I am sure by now you have heard of the heart breaking story about a young girl who took her own life in reaction to cyber bullying by an apparent peer, who unfortunately turned out to be another parent, attempting to protect her own child. This is another example of misguided intentions leading to devastating results for everyone involved. Can you imagine what the daughter of the “cyber-bully” mom is going through? Or how about the mother who has lost her daughter? How many “what ifs” are flying around their heads?

This news article was found at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1087376/Mother-tells-court-MySpace-cyber-bullying-led-13-year-old-daughters-suicide.html

Suicide victim: 13-year-old Megan Meier

A weeping mother has told a court how her 13-year-old daughter hanged herself after being ‘cyber- bullied’ on a social networking website.

Megan Meier took her own life after the mother of a classmate posed as a boy on MySpace and told her the world would be better off without her, it was alleged.

Lori Drew, 49, created the fictional identity of a teenager named Josh to find out if Megan had been spreading malicious messages about her 13-year-old daughter Sarah, jurors were told.

They also heard that in response to the remark that the world would be better off without her, Megan had responded: ‘You are the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.’

On the first day of the Los Angeles trial, which is thought to be America’s first ‘cyber-bullying’ prosecution and which could set a legal precedent over online harassment cases, Tina Meier described the day her daughter committed suicide.

She said that a sobbing Megan had told her Josh and two other girls had been name-calling on MySpace.

Mrs Meier told her daughter she wasn’t supposed to be online and shouldn’t have become involved in the argument in the first place.

Lori Drew, a Missouri woman who allegedly perpetrated a MySpace hoax that drove her daughter’s 13-year-old classmate to suicide

Choking back tears, Mrs Meier told the court: ‘The last words she said to me were, ‘You are supposed to be my mom, you are supposed to be on my side’.’

Megan, who was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression, was later found hanging in her bedroom by her mother.

Drew, a businesswoman from Missouri, has pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing computers without authorisation.

Each count carries a potential sentence of five years in prison.

Prosecutor Thomas O’Brien said Drew had conspired with her assistant, Ashley Grills, 18, to invent ‘an attractive male teenager’ on MySpace to find out what was being said about her daughter Sarah, a 13-year-old classmate of Megan.

The defendant fully intended ‘to hurt and prey on Megan’s psyche’, he alleged.

However, Drew claims it was Grills who set up the MySpace account and that she was driving home when the message saying the world would be better off without Megan was sent.

District Judge George Wu told jurors the case, which is being held in Los Angeles because MySpace computer servers are based in the city, is about whether Drew violated MySpace’s terms of service, not about whether she caused Megan’s suicide.

What if there was a way to prevent this from ever occurring again? What if there was technology out there to monitor what your kids are doing online whether they are at home or not? What if there was a safe place on the internet for your kids to play – sheltered from the dangers of the internet.

Children’s Educational Network is focused on providing solutions to these questions. Fun, entertaining, protected solutions. It is our mission to make sure that no one else suffers from cyber bullies, predators, and unsupervised kids testing their boundaries.

We strive every day to ensure every child’s safety on the internet. We know that kids will be kids and that they want to be entertained and that they thrive on socialization and we are working to provide an environment that is conducive to their wants while protecting them from the dangers that come along with all that freedom.

We have gotten off to a great start with ClubTUKI and our kid safe browsers but there is more work to be done. We have a couple new technologies coming out soon that will help parents do everything they can to prevent that horrible question “What if I would have done more”. We are also rolling out some fun new additions to our Club TUKI site to keep kids interested, educated, entertained and most importantly, protected.

If you would like to join with us in our venture, or if you have any questions about Children’s Educational Network, please contact us at support@teamtuki.com. We are always seeking feedback, partners, joint ventures and investors to help us move forward with our mission.