A 49-YEAR-OLD Missouri woman who prosecutors say drove a lovestruck 13-year-old girl to suicide by tormenting her with a fake MySpace persona was acquitted yesterday of the most serious charges against her.
Lori Drew was found guilty of three misdemeanour counts in the high-profile case, which made worldwide headlines and prompted calls for social networking sites like MySpace to crack down on such activities.
She was cleared of three felonies by the six-woman, six-man jury, which deadlocked on a fourth count of conspiracy.
Drew will face a sentence ranging from probation to three years in prison for the misdemeanour convictions. She could have been sent to federal prison for up to 20 years if she had been convicted on the felony charges.
Prosecutors say Drew and others created the fake MySpace persona of a 16-year-old boy to woo neighbour Megan Meier for several weeks, then abruptly ended the relationship and said the world would be better off without her. Meier hung herself in October of 2006, just hours after she had read those messages.
Experts said the indictment, which was handed down in Los Angeles after Missouri authorities declined to prosecute Drew, could stretch the bounds of the statute on which it was based.
After the incident became widely known, the Drew family was shunned by the community and targeted for abuse.