No charges in Megan Meier's MySpace Teen Suicide

ST. LOUIS - People who sent cruel Internet messages to a 13-year-old girl before she committed suicide won't face criminal charges, a suburban St. Louis prosecutor announced Monday.

St. Charles County prosecutor Jack Banas said that while he understands the public outrage over Megan Meier's death, he could not find statutes allowing him to charge anyone in the case.

"We were certainly hopeful that there was going to be some sort of prosecution, but I'm certainly not surprised," said Megan's mother, Tina Meier.

The Dardenne Prairie girl's parents say she hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, minutes after she became distraught over mean messages received through the social networking site MySpace. She died the next day, and weeks later her family learned that a boy she had been communicating with online did not actually exist.

A police report said that a mother from the neighborhood and her then-18-year-old employee fabricated a profile for a teenage boy online who pretended to be interested in Megan before he began bullying her.

"I think people are upset that a parent got involved in something so childish, and that a young girl committed suicide," Banas said in a telephone interview.