Which family killed Megan Meier: The neighbors, or her own?

The answer is: Neither. Megan Meier killed herself.

If we want to assign blame, if we want to say she was driven to this desperate, final act, who is truly to blame? The family who perpetrated the MySpace hoax, leading her to believe a cute guy named Josh liked her and then suddenly didn't like her? Or her own family, particularly her mother?

Many articles about Megan's death state that Megan went upstairs and hung herself after her mother found her upset about MySpace messages from "Josh" and - instead of offering any comfort - criticized her daughter for using vulgar, inappropriate language to defend herself against friends who were attacking her.

"Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people.

"I am so aggravated at you for doing this!" she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, "You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!"

On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron.

"I grabbed her as she tried to go by," Ron says. "She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn't understand why. I told her it's OK. I told her that they obviously don't know her. And that it would be fine."

Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.

"I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet."

Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday."

You're supposed to be my mom. You're supposed to be on my side.

I don't excuse Lori Drew and her helpers for their part in this, nor do I believe that parents should always take their children's side no matter what, without finding out the facts.

However, in Megan's case, it appears to me that Lori Drew and Tina Meier share equal amounts of responsibility for Megan's death.

The bulk of the responsibility belongs to Megan herself. That's one of the hardest parts about suicide. The person who's gone, the person we grieve, is the person deserving of the most blame about his or her own death.

There's no easy way to reconcile that.