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	Abuse Story: Page 1 Impact By Karen Hunter Hartford Courant June 8, 2008 http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-hunter0608.artjun08,0,6137712.column The Courant's front-page story count has decreased considerably over the years, but it is still rare for a first-person article to take up the entire page. If ever there were a reason, however, Assistant Features Editor Kevin Hunt's story about the child abuse complaint his mother filed 38 years ago against Dr. George Reardon was it. So it was surprising when a reader questioned me about the placement of the story. "I'm not saying it shouldn't have been done," the reader said. "It was very interesting and compelling. It was very well written. It opened my eyes. But I don't think it was news. It was something I would expect to see in the Commentary section. If you still had Northeast, I could see it there." Managing Editor Barbara Roessner explained, "I felt it was an extraordinary piece of work, and that it would have an extraordinary impact. I wanted the presentation to live up to the importance and the power of the piece." In reading Hunt's story, one could not help but wonder about the process that brought it to The Courant's front page. Some may recall that nearly two weeks before Hunt's story was published, a news article reported that a formal complaint had been filed in 1970 against Reardon, who was then an endocrinologist at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Although top editors knew that Hunt and his mother, Marcia Hunt, were the parties involved in the complaint, they were not identified in the May 21 story, which also appeared on the front page. Roessner said she and Editor Cliff Teutsch "were the only ones at the newspaper who knew of Kevin's personal history, which he shared with us after the West Hartford cops called and told him they'd found the documents relating to his case. It was clear from our first conversations with Kevin that the most compelling, most dramatic, most urgent story needed to come directly from him, not translated through a reporter. . . . It seemed to me a stroke of fate that Kevin happens to be a journalist, a writer, a person with the talent and skill to tell a story with passion and grit and, surprisingly, humor. "At the time the May 21 news story was written, only a few editors knew Kevin's story was in the works. We went ahead with the news story, with the names redacted from the documents, knowing that Kevin would be giving a first-person account. ... We felt that was the best way to separate the news from the point-of-view story Kevin was writing." Hunt explained that "the only way I would have come forward was if I had documentation of our complaint. "Here I was, someone who worked at The Courant, suddenly in the middle of a news story," Hunt said. "So I had a professional obligation to give the information to the newspaper. I had a personal obligation to tell the story in my own words, under my own name and with a picture of myself." He said his motivation included an article in The Courant last December that "described a Reardon victim from Glastonbury, identified as Tom, whose mother still cannot acknowledge his ordeal. In my conversations with West Hartford Police, that was a common theme. There is always more than one victim — the child and the parents." Even if the newsroom's former vehicles for unconventional stories — namely Northeast and Sunday Life — were still around, I'm sure the power of Hunt's account would have propelled it to the front page. (Readers should note that the news staff and the editorial page staff, which produces Commentary, simply do not trade stories.) The importance of Hunt's article was not lost on hundreds of readers who e-mailed him and discussed the story on The Courant's message board. "I never would have imagined the reaction to my story," Hunt said. "In the first two days after it ran, I responded to more than 200 e-mails and followed all the comments on the paper's website. I am stunned. I expected to feel some embarrassment and humiliation, but instead people are calling me brave and courageous. That is nice, but I'm nothing more than just a very stubborn Irish guy. "Whatever it took, I'm just glad I wrote that story. And it doesn't end here. I hope more victims come forward to put a human face on this tragedy and finally get the justice, and closure, it deserves."
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