Doing Time For Texting
Just in time for the new year, a Missouri woman will be going to court as one of the first to face harassment charge since Megan’s law went in to effect. The Megan I’m referring to is 13-year-old Megan Meier who committed suicide after a grown woman pretended to be a mean teenage boy who broke Megan’s heart. The law adds electronic sources, such as internet and text message to the Missouri harassment law.
This first case involves a 21-year-old woman, Nicole Williams, and a 17-year-old girl. Apparently the 17-year-old was talking to Williams’ boyfriend and she was none to pleased by it. She sent the younger girl several text messages some of which threatened rape. Williams claims others sent the text messages from her phone. Apparently Williams needs to keep better track of her phone.
Some say these are just normal threats between two girls who are squabbling over a boy. Now the comments are a legal matter only because of the medium used; text message. What do you think of that claim?
I’m no lawyer (I just play one in my head), but I believe the legal term of harassment typically refers to continued and unwanted behavior that is found to be threatening or disturbing. Multiple text messages threatening to rape or have somebody raped seems pretty threatening and disturbing to me. It’s not the typical “meet me in the parking lot so we can scrap” kind of threat.
My teens argue all the time. And I often hear them say, “Knock it off or I’m going to punch you in the face.” We recently had a little sit-down with both boys and told them we will not have any more talk like that. I don’t want to hear another “I’ll punch in the face” come out of their mouths. I know they don’t mean it [usually], but we don’t need to be intimidating and threatening each other in this household. Harassment will not be tolerated.
If somebody like Nicole Williams didn’t learn this lesson in her own family then maybe there does need to be a law to let her know it won’t be accepted in society. Now I doubt she would have followed through on her threat of rape, but she needs to understand that (1) no boy is worth going to jail for and (2) there are better ways to deal with jealousy and anger. I don’t really think she needs to do jail time for this, but I’m all for her facing a judge to explain herself.
What do you think?
