, thumbtacks and a can of baked beans thrown on her car. Miss Williams, however, has not been linked with or charged with those offenses, she said.
The case was filed in November and is the first involving text messages in St. Charles County, the county where Megan Meier resided, since the new law went into effect.
Defense attorney Michael Kielty, who represents Miss Williams, criticized the revised law on electronic harassment. He called the Meier case tragic, but said lawmakers had engaged in a knee-jerk reaction to try to address the high-profile case.
In a landmark cyberbullying trial, Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Mo., was convicted last month in Los Angeles on misdemeanor federal charges of accessing computers without authorization.
Prosecutors said Drew and two others created a fictitious teenage boy on MySpace.com and sent flirtatious messages from him to neighbor Megan. The “boy” dumped Megan in 2006, telling her: “The world would be a better place without you.” Megan hanged herself. Drew has not yet been sentenced.
The trial in California came after Missouri prosecutors said they couldn’t find state statutes that allowed them to file charges.
Mr. Kielty said Missouri’s revised harassment measures are bad law. “It’s probably one of the worst-written laws I’ve seen in my career,” he said.
He said kids used to say things face to face or pass notes in school commenting on someone’s looks or weight. The new law “criminalizes behavior that otherwise wouldn’t be illegal except for the medium,” he said.
“It’s not criminal. It might be mean-spirited, but it’s not criminal,” he said.
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