A terrified teenager desperately tried to protect her unconscious friends from assault after they were allegedly drugged by the host’s father during a sleepover, a court has heard.
The 12-year-old sent a series of panicked text messages begging for rescue as Michael Meyden, 57, reportedly sniffed around the home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, to see if the sedatives had taken effect. Meyden has denied the accusations against him.
She was the only one of the four girls who refused most of the spiked smoothies he insisted they drank, and later pretended to be asleep while Meyden repeatedly tried to keep one of her drugged friends off her, which according to the affidavit probable cause is alleged.
“Mommy please pick me up and tell me I’ve had a family emergency, ‘I don’t feel safe,’” she wrote as Meyden briefly surfaced.
“I may not respond, but please come get me. Please. Please pick up. Please. PLEASE!!’
The father of two is scheduled to appear in Clackamas County Court
The girls, all 12 years old, were hospitalized and tested positive for benzodiazepines
The three girls had accompanied Meyden’s daughter to the ‘spa night’ at his home in August last year.
Meyden, a human resources director, was “very involved” in the event. He took them to get their nails done and picked up pizza for their dinner, the affidavit said.
Before going to bed, Meyden allegedly made them each two smoothies and ‘insisted’ that they drink them.
‘Mr. Meyden gave each of the girls specific colored reusable straws to distinguish their own drink,” the probable cause statement alleges.
‘Mr. Meyden was convinced that the girls drank from their own cups.’
One girl drank both smoothies and another girl drank one glass, but the third girl said she didn’t like the smoothies and barely drank any of them, police said.
Authorities claim one of the girls said the drinks appeared to contain “little white bits”; was in it and that Meyden’s own daughter appeared to have drunk a significant amount.
The girls then retreated to the basement, where two slept in a bedroom and the others on a pull-out couch.
The only non-drugged girl remained awake and saw Meyden allegedly enter the basement and pull the heavily drugged girl away.
When he disappeared upstairs, the girl pulled her unconscious friend back to her side, and Meyden returned and pulled her away again, the affidavit said.
“He put his finger under the awake girl’s nose, “as if to see if she was sleeping well, then waved his hand in front of her face,” she told police.
As Meyden reportedly retreated, she began calling and texting her parents and was eventually able to reach a family friend, who picked her up and took her to her home.
As word spread, the other two girls’ parents arrived at 3 a.m. to pick up their daughters, but Meyden was reportedly reluctant to let them in, telling them their children were asleep.
The parents took the girls to Randall Children’s Hospital where they tested positive for benzodiazepines, sedatives usually used to calm anxiety or as a sleep aid.
The girl who drank two smoothies told police that shortly after drinking the second one, she started feeling dizzy, hot and clumsy.
She then “blacked out” and fell into a “thick, deep sleep” the likes of which she had never known before, the affidavit said.
Meyden has been charged with three felonies of soliciting another person to ingest a controlled substance, three felonies of placing a schedule IV controlled substance on the body of a minor and three felonies of delivering to a minor a schedule IV controlled substance.
He surrendered Tuesday at the Clackamas County Jail and pleaded not guilty at a hearing Wednesday before being released on $50,000 bail.
Court records show he and his wife divorced late last year, and his current address is an RV park in Vancouver.
‘Mr. Meyden is presumed innocent,” said his attorney Mark Cogan.
‘We haven’t seen the evidence. The indictment was issued by a grand jury behind closed doors where no judge, no attorney, was admitted.
“And we hope that people will postpone judgment until all the facts are known.”