"The baby did not plunge; he was thrown!"
We now all know the story. Last Sunday night, Tony Moreno, 22, made a suicide jump from the Arrigoni Bridge taking his 7 month old little boy--Aaden Moreno--along with him.
As it turned out, Moreno survived the jump, but not his little boy, Aaden.
While rescue teams search the river for Aaden's body, news reports from "The Hartford Courant", indicate that weeks before this incident the little boy's mother, Adrianne Oyola, asked a Connecticut Family Court judge, Judge Barry Pinkus, for a restraining order against the child's father because she feared for the safety of the boy and herself.
More specifically, "The Hartford Courant" stated: "Court records indicate there is an open child custody case involving Aaden's parents. The records show the baby's mother, Adrianne Oyola, applied for a restraining order against Moreno on June 17 because she feared for her child's and her own safety. Oyola wrote in the application that she and Moreno were happy until she became pregnant, but he began to verbally abuse, threaten and push her.
"He has told me he could make my son disappear any time of the day," she wrote. "He told me how he could make me disappear told me how he could kill me. I sometimes am scared to sleep. He told me he would put me in the ground and put something on me to make me disintegrate faster."
"I can't bring [the baby] around my family without [Moreno's] approval, but he could do anything he wants without letting me know," she wrote. "I feel that he is a danger to my child and me and would like to leave with my child and get full custody."
Unfortunately, Judge Pinkus refused to grant her a restraining order and now the child is dead.
In the aftermath of this incident, I have been indignant about the coverage that "The Hartford Courant" has provided. Specifically, in its earlier reports, the Courant failed to indicate the name of the judge who had denied Ms. Oyola a restraining order.
When I asked Christine Dempsey, one of the lead reporters on this story, what was the name of the Judge, she responded that she did not know. This is hardly credible granted that it is clear that "Hartford Courant" reporters reviewed the files in the case and quoted from the Motion For a Restraining Order which the judge was required to sign in order to deny it.
Why would "The Hartford Courant" seek to suppress this information? Perhaps a little thing called the Judicial - Media Committee, about which this blog has previously reported, played a role? Who knows!
It was only upon the report of Mr. Jason Newton of Channel 8 WTNH news that we were finally able to obtain the judge's name.
As it turned out, the name of the judge--Judge Barry Pinkus--was of great interest to the general public because this was the very same judge who ordered that killer Joshua Komisarjevsky, the man who raped and murdered the Petit family women, be granted full custody of his young daughter. Thus, here is a judge whose decisions have already been called into question, and this should be duly noted.
Not only did "The Hartford Courant" attempt to protect the identity of the notorious judge involved, it also used language in its headlines and elsewhere that appeared to shift responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim, or at the very least imply a neutrality that had no appropriate place in reports of this incident.
For instance, here is one: "Mother of Baby Who Plunged Into River Feared For Child's Safety, Records Show!" If you were casually scanning the newspaper and read that headline, you'd never think that a father was involved in this situation at all! From the way it is written, it would appear that the mother plunged into the river and now the records show she feared for her baby. So?
Next, if you look at how the headline is written, it seems as though the baby simply tossed himself into the river -- no father involved. To understand what I mean, just see the structure of the headline itself: [The] baby...plunged into [the] river. Right. Isn't that what the sentence says? The baby plunged, i.e. subject and verb, the baby took action by plunging; that is fundamental to the meaning of the infinitive "to plunge". In other words the baby jumped off the bridge of his own volition. But no, no, no. This is not an accurate report. The truth is the baby should have been presented as what he was in any headline and in any report, as the helpless object of his father's wrath.
This baby did not plunge--subject/verb.
The father threw the baby--subject/verb/object.
Ahhhhh! Have I said this right? Do you get what I am saying?
Again, this baby did not plunge. On the contrary, he was thrown! Let me try to say this in the passive voice (which I've been told many times not to use, but in this circumstance is incredibly enlightening) "The baby was thrown off the bridge by his father." In other words, the baby was the innocent object of the Father's evil actions.
That is more accurate grammatically and in so many other ways. It puts the blame and the responsibility where it belongs, in the actions of a criminal Father.
Someone please explain to me how any writer or editor at "The Hartford Courant" could mistake who is the victim here? Who could fail to use the right kind of language to do justice for this little boy.
Now, I did not by any means wish to give folks a grammar lesson. In fact, even though I've taught writing for many years, grammar was never my strong point as my students can attest. But even I can see what happens when you massacre the English language to misrepresent the facts of a case while pretending to report on a story.
My question is, here you have an entire newspaper with highly trained editors whose sole job it is to see that their employees report on the news truthfully in a way the public can understand.
How come when it comes to CT Family Court and its abuse of protective mothers and their children, "The Hartford Courant" seems to keep on getting it wrong.
