Last summer, a Broward County jury convicted middle school teacher Aaron Mohanlal of 13 counts, including child abuse, molestation and lewd battery on a 13 year-old boy, and a judge sentenced him to 43 years.
But a year later, Mohanlal has yet to spend a day in prison.
The story, by CNN reporter Ashley Fantz, first appeared on the network's website Thursday afternoon.
I happened upon it as I was watching Headline News. The network was devoting as much as 10 minutes to the story at the top of each half-hour block with the outraged anchor doing a Q&A with reporter Fantz and using words like "animal" and "monster" to describe Mohanlal. They knew they "owned" the story.
Intrigued, I did a Google news search to see if any of the South Florida media outlets had anything on the story. I found only five links, none of them from any of our media powerhouses here in So Fla.
At midnight, my Google search showed a few TV stations and small newspapers had picked on the story.
But neither the Herald, the Sun-Sentinel or the Palm Beach Post had anything on their websites.
We're starting to see the effects that recent staff cuts at local papers are having on news coverage.
I'm sure in the days ahead the local papers will start to do this story. What they won't be writing about is why they dropped the ball on this one. But we already know the answer to that one.
Do you - or anyone for that matter - know Judge Gold's email address? I was able to find his office phone number, but for some strange reason (insert sarcasm here) no live person ever returns calls or picks up the phone. I and several others from Texas would like to email him. Thanks! And thanks for posting this story!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you but the more I hear about this story its sounding like we have a corrupt judge on the table. Something is really fishy about all this and why in the hell would he let this happen, I am thinking something is up either his is being paid or black mailed. All and all they are trying to get this guy back in jail and the judge keeps cancelling the hearings. I hope some report does a good job and starts investigating this judge sounds to me he needs someone to check on his background.
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