JERSEY CHILD ABUSE COVER-UP: ANOTHER SNAPSHOT OF WHY YOUR CHILDREN STILL AREN'T SAFE

The (last?) Bald Truth shows just how necessary it is to take the battle to a different arena...

If my experience of giving a first session of evidence to lawyers from the Committee of Inquiry's legal team and events taking place during this week's question time in the States confirmed one key thing for me it really was that my decision to put the Bald Truth blog into cold storage - quite possibly even for good - and focus on opportunities at a wholly different, international level not yet undertaken by anyone really must be the right one. 

Yes, okay I acknowledge the key Jersey political blogs are now far, far bigger and more widely read than they were four or five years ago. But I also believe something new just has to be done to try and help them and justice along. And it now seems the opportunity is mine to try and do this...

But let's take a good, hard look back at the truly shocking facts unveiled in  yesterday's States Sitting with a question put to the Health Minister.

 

Here the man who is currently the best Jersey politician by a country mile, Deputy Mike Higgins was trying once again to get some 'bald truth' out of Jersey's Health Minister. This personage is one Trinity Deputy, Anne Pryke should you be one of the apparent Island majority who have absolutely no idea who this very 'senior politician' in charge of the costliest and most essential department is.

Deputy Higgins was asking Pryke about a child protection case to which I have alluded previously and one which I had subsequently passed on to him upon my leaving the States earlier this year. Indeed, a case which is so shocking that if the mainstream (State) media only reported it (they won't of course - dog poo, too many rocks on the beach and needing to keep their Establishment chums looking good for the election are far more important!) said facts really should have all good parents/professionals rioting out on our streets - let alone finally voting our corrupt Establishment Party out of power.

Not just hearsay - a six hour long colour video!

 

Now I have to be very careful here because having done so much painstaking work with the rightly concerned complainant in the hope of securing justice and accountability I really cannot say all that I would like to: protecting the identity of the children involved being absolutely paramount as readers will understand. Suffice to say that what came out as a consequence of Deputy Higgins' questioning of the Health Minister is simply jaw-dropping even outlined in the sketchiest of fashions. In fact truth be told it is actually terrifying.

You see according to an individual Deputy Higgins described as the Head of Children's Services it can now be reported here that; apparently being presented with a SIX HOUR video - not to mention SELECTED STILLS  - showing a couple of adults choosing to initiate oral sex where a young toddler is not only present but is physically being held so close to 'the action' by the male and in such a fashion as to render the child what most right-minded people (I believe) would surely view as a deliberate prop  or possibly even sexual stimulant does NOT immediately set child protection alarm bells ringing at the top of the Island's Health & Social Services Department!

Can this really be true?

Well, yes I'm afraid it can because though Health Minister Pryke was doing her usual best to waffle, time waste and plead ignorance to avoid giving an answer that might come back to haunt her I can confirm here that Deputy Pryke herself sat through a FOUR HOUR meeting at the Hospital which I had arranged on behalf of the complainant where all of this was spelt out for her in most graphic detail. 

A meeting I should point out where the Minister was not only able to again see said stills and hear first hand of the complainant's and my own concerns - but to which she was also accompanied by two very senior members of her  own Health team very familiar with the details of the case. These being Mr Pointon and Mr Jouault. Hopefully, of course, unless things are even more lax at Health than even I and Deputy Higgins already believe this meeting surely should be officially minuted: and these facts can thus be confirmed? 

One thing is for certain: I am happy to testify to the above wherever necessary. 

For let us be quite clear: this was not a case of a naïve and immature young couple forced by hard economic circumstance to risk initiating intimacy in cramped, one room accommodation. This activity; its manner and location was a matter of evidenced conscious choice. 

The consequence of both Health and Police 'professionals' refusing to admit that they were wrong and thus be held accountable was that highly damaging decisions were subsequently made in Jersey's courts.All I really need to say for now I believe to demonstrate once again that whilst most of the time servers and wannabes masquerading as States Members don't want to know Jersey's children are as vulnerable now as ever they were.

