When the story of Josh Evans broke, the internet screamed for blood. A mother whose daughter befriended the fake online persona and then committed suicide over it was the main target of the public’s outrage. But local prosecutors determined, correctly in my view, that the conduct wasn’t criminal. They acquitted Lori Drew on felony charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the federal judge who overturned those convictions did so because the CFAA’s authors didn’t intend to criminalize the kind of behavior that took place in this case.
Drew’s initial denials of involvement in the hoax were contradicted by federal allegations that she set up the account with her daughter. And the initial police report indicated that she and her employee in her home-based direct-mail business — later identified as Ashley Grills, now serving a life sentence for her role in the Meier hoax — communicated extensively through the fake MySpace profile with Megan.
While at UMass, Stefania completed a formal internship creating a historic structures report for Mission House as the Jeanine Rioux Intern for The Trustees of Reservations and also served as a curatorial intern at the Berkshire Museum and Strawbery Banke. She completed research under the European Studies program that included a field trip to England and Wales to study interpretation of history in open-air museums. In the spring of 2011 she conducted a semester long project at the Skinner Museum as part of the History Graduate Seminar on perceptions and interpretations of Civil War artifacts in local communities.
