Post does a Gordon Bennett (snr)

The Post has again, although mildly, been told to know it boundaries after it conducted separate interviews of Toy Molly (who suffered brutal abuse that lead to the death of her unborn child) and her husband who is the accused of the abuse, a case which has been given a lot of coverage in the paper over the last two weeks.

Cr Kau said yesterday it was not the paper’s job to investigate and interview the victim and finally the offender but said it was the responsibility of the police.
“You Post-Courier are not CID. It’s the CID who should investigate.
“I’m not questioning your job but it would be proper if the CID handled such serious cases,” Cr Kau said.

Was it not over a 170 years ago that prominent newspaper owner James Gordon Bennett Snr conducted the first ever interview newspaper interview and subsequent follow up coverage that lead to an innocent man being cleared of the murder of the prostitute in 1836? His actions raised the question of whether the police were doing their job well enough. I think similar parallels can be drawn here to the case of abuse of Toy Molly.

If the Post Courier can carry out an interview with the victim and the accused to cover their stories then it raises several serious questions. What exactly are the police doing to further investigations and how is it that after two weeks of coverage the accused not been located and put back into custody for questioning when already the Post has reached him for an interview?

Understandably members of the community are frustrated at the slow progress. However they could also be using this opportunity to highlight the short comings of the police in order to put public pressure on them to move quickly to find the suspect and secondly appeal to those who are aiding the suspect to give him up so that proper investigations can be carried out.