JAYNE HARRIS

Archbishop Welby's New Year Tweet
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Into my mailbox came a long email from Jayne Harris. For a moment I'd forgotten her real name and wondered what it might be about.

Then I remembered. Jayne formerly went under the handle HG and she was the lady, who, coming from an already troubled family background, had been abused twice over in Jersey (CI) in 2010 and had, since then, been condemned to live a most appalling life on the mainland.

The occasion of her email was a remark by Church of England's Archbishop Justin Welby in the course of his New Year message and which you see reproduced in his tweet above.

Openness my arse, if you'll pardon the crudity. Jayne's story is testimony to the absolute reverse in her case. While she had been abused before coming to Jersey and after her brutal deportation off the Island, it is her experience in Jersey that I am most familiar with and it is enough to give you a flavour of this poor woman's misfortunes.

Briefly, this is the sequence:

a churchwarden in Jersey abused a vulnerable young lady. When she complained to the Dean he effectively ignored her complaint and when she made a fuss he had her arrested. She was then deported from Jersey and dumped penniless on the mainland where she was mainly homeless for the following three years. The then Bishop (Scott-Joynt) was a waste of space but when the new bishop (Dakin) came in he suspended the Dean. His feelings in the matter are no doubt to his credit. However, as he was badly advised and exceeded his powers, he had to reinstate the Dean who immediately, and falsely, claimed that he had been exonerated of the bad behaviour of which he had been accused. Relations between the Bishop and the Dean deteriorated to the point that the Bishop (Dakin) dumped the Dean on another Bishop (Willmott) who is now supposed to "supervise" him.
Source

The critical pivot in this story is the then Dean of Jersey, Bob Key. He was in charge and he fell down on two counts. The churchwarden was under his jurisdiction and this same churchwarden was not supposed to be unchaperoned in the company of a woman. This stricture was ignored in Jayne's case and when she complained about the churwarden's inappropriate behaviour he was not appropriately dealt with and she was not taken seriously.

A factor in the Jersey church's inadequate treatment of the churchwarden was probably not unrelated to his being the brother of a Jersey VIP, who had, incidentally himself been accused of abuse and whose identity the Jersey Abuse Inquiry had tried to hide (but that's another botched story).

You can read more background on the saga here and here.

Anyway Jayne's current letter is taking Welby up on his offer of openness and spelling out for him the consequence that should follow if he really means it. I have reproduced a few critical passages below and you can keep an eye on the news to see if there is any follow up. I wouldn't be holding my breath.

Jayne's long letter was addressed to the Jersey administration, parliamentarians, Deanery and Press. She also circulated a copy to three bloggers, including myself.

And as the Archbishop spoke about Openness, then it is assumed that he is resigning for his actions in my case and handing himself in to the police, it would be assumed he would expect Bishops Willmott, Dakin, Hancock and Butler to do the same, along with those in the Jersey Deanery who destroyed me. Good. This means it is time for an independent investigation into my case, from Bob Key to the police and the conflicted dignitaries to the subversive and openly criminal safeguarding partnership.

I would like to remind the Bishop of Dover, Diocese of Canterbury and Deaneries of Jersey and Guernsey that, a decade on, there has been no investigation into my case and no apology for the openly conflicted million pound whitewash of my case by John Gladwin, Heather Steel, Jan Korris and Jersey Safeguarding Partnership from their conflicted positions.

There has also been no criminal or disciplinary action against Philip and William Bailhache, Ian LeMarquand, Ian Gorst, Bridget Shaw ...

Making me out to be mad has very very seriously affected my mental health and added to the already unhealable and eventually fatal harm to me, the church are archaic in behaving in such an appalling manner when faced with autism and trauma, so I am glad that the disgraced and soon to be imprisoned archbishop is agreeing to be open, he is stating that it is time for Butler Sloss and Bursell, Steel and Gladwin and the rest to be exposed for their criminal corruption and abuse of power, systemic whitewash of high profile cases, and face sentences, of course that is what he means by being open and honest, he means Shaw and Bailhache, Birt and Steel and the rest, right down to Satan's Priest, Mike Taylor, whose actions in facilitating abuse and vilifying me would have cost him his job a decade ago in a normal organization. Good. I am glad I will die knowing that these wicked people will be punished.

There are quite a few people in those extracts who Jayne implicates in her extended abuse, but in my view it was the Dean's involvement which set off the disgraceful train of events which led to where Jayne is now. She had finally settled in Jersey, was involved in the local community, and had a potentially bright future ahead of her, that is until the Dean panicked in a most un-Christlike manner.

The Dean has left Jersey and has now been made the Church of England's Global Evangeliser promoting a programme called Thy Kingdom Come (or as Stuart might paraphrase it There's a Train Coming Down the Track). In this role he has been happily travelling the world.

I caught up with him giving a pompous interview to the New Zealand church and it's here if you can stomach it without throwing up.

The (former) Dean uses a very interesting phrase in the course of the interview when referring to his time in Jersey. He says

"... after I stopped being her majesty's Dean of Jersey a year ago ..."

Not the bishop but the Queen herself. Apart from the name-dropping involved, this carefully modulated reference cleverly conceals the fact that his bishop suspended him for his mistreatment of Jayne but it was Her Majesty herself that got him reinstated.

This resulted from a constitutional quirk. Jersey is a Crown Dependency directly answerable to the Monarchy and the Monarch herself, who is also head of the Church of England, had also effectively appointed the Dean. He actually had a (non-voting) seat in the Jersey parliament.

So, short of the Queen sacking him he could hang in there and he shamelessly did. The bishop then had to re-instate him and that was trumpeted by the local mafia as him being "exonerated" and the half-apology he had previously offered was wiped clean off the slate.

So it is quite sickening to see him pull the Holy Joe on a poor unsuspecting New Zealand church and interviewer.

Anyway, back to the letter. I have not been following Jayne's plight for some time, principally since we fell out a few years back. But her awful situation, to judge from the letter, has just been getting worse and the fact that she is still in the land of the living, she herself puts down to her being a tough cookie at the end of the day. We should not forget that many survivors do eventually throw in the towel and become simply victims passing seamlessly into the land of the willfully forgotten.

Lest I get attacked for naïvely taking her side, I have to say that she can be awkward, including for her champions, but this is not an excuse for mistreating a human being, particularly one whose awkwardness is born out of trauma. And I think I can claim some objectivity from having been in both her good and bad books over the years.

For her, I wish justice and nothing less. As for the Dean ...

I'm sure the evangelysing/proselytising former Dean does not lose any sleep from a fear of meeting the same fate as John The Baptist, so I'll leave you with a final meditation on this weak and venal man. With due apologies to Charlie Hebdo which so often gets so much right.