I thus repeat nothing - but NOTHING - has been learnt since Haut de la Garenne. And until professionals, Ministers, Judges, Attorney Generals or whoever who are responsible for such failings are finally held to account nothing - but NOTHING - will ever change. Shoot the messenger once again if you like but the truth of what I say - and what Deputy Higgins reported yesterday - is absolute.

Oh yes...and just in case any reader is still in any doubt on this one: the senior police officer charged with examining a copy of the video had apparently just passed it on to a more junior colleague. A junior colleague who we must also surmise either has judgment as flawed as those ,professionals' up at Health; or who simply just got bored and didn't watch it all the way through to the important bits. You see the police report didn't think what was revealed was a child protection concern either....

Could you make it up? Probably not. But this I'm afraid is Jersey in the 21st Century.

Keep the Faith 

As for me - having already given several hours of evidence on a wide variety of material I have a second session of evidence to give the Committee of Inquiry very soon. Then, unless the Birts and Bailhaches of this world manipulate things to somehow prevent it, I have further promised that I am happy - and indeed wish - to then give my evidence and be questioned on all and any of it in public.

But once this is completed I have no shame in saying I really do have to finally take a step back to pursue the opportunities arising to change things via routes and mediums not yet tried. The battle will go on as before - just on a different battlefield so to speak. I'm actually really looking forward to it no matter where its course may take me!

Finally, I thus wish all of those wronged and abused - and likewise those who have bravely fought so hard for them - strength and the very best of luck. Remember: if you are reading this and you don't do justice - in Neo-Feudal Jersey 'justice' will certainly do you....

Take care

Trevor

 

A WAKE UP CALL FROM HISTORY

A Student Federation poster from Chile in 1920 echoes down the years to warn a Jersey public who fail to stand up to those who hijack the democratic process…

I was fascinated in reading about a man, Salvador Allende, who is not only a personal political hero but also without doubt one of the most important champions of democracy of the 20^th Century to stumble across details of a 1920’s poster issued by the then FECH Chilean students’ federation newspaper ‘Claridad’ (Clarity). Indeed, given two highly symbolic events of the past seven days here in Jersey the message contained really could not resonate as being any more relevant:

Firstly, the final launch of the Committee of Inquiry into the decades of horrific child abuse concealed from Jersey’s ordinary people by years of corrupt Establishment politicians, ‘law lords’ and media sycophants. And equally, of course, the final ‘heads-in-the-sand’ decision to commit us to the huge burden of a Financial District that within twenty years will be as redundant as the crumbling ‘Off-Shore’ tax evasion industry on which it is based.

For the poster (the words of which I reproduce below) sums up in language as adroit as it is blunt the cost of what happens both individually and as a community when, as Plato so famously highlighted, the ordinary populace fail to engage in the political process or look beyond the lies and motives of those who would tell you theirs’ is the best and only way.

Indeed, replace the names of the Chilean newspapers of the 1920’s quoted within the poster with the Jersey Evening Post, Channel ITV and the local BBC and the words of 94 years ago could have been written specifically about the Jersey of 2014.

The words sum up not just Haut de la Garenne and so many other horrors which were allowed to happen by this failure of humanity but also how the victims/survivors, the two brave police officers who finally set out to drag out the truth; and, indeed, the handful of Leftist politicians and bloggers who stood tall alongside them were then trashed by the Establishment and their lackeys to protect the guilty.  

Just as it sheds light on how so many ordinary people continue to be sleep-walked down the crumbling, neo-liberal capitalist road to a moral less Nowhere by the same ‘leaders’ when the evidence of what lies ahead are all around to be seen if only one brave enough to look and see. Read the words of the poster; open your eyes and take heed.

As for Salvador Allende, a great leader whose democratically elected government was destroyed by the mass-murdering fascist General Augusto Pinochet at the behest of equally corrupt US President Richard Nixon – if only we in Jersey had a leader of his stature, vision and commitment to social justice to lead us away from the edge of the Abyss today! As we haven’t I guess it is up to us to save ourselves...

