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KIRKSVILLE, MO. -- With more than 300 million users, Facebook has taken the world on by storm.

Virtually every high school and college student is a member of the social networking site, and now, it’s rapidly catching on with most adults, too.

But sometimes the site can be used for a new phenomenon called cyber-bullying.   

“My daughter was talking with her friends on Facebook, and she said, ‘I can’t believe they made a group about me,” Melanie Von Fange said.

The group was a hate-group targeted at her 13-year-old daughter. The group had over 100 members. Von Fange says they included schoolmates and even parents.

“She showed me what they were saying in the group and it was appalling…things like, ‘I’ll delete this group if she kills herself. LOL. She’s such a horrible person,’” Von Fange said.

Von Fange was careful to document each comment and even messaged the group’s members. “I said, ‘I’ll have to report this to authorities if you don’t take it down,’ and they continued to laugh. So I contacted authorities.”

Police say 17-year-old Jerod Reed created the group. He was charged with harassment and spent two weeks in jail before being released on his on recognizance.

Not long ago, this kind of cyber-bullying wasn’t technically illegal. But that all changed with Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide in St. Louis after she was harshly bullied on MySpace.

That led Missouri to revise it’s harassment laws to include cyber-bullying.

Adair County Prosecutor Mark Williams says those revisions apply directly to the Kirksville case: “The part about taking her life…that’s where he crossed the line. The harassment statute was changed to address these specific types of incidents.”

Von Fange says many of the kids who were in the group have left and it and even now rally around her daughter.

As for her attacker, Von Fange says this: “I’m really sorry it had to come to this. I really wish you hadn’t done this. I wish you would have found a more mature way to not like my daughter rather than attacking her.”

Von Fange says if parents find themselves in her situation, they should document everything by taking screen-shots of the cyber bullying.

KTVO was unable to contact Jerod Reed or his attorney by news time for this story.