Such statutes might even drive online harassment deeper into the Internet underground, further from the reach of schools and parents, making the abuse and the abusers harder to find and exacerbating the trauma to young victims, assert several anti-cyberbullying advocates.

Judd told TODAY on Thursday that he aims “to make sure that we do everything we can to send a loud message so parents have to pay attention. At this point in the investigation, we don’t have a criminal case against any parents. We wish we did.” On Thursday, Florida lawyer Mark O’Mara, defense attorney for George Zimmerman, announced he was drafting a proposed law to hold parents accountable in some cyberbullying cases…

On Thursday, the parents of one of the two girls charged in connection with Sedwick’s suicide said through their attorney that they frequently tracked their daughter’s cellphone and Facebook accounts and never saw a problem to confront and, further, that their daughter “is a loving, caring, and supportive young girl with many friends.”

While no parents have been charged for their child’s cyberbullying, in sporadic cases, police and prosecutors have charged and convicted American parents for negligence after their children killed other kids with loaded guns left lying around the house or by crashing cars into other people when driving drunk, Aftab said.