Chilean students’ federation newspaper ‘Claridad’ (Clarity) poster of December 1920

‘You are a coward. Yes a complete coward. And don’t think that we are saying this to attract you to this poster. No. Quite simply, you, whoever you are that is reading this, have you noticed how you live? What is it that you do every day? You are silent when convenient. You always ingratiate yourself with the more powerful. You opine like everyone else. When have you ever raised your voice against the scandalous infamy around you? When? Tomorrow or maybe the day after you may die and what purpose have you served? Do you know what the society we live in is, this capitalist society? Do you know what the society is that we push for and that you try to delay? No doubt you think the same as ‘El Mercurio’, ’La Nacion’ ‘El Diario Illustrado’ etcetera, the same as the newspaper you read every day. Learn for yourself man. Don’t be a puppet. Have some shame. Use your own head, that’s what it’s there for. Find out. Investigate. Don’t be fearful. And don’t leave calmly after reading this. In vain you try to be deaf. You are a coward, at the mercy of he who pays you best, or shouts at you loudest. Don’t fool yourself. When have you ever said anything that could jeopardise you? Because of docile individuals like you the world is unliveable with swine.’

Do you want to be on the easy side or on the side of what is right? I personally am proud to say that no matter the cost I have always stood – and will continue to stand – on the latter.

Keep the Faith.

JERSEY CHILD ABUSE COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY: THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING EVIDENCE

The official launch of the Committee of Inquiry into the State cover up of decades of institutional child abuse is now just over a week away. Many abuse survivors have often thought that we would never, ever get to see this finally come about. Understandably so, given the rabid opposition orchestrated by those who desperately wanted both the true extent of the victims’ suffering; and the betrayals of those who let it happen and should have brought the perpetrators to justice years ago swept under the carpet in best ‘Jersey Way’ fashion to protect our image as an ‘Off Shore centre’. 

Survivors/victims have not only been dismissed and even simply deliberately ignored over the years many have been bullied; they have been humiliated and insulted. Some have even been threatened with legal action to try and intimidate them into silence. As one of the tiny handful of politicians who actually fought for the establishment of the Committee of Inquiry way back in 2008 I thus really cannot stress highly enough just how crucial it is that anyone who has evidence of any kind comes forward now and presents this to the Committee if it at all possible. 

I know only too well from the large number of survivors I have spoken to that this will be terribly painful for many… 

Perhaps it will even be genuinely impossible for a number. Indeed, just listening to some of the victims’ experiences made me feel physically sick on occasions. But what all of us who do not go along with the ‘Jersey Way’ ethos of the likes of the Bailhache brothers – two arrogant and utterly disgraced Attorney Generals and ‘judges’ whose names are now shamefully synonymous with the betrayal of both child abuse victims and justice alike – must keep in mind is this. 

No matter how painful; no matter what the intimidation or the cost all who can manage it simply must endeavour to place all that we know ‘on the record’ come the inquiry beginning on April 3rd because the alternative is surely even worse. Can we be sure that the Committee will act upon the evidence they are given as a truly independent body should do? No. We cannot. Yet what we can do - and do beyond any shadow of a doubt – is ensure that all of the facts finally do end up on the public record for posterity. 

By doing so we thus may just ensure that this type of sickening cover-up by the Island’s Establishment cannot happen so easily again; nor perpetrators get away with it so easily. 

After all, Jersey won’t always have a ‘justice’ system as corrupt and utterly warped by power and greed as the one allowed to ferment under Philip Bailhache and the equally contemptuous of Jersey’s obligations to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, Michael Birt. Just as one day the UK finally won’t have weak individuals like recent ‘Justice Ministers such as McNally and Hughes; or of course the Queen’s Lieutenant-Governor for the Island who equally know what is going on but keep their mouths shut for fear of damaging the murky Jersey tax links with the City of London. Truth will always out in the end no matter how long it takes. 

