Anonymous pranksters who made a fake Facebook profile for a high school dean and used it to send out messages may soon be exposed, thanks to a court order issued late last week. Dean Tim Puntarelli of Roncalli High School—a Catholic prep school on the south side of Indianapolis—sued the social networking site in an attempt to find out who is behind the profile, citing harassment and identity theft. Marion Superior Court Judge Robyn Moberly's order is meant to identify the still-anonymous individuals so that Puntarelli and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis (which operates the high school) can hold them responsible for what they perceive to be character defamation, even though the profile is no longer up.

Dean Puntarelli first complained to Facebook a month ago, when he caught wind that those behind the profile had sent out inappropriate messages and images to Roncalli High students. While the lawsuit is short on specifics, it referred to "pictures and messages inappropriate for a Dean of Students to send to a student." Facebook removed the profile after it was deemed to be fraudulent, but refused to hand over the IPs or any other identifying information about those who created it.

That's why Puntarelli has now resorted to filing a lawsuit in hopes of forcing Facebook to hand over the information. The social networking site has been ordered to preserve the details of the profile for further review. Archdiocese attorney Jay Mercer told the Indianapolis Star that the school was waiting to learn more details before deciding whether to move forward with the lawsuit, and that the archdiocese was unsure of whether a student or someone unrelated to the school was responsible.

"The archdiocese hopes to resolve the issue as quickly as possible in order to restore damage done to Puntarelli's reputation and to prevent this type of identity theft from happening again," the archdiocese said in a statement sent to the press on Friday.

If you're getting a feeling of déjà vu reading this story, it's probably because the case is reminiscent of numerous fake principal/teacher profiles created on social networking sites like MySpace using less-than-flattering information. In some cases, such as that of Hickory High School principal Eric Trosch and Clark High School assistant principal Anna Draker, the students who created the profiles have represented their school officials as drug addicts, alcoholics, and sexual predators. This ultimately resulted in the school officials filing suit against the students (and their parents).

Although judges have shown sympathy for students' right to free speech and parody in some similar cases, Indiana University School of Law professor David Orentlicher told the Indianapolis Star that full-on defamation is another story. "If it really is defamation, then students are subject to that," Orentlicher said. "Your right to freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to break the law."

Further reading: