A teenager & the tool of anonymity

If this weren't a story told by a wire service, picked up by news outlets in other countries, it would be hard to believe. But it's the true story of a 14-year-old boy, "Boy B," attempting suicide by inventing a case for his own murder in online chat. The self-created victim used the anonymity of the Internet to create and pose as various participants in an elaborate story that persuaded a 16-year-old boy to attempt his murder. "The older teenager was eventually persuaded that he had been recruited by the British Secret Service to kill Boy B, after which he would be rewarded with a job as well as a sexual relationship with [a] 39-year-old female 'spy'. In June last year, Boy A carried out his 'orders' and stabbed his online friend - who, he had also been told, was suffering from a cancerous tumor," he told the court, according to Agence France-Press. The would-be victim did not die, and police investigating the case pieced the story together from "56,000 lines of computer chatroom text between Boy A and his various real and invented correspondents." The police told AFP they didn't know why Boy B wanted to die. As for sentencing, "Boy A was given a two-year supervision order ... after pleading guilty to attempted murder." Boy B will receive three years' supervision for "for perverting the course of justice and incitement to murder" and may not use online chat.