A teenage girl is suing two classmates for libel after claiming they had bullied her on Facebook.
Alex Boston, 14, and her parents decided to take the legal action after the youngster’s school and the police said they were powerless to help.
Miss Boston claims the classmates created a fake Facebook account in her name which included a photograph of her which had been distorted.
They also allege that the account was used to post a racist video on YouTube – which suggested that Miss Boston disliked African-Americans – and was used to leave comments on Facebook pages of her friends which suggested she smoked marijuana and was sexually active.
According to Wired, Miss Boston’s attorney Natalie Woodward said: ‘All of these things were not true and they knew them to be not true.’
Miss Boston and her parents decided to sue for libel after she discovered the Facebook page a year ago.
She complained to teachers at Palmer Middle School in Kennesaw, Georgia, but was told they were powerless to help because the alleged bullying took place outside of the school.
Police officers also told the teenager and her parents that they could not intervene because there was no cyber-bullying law in Georgia which applied to this case.
Instead, officers advised the concerned family to send a complaint to Facebook and request that the fake account was removed from its site.
