Anthony Pasquale stops to visit his daughter at the Cedar Green Cemetery every morning, then returns once or twice more during the day. He sits on the small white bench and faces the polished granite headstone, etched with a hologram of Autumn on one side and the things she loved on the other — bicycles, soccer balls, cheerleading, skateboards.

From where he sits he can see the middle school, where his 12-year-old girl was a student, and next to that the high school, where the 15-year-old boy who killed her was one, too. When school is in session, Pasquale has even glimpsed a classmate peering out of the ground-floor science-lab windows, which look directly onto Autumn’s grave.

That’s how things work in a small town like Clayton, New Jersey, where everyone knows everyone else, where lives and stories intertwine. “Because it’s a small town — that’s why we live here,“ says Anthony Pasquale. But it was also why Autumn died.

“She trusted him because she thought everyone was raised the way she was,” he says of her attacker. “That everyone could be trusted. That all parents taught kids right from wrong.”

It has been nearly two years since Autumn went missing and Justin Robinson went to jail, pleading guilty to strangling her after she stopped by his house to trade parts for her brand-new bicycle. In that time her parents have learned that the stages of grief now include another step — finding someone to blame. It’s a stage well known to parents wrenched by a particular kind of loss, a kind arguably more common and certainly more public of late — losing children at the hands of other children. And it is raising questions with few answers in the existing legal system.

“Where were their parents?” grieving families asked after Columbine and Newtown, after Isla Vista and Troutdale.

“Where were the parents?” asks Anthony Pasquale, sitting in the back booth of the Liberty Diner in Clayton, where his coffee is on the house now, because, as is the case everywhere else in town, everyone knows who he is. “Parenting comes with responsibilities, and one of those is to raise your kids right, to pay attention and know when they’re a danger to someone else. That’s a parent’s job.”

To fail at that job is a crime, he believes. He’s recently taken his certainty to court, suing Justin Robinson’s parents for, essentially, being bad parents. He has also turned to Change.org and the New Jersey Legislature, advocating for “Autumn’s Law,” which would punish such parenting with prison.

Read More

A Black female, whose adolescent offspring savagely murdered a little White girl, is trying to get out of being held responsible for her brat’s behaviour. She is doing this by claiming compensation from the murderer (her son) and his father (her husband) – if the White girl’s father succeeds in suing all of them for compensation. He is claiming they were negligent in bringing their brat up and should have known that he was a danger to the public. A judge has allowed her to do this, but it is unclear how she is intending to show that her 16-year-old was somehow negligent in bringing himself up.

From the Courier Post:

The mother of Autumn Pasquale’s killer may file a civil complaint against her jailed son and his father seeking to hold them responsible for damages if they lose a suit brought by the victim’s father, a judge ruled this week.

Superior Court Judge David W. Morgan in Woodbury allowed Anita Saunders to file the complaint against her ex-husband, Alonzo Robinson, and her son, Justin Robinson.

If they lose a civil suit, Saunders wants her share of damages paid by Justin and his father, according to court papers.

“That’s not surprising,” said Doug Long, attorney for Autumn Pasquale’s father, Anthony, who filed suit against Saunders and the Robinsons last year.

“What’s surprising is she’s trying to protect herself through indemnification if she ultimately loses.”

Pasquale says Justin Robinson’s parents should be held accountable for his daughter’s 2012 murder. Justin, now 17, pleaded guilty last year to strangling Autumn inside Saunders’ Clayton home and dumping her body in a trash can next door.

He was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Pasquale says Justin Robinson’s parents should have known their son “posed a risk to third parties” before Autumn’s slaying and should have sought treatment for him after the teen allegedly witnessed his father attempting to strangle Saunders.

Autumn’s father seeks restitution for pain and suffering and reimbursement of funeral expenses. His suit alleges several counts of negligence against Saunders and Alonzo Robinson and a count of wrongful death against their son.

Neither Saunders’ attorney, Alfred J. Quasti, nor Justin Robinson’s lawyer, Sharon King, returned calls for comment.

“Keep in mind, while there are other counts, the major count against Justin’s mom is negligent supervision,” Long said.

“I’m not sure a court would allow her to be indemnified by her son. … A 16-year-old couldn’t be negligent in supervising himself.”

Read More