But should you be one of those who genuinely doubt that presenting your evidence is worthwhile or will achieve anything positive – perhaps when set against the pain the process may bring about - please just consider the likely consequences if you do not. For in such a scenario the likelihood is that the lies and false picture of what took place at Haut de la Garenne and so many other places painted by the Establishment and their lackey media mouthpieces like the Jersey Evening Post will over time become accepted ‘fact’. 

Just as Dr. Goebbels stated: if you keep repeating a lie long enough… 

Not only will both the true extent of the suffering of the victims and the complicity of the politicians, civil servants, police and media who made it all possible be airbrushed out of history – the same Establishment and media fabrications trashing the hard work of the brave police officers, Graham Power and Lenny Harper, who finally did act to do something about it all will also become historical ‘fact’. 

This should be something that not a single soul who cares about justice and putting an end to ‘the Jersey Way’ could even contemplate as letting happen. And that is why all who can should give their evidence and give it proudly. 

Indeed, as the politician who led the investigation into the absolute fabrication of what really happened within the financial managing of Operation Rectangle by Power and Harper I know as well as anyone how the Jersey mainstream media – not just the Jersey Evening Post but Channel and the local BBC - sold the public a work of fiction in conjunction with Establishment politicians that would have done Stephen King proud. 

For example, without the evidence secured from witnesses in that Scrutiny Review we would never know such important and revealing facts such as… 

Far from Harper and Power ‘wasting’ 7.5 million pounds as claimed by the State media and some oddly obsessed Establishment politicians the duo did not even spend such a figure at all. The majority of the money actually was spent by their successors Warcop and Gradwell who did not even have a major crime scene to maintain. 

We would never know the truth that, try as politicians such as Ben Shenton, Jim Perchard and Sean Power did to smear the name of Lenny Harper the only individual leaking information to the media during a live child abuse investigation was actually Mick Gradwell – the man the JEP tried to spin to people as some kind of whistle-blowing hero! Yes, one of the very men brought in by the Establishment to trash and bury the whole investigation! 

These are just two hugely revealing facts amongst a great many that were dragged out into the light to counter the Establishment/State media lies only by people giving evidence to my panel… 

By now speaking to the Committee of Inquiry survivors and other witnesses alike can achieve the same – only even more so! Perhaps even setting in motion moves that will finally bring some of those protected under the ‘justice’ of the regimes of Bailhache and co to belated justice. So I repeat: let the true facts be recorded for future generations. Because if we do not we can be quite certain it will only make the events surrounding Haut de la Garenne all the more likely to happen again. 

Keep the Faith

TRUTH & THE JERSEY WAY: SOME THINGS JUST DON'T GO TOGETHER.

Committee of Inquiry members named as Option B & the Jersey Evening Pravda keep spinning the lies...

In the week that finally saw the first two names for the hard-won Committee of Inquiry into decades of Establishment-concealed child abuse announced the crucial importance of all of these people being 100% independent of Jersey's self-proclaimed elite could not have been more strongly reiterated.

 

For if the Committee of Inquiry is to finally get to the bottom of what went on at Haut de la Garenne and other institutions (States and otherwise) they will need to have a commitment to truth burned into the forefront of their approach at all times. Of course, this fact would likely go without saying in most jurisdictions. But sadly Jersey is not 'most' jurisdictions. It is...how shall we put it: different.

 

Both different in that it is fundamentally one of the most special places you could ever hope to find. But 'different' too in that we unfortunately have a clique of people at the apex of power desperate to hold on to power here for whom truth appears to come a very long way down their list of priorities.

People who regularly try to rubbish true proponents of political equality,transparency and accountability - yet are quite happy to throw such words around themselves like so much confetti at a wedding. So long as it helps them get what benefits THEM.

 

Option B for Bullsh*t...

 

Anyone doubting this fact really need look no further than those at the forefront of the campaign for Option B in the forthcoming (hijacked) Jersey referendum. Already the pages of the local Pravda (more on this later) have been swamped with letters whose lack of honesty (it surely can't be just ignorance, can it?) should tell you that buying a  secondhand car from the authors might just be one hell of a risk.

