Cyber communication - continues

Over the weekend I was catching up with some leisure reading if you can classify the weekend paper as such. I came across an interesting case that occured in the US

Woman charged after MySpace 'joke' goes tragically wrong
A brief synopsis of the story -

A 49 year old mother has been charged over a MySpace hoax that ended with her 13 year old neighbour committing suicide after being rebuffed by a fictitious boy. Several adults including the 49 year woman chatted on line with the girl creating the fictitious relationship, the co-conspirators'chatted with the girl on MySpace and gleaned information from online exchanges to 'torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass' the girl. The woman who created the joke felt that it had gone to far so ended the fictitious relationship by saying the 'the world would be a better place without the girl in it" The message was supposed to end the relationship and so it did. The 13 year old girl committed suicide by hanging herself.

West Australian p 30 Saturday 17 May 2008

What these people did not know is that this girl was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression. This was an incredibly cruel and malicious joke which contributed to the death of a child someone so vulnerable. The woman has been charged in relation to the death of the child. Watch this space to see the outcome........

This is an exteme case of cyber bulling, it highlights that often we do not know what people's psyhological status is when we are communicating on line. All the more reason to remember that it payes to be considerate and not malicious, rude or foul mouthed when communicating on line.
Picture from:
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/03/01/svYOUTUBE_wideweb__470x468,0.jpg&imgrefurl=http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/613&h=468&w=470&sz=46&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=3nzR5gfGq8eimM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcyberbullying%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4HPAB_enAU248AU248%26sa%3DN