In addition to the four memorial-donation webpages for Sandy Hook victims which were created one to three days before the massacre, and the Crisis Management Institute guide on how to talk to children about the massacre which also predated the massacre, here’s another pre-massacre webpage.
YouCaring.com is a free online fundraising site. This is how it describes itself:
YouCaring.com is a simple, FREE online platform created for people who want to fundraise for causes they care about. From medical expenses, to memorials and mission trips or even pet care — if it’s important to you it qualifies you to set up a free online fundraiser. We provide you with customizable personal fundraising webpages to help you spread your cause and raise support.
Good-hearted Cathy Canfield, a child therapist, set up a fundraiser on YouCaring.com to help children in Newtown, CT, to cope with the terrible massacre of 20 first-grade students and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.
Canfield’s fundraiser page on YouCaring.com does not give a date for its inception, but Canfield referred to the Sandy Hook shootings as “yesterday’s tragedy” and that donation must be made ASAP because her “plan is to leave tomorrow (12.16.12)” for Newtown, CT. All of which suggests that she had created her fundraiser page on Dec. 15, 2012, a day after the Sandy Hook massacre. Indeed, the 20 donations she’s received, totaling at least $1360 (two donations are of unknown “hidden amount”), are all dated Dec. 16, 2012.
This is what her page on YouCaring.com says:
Support Free Play Sessions to Connecticut Children
Organizer:
Beneficiary: Cathy Canfield
In response to yesterday’s tragedy, I plan to put my skills to work and provide some much needed help to the children affected by the Sandy Hook Shootings.
I practice child-centered play therapy, which I do because it has been proven to work time and again in a wide variety of situations, including trauma, at my private practice www.childrenscounselingofalexandria.com. If a child sees me only once, during that time I can provide emotional relief that they may not otherwise experience right now.
In order to do so, i need your help with expenses. I have set my goal at $1500 to cover my expenses Because I am not going through another agency, this money goes directly towards helping.
The plan is to leave tomorrow (12.16.12), so donate what you can right now and tell your friends about it. And if somehow, I cannot raise enough money to go, I will refund any amount donated.
After having raised $1620 of her stated goal of $2000, Canfield closed down her fundraiser. Here’s a screenshot I just took of Canfield’s page (in case YouCaring.com takes it down):
The only problem is this:
There’s an article by JesseW, a frequent blogger (therefore a staff member) of YouCaring.com, about Cathy Canfield’s Sandy Hook fundraiser. But JesseW’s blog about Canfield’s fundraiser is dated December 14, 2012, 06:45. (More on the 06:45 time later.)
Here’s a screenshot I just took of JesseW’s blog (in case it is scrubbed from the site), followed by the article in its entirety (note that JesseW mistakenly gave the date for the Sandy Hook massacre as December 15, instead of December 14, 2012).
Holiday Fundraiser for Newtown Students
by JesseW 14. December 2012 06:45
Generosity is a Gift That Keeps Giving
For the families in Newtown CT, this holiday season has been one that will be forever engrained with the tragedies that took place on December 15th, 2012. To help, many very generous people have gone well out of their way to express their care and support. Today we want to feature one of these generous and inspiring people, who is giving their best to support their fellow Americans.
Meet Cathy Canfield, Cathy is a child therapist from Alexandria, VA who is doing everything in her ability to help the children of Newtown. When Cathy heard about the tragedy that took place on Friday the 15th, she knew that she could help in some way. She wrote a small post on Facebook that mentioned her desire to drive to Newtown and put her skills to good use during this difficult time. After a bit of encouragement from some friends who saw the post, Cathy decided to create a free online fundraiser to help her secure the funds she needed. Not long after, and to much surprise she found that she had raised $2,100 with the help of her friends. Cathy then proceeded to contact the schools to find where her skills could be best put to use. Unfortunately, the only thing Cathy heard back was that there had already been so much help and support given to the town that they did not know if Cathy could even get an opening.
After hearing this news, Cathy decided that she would still try and help in any way possible. She contacted her donors and explained her situation, some requested their donation back and others gave it willingly to Cathy to be used as she saw fit. Cathy is now left with $1,000 which will go to the people of Newtown. You can visit her fundraising site, or start your own today on YouCaring.com.
The “free online fundraiser to help” to which JesseW refers is Cathy Canfield’s Sandy Hook fundraiser page on YouCaring.com — a page that presumably was created on December 15, 2012, a day after the massacre. But why is it that JesseW’s blog about Canfield’s fundraiser has a date of “14. December 2012 06:45″?
To the alert reader who asks if the “14″ in “14. December 2012 06:45″ represents a sequential number assigned to JesseW’s blogs (as in the 14th blog posted by JesseW), I refer you to YouCaring.com’s archived links to all of JesseW’s blogs, especially to page 4 showing a 4-day gap between her “31. December 2012 07:53″ blog, “6 Tips For Crowd-funding,” and her “27. December 2012 03:44″ blog, “Funeral Fundraiser For a Young Man Shot On Christmas Eve.”
In other words, the “14. December 2012 06:45″ of JesseW’s blog about Cathy Canfield’s Sandy Hook fundraiser on YouCaring.com, refers to the date, month, year, and time when the article was published on YouCaring.com.
Not only is that a day BEFORE Canfield presumably had created her fundraiser on YouCaring.com, there is still another problem with JesseW’s December 14 blog: its time-stamp of 06:45.
06:45 means 6:45 a.m. because YouCaring.com runs on military time as proved by the timestamp on this post:
http://www.youcaring.com/blog/post/2013/01/01/Help-Raise-Money-for-A-Family-Who-Lost-Their-Mother-to-Heart-Disease.aspx
YouCaring.com’s IP server is in San Antonio,Texas. You can see that for yourself by going to Freewebsitereport.org.
San Antonio, Texas is on Central Time — which means a time-stamp of 06:45 is 07:45 Eastern time, which is two full hours before Lanza allegedly shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School.
We are told that sometime before 9:30 a.m. EST on December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot his mother with a .22 Marlin rifle at their Newtown home. Adam then drove his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary School. At about 9:35 a.m., Adam shot his way through a locked glass door at the front of the school.
Wait. It gets better.
YouCaring.com’s server is running on GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which means that JesseW’s blog’s time-stamp of 06:45 GMT is actually 01:45 EST, that is, a full seven hours before the massacre.
You can see for yourself that YouCaring.com runs on GMT by going here (http://www.hscripts.com/tools/HVLT/apa-version.php), then plug in YouCaring.com’s IP (198.61.196.29), which will show you that the server works on Greenwich Mean Time.
To conclude, a blog written by a staff member of YouCaring.com, about a fundraiser for children affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, was posted onto the web on December 14, 2012 — SEVEN hours before the massacre took place.
H/t the brilliant FOTM reader Tony who alerted me to JesseW’s blog’s time-stamp, and patiently showed me how to verify the time-stamp.
~Eowyn