 

Why do I say this? Well, it is quite simple. The cold, hard truth of the matter is that Option B - if it were to become law - would create voter inequality that would make Jersey the laughing stock of Europe. Indeed, this would not just be because of a degree of resultant inequality that would cause riots on the streets of any normal democracy; it would be because no other country in Europe would actually even consider risking putting forward such non-ECHR compliant, neo-feudal claptrap as a government-backed initiative in the first place.

 

Thatcher may be dead but the self-interest mentality lingers on...

 

Yet here in Jersey, of course, we see people such as former occasional visitor to the States Chamber, Ben 10 Shenton; Clothier saboteur Pierre Horsfall and even young Thatcherite wannabees like James Rondel all spouting the demonstrable garbage that Option B will create a 'fairer' system! Really boys?

 

Then why is it, let me ask, that not a single one of you B faction brigade can ever manage to explain exactly 'how'? Why they are so quiet on this issue and keen to adopt the standard far-right diversionary attack of branding people who differ 'wreckers' is because they know they are talking the aforesaid utter tosh.

 

Option B is the choice for people who say that they want efficiency, stability and equality. But actually want an entrenched two-tier society that will continue to let those with the deepest pockets and the lowest ethics carry on riding the elitist gravy train a few years longer. Ride the gravy train even in the knowledge it will ultimately - certainly within the next 20 years -lead the majority into the economic and social Abyss. Please make sure you look at what they DON'T tell you.

 

To this regard a few weeks ago the A Team were using a catchy little slogan that played on this truth with a tongue-in-cheek 'No Plan B'. May I politely suggest that a more honest slogan would be:

 

 

'Vote B and you'll B stuffed - Forever!'

 

 





Which brings us neatly on to that bastion of Establishment Party lies...the Jersey Evening Pravda

 

Now the fact that the local Pravda  is already up to its old tricks in support of the B campaign (lovely big photo of 'thumbs up for inequality' Shenton) should come as a surprise to nobody who follows local politics. This newspaper has been actively working to undermine democracy and spinning Establishment propaganda since at least the end of the Second World War. Doubt my word then just go and sit in the reference library for a few hours.

 

Indeed, the JEP's consistency in this strategy has been remarkable and has never once faltered: whether this required such diverse ploys as refusing to let the Jersey Democratic Movement publish its election manifesto; portraying heroes of the Occupation such as the legendary Norman Le Brocq as rouble-grasping, anti-Jersey 'wreckers' or just about anything else.

 

Psst! Need a couple of Lefties portrayed as fraudsters even when all they really did (like some Establishment candiates!) was help a few elderly and/or disabled people register for a postal vote? Yup - Pravda are the boys for the job!

Want a child abuse investigation trashed and years of buggery, bullying and unheeded cries for help from children painted as secondary to what PC Plod had for dinner - once again, we're your guys! Want a dodgy copper leaking information during a live child abuse investigation to a hack Daily Mail journalist instead painted as a 'whistle-blower' - give us a call!

 

No wonder more and more people are deserting the MSM for Citizens' Media...

 

Of course, often this most vile of 'newspapers' takes a more subtle approach.

Ever so accidental pictures of favoured Establishment candidates such as Sir Philip Bailhache given much greater prominence, likewise with quotes/text than other candidates. Respected US journalists (shockingly monitored whilst a visitor to our island and then banned upon revealing what she was researching) stuck on the pages of Pravda when her visa is returned... ever so accidentally next to a big feature on illegal immigrants!

 

The truth is the Jersey Evening Pravda is both terrified of TRUTH and contemptuous of it in my opinion and, indeed, in that of so many others. Okay so we know they are desperate to bury this... But just consider our case against them and Broadlands for the horrible, cowardly lie that my wife (Deputy Shona Pitman) and I had increased our salary by 4 times with my entering politics.

 

Bad enough as this despicable lie was in itself given our income had decreased and, of course, a belated, desperate attempt to spin this as a reference to a mortgage muliplier ignored the ever so inconvenient little fact that that 4 x wasn't even the current rate.But if you have been reading their recent appallingly written stories from the likes of Richard Heath and Andy Sibcy (what happened to you guys?) relating to facts of the case and material sent to the UK Justice Ministry then you'll oddly NOT have been made aware of the following very interesting FACTS.

