Battered Boy’s Father Reportedly Starts GoFundMe, Questions Raised About His Motive

What happened to Jaden Jordan, allegedly at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend, Salvatore Lucchesse, 24, can only be described as vicious, senseless, and tragic. The details of this heart-wrenching story have raised more questions than they’ve answered.

The Daily News reported last night that Guseyn Aliyev, Jaden’s father, started a GoFundMe page to pay for the Jaden’s funeral, which he said the boy deserves after being killed just after his third birthday. We could not find the crowdfunding page, but the News reports that he is asking for $30,000.

A woman who works for the Legal Aid Society, Monica Dula, posted on Facebook that she thinks Aliyev is just trying to make money off his son’s death — a damning accusation. She notes that “the Crime Victims Assistance fund will cover everything.”

We did a little digging into that fund to see if that was true, and New York State does have an Office of Victims Services (OVS) which provides compensation to innocent victims of crime. Parents of victims are eligible to use this fund. In fact, OVS specifically says they will help family members pay for burial costs if the family member cannot afford it.

“The agency provides a safety net for individuals who have no other way to pay for costs – including but not limited to medical bills, counseling expenses, burial and funeral costs, and lost wages – resulting from being victims of crime,” reads the OVS Victim Compensation page. “Family members of crime victims also may be eligible for help.”

So, another question that has been raised by this utterly devastating story is, if there is actually a GoFundMe page — again, we couldn’t find it and the News didn’t link to it — then why wouldn’t Aliyev go through the state to pay for Jaden’s burial and funeral?

A lot of blame has been thrown around in the comments sections of our articles describing the dehumanizing state the three-year-old child was in during his last moments — he had a fractured skull, lacerations on his kidney and liver, and was covered in feces when he was taken to the hospital before being put on life support.

An enormous amount of commenters called for both parents to be charged along with Lucchesse.

While it is not our place to persecute anyone, some questions cannot go unasked. Commenters have been asking what Jaden’s mother was doing while her son was locked in a dog cage, being terrorized by a pit bull, which neighbors and police say Lucchesse did to the boy.

Aliyev lives blocks away from the boy’s home on West 5 Street where his son was beaten to death. Could he have stepped in to stop the brutalization of his child? If so, what stopped him? How could this have gone so far without someone stepping in?

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services was tipped off about the abuse and was even at the residence days before the child’s death, but they went to the wrong address. Could they have been more diligent?

We can’t know or speculate as to what goes on behind closed doors, but this incident is a peculiar one that raises many questions on why and how such a young life was cut short, and what is being done to ensure whoever’s responsible will be held accountable.