Never mind Article 6 and Human Rights - we're the Jersey Establishment!

 

Firstly. the editors and owners of the Pravda are desperate that you don't know the cold, hard FACT that this newspaper is seeking to gain financially from a court case that was NOT ECHR compliant. This being because our esteemed Bailiff's Office - whether through negligence or, it has to be asked, something more sinister,failed to ensure that Jurat John Le Breton who is an evidenced personal friend of a defendant company director did not obey the rules on conflict of interest and recuse himself.

 

Whatever could have been Le Breton's motive for not doing what was required, I ask?

The Jersey Evening Pravda - aided and abetted appallingly by BBC Jersey in this instance - claim they CAN'T report this for risk of getting into 'Big Trub'. Slightly odd then you might think how journalists in both the UK and beyond have reported what is cold, hard FACT? Obviously the Establishment tom-tom drums have been beating frantically to try and keep the Bailiff's Office's failures quiet at all costs.

 

Then secondly, the reality that Jurat John Le Breton is highlighted within the Establishment suppressed Sharp Report as refusing to look at EVIDENCE against his friend and Victoria College teaching colleague, predatory paedophile Andrew Jervis-Dykes. Not just this but then writing in support of this vile individual. And yet was then actually put forward and supported by Establishment grandees including a former Education Committee President to become a Jurat!

 

The role of a Jurat? Looking at and deciding on... EVIDENCE!

 

And then we have the little fact of the Jersey Evening Pravda trying to con their readers that it is only Shona and I who have written to the UK Justice Minister expressing their deep concern at this abuse of justice. Of course the truth is that a dozen prominent Islanders wrote in support of our challenging of this sickening farce. All but three current or past States Members.

 

Funny how the Jersey Evening Pravda don't tell their readers that?

 

Opting out of ECHR obligations on the excuse that Jersey 'is small' just isn't an option...

 

But Lord above, would YOU not be concerned if you found an individual like John Le Breton awarded the job by the Bailiff's Office of deciding on evidenced fact in your case?! Deciding on evidence that could impact your whole life? Yes, I repeat: no wonder the Jersey Evening Pravda want to keep this little scandal quiet. Conflicted to the hilt AND a proven record of being happy to look the other way on evidence!

Yet what possibly makes this even worse? The aforesaid fact that despite this appalling reality the Pravda and their lawyers still appear quite happy to try and gain financially on the back of court proceedings that as a conseqquence wouldn't stand up in a Third World country like Zimbabwe.

 

Or maybe its all a whole lot more sinister still?

Maybe Le Breton's being allowed to get away with sitting on our case against the JEP/Broadlands even when it is beyond question that he was impossibly conflicted wasn't just down to him? Maybe what is happening now isn't just a consequence of cynical opportunism? Maybe it was yet another manifestation of 'the Jersey Way'?

Maybe it was all part of a deliberate strategy?

 

After all, the Establishment can always use the get out/excuse 'well, if you are unhappy you can appeal!' Knowing that most ordinary people simply can't afford another £30,000 + nor should have to due to failings entirely down to the Bailiff's own Office probably don't even enter into their considerations.

Or maybe that too is all part of 'the Jersey Way' plan...

 

But to return to where I began with the selection of the Committee of Inquiry members to examine decades of States concealed child abuse: all i can say is thank God that this selection is in the hands of a decent man like States Greffier, Michael de la Haye!

If we can follow in this vein all the way through and keep the Establishment 'wreckers' at arms length maybe the inquiry will eventually be able to succeed. We must certainly do all we can to ensure this happens. More than enough children and adults have suffered already.

 

 

Keep the Faith. Yes, they can destroy us - but ultimately the Truth will always win in the end...

Truth - especially the BALD TRUTH - to paraphrase Corporal Jones - the Jersey Establishment and their mouthpieces just don't like it up 'em!