TRUSTING THE BBC?

The BBC are scheduled to broadcast a programme tonight on the sexual abuse of children and the financial sector in Jersey (CI). I am well familiar with the scene in Jersey and I must say I am surprised that it is the BBC that is airing this programme.

The BBC does not have a good record in this area either in Jersey or in Great Britain, so I will be very interested to see how comprehensively it covers the Jersey situation which has ramifications in all directions. Unfortunately I don't have piped TV and am geo-blocked from watching it on my computer, so I will be relying on the testimony of those whose opinions I trust to fill me in here.

Meanwhile I thought I'd do a sort of a check list of what I would expect to be covered in an objective and trustworthy programme.

From the blurb, it seems the programme is anchored around the efforts of two bloggers to hold the Jersey establishment to account, particularly after most, if not all, of the significant channels of official opposition and investigation had been neutered.

The two bloggers concerned, Neil McMurray and Rico Sorda are simply civilians without any connection to official Jersey or to the "accredited" media. They started blogging on the subject of child abuse in reaction to what was going on on the island and which was not being dealt with. In fact most of it was subject to cover up by the establishment and their minions.

Neil and Rico exposed a lot of stuff to the extent that they were trusted by victims/survivors to the point that material was being leaked to them rather than to the captured media where such material, instead of being published, would be consigned to the waste basket. They have both suffered personally for the stands they have taken, perhaps Rico the more so.

So full credit to them. But there are a host of other characters who have also challenged the establishment but who have been taken out of play by various underhand methods.

I should start with Stuart Syvret. Stuart was the Health Minister early on in the current century. He was receiving complaints from victims and decided to investigate for himself. He has by now a weath of stories of abuse, most of them, I suspect unpublished. At the time he was also blogging on what was going on.

He was sacked, imprisoned at various times on fairly flimsy excuses, and had his blog taken down by Blogger/Google as a result of a disgraceful legal sleight of hand by the administration. He continues to blog via comments on, for example, Neil's blog and, though on the shrill side of late, his content is always to the point. He has been the cause of some landmark legal contortions in the Jersey "justice" system as the establishment have attempted, and succeeded in locking him up regardless of his human rights.

At the same time as Stuart was doing his investigation, the police were doing theirs, oblivious of what Stuart was at. Two policemen in particular deserve great credit for what they did but both suffered for it.

Police Chief, Graham Power, was suspended on the basis of trumped up and wilfully misinterpreted evidence, and he was held in suspension for as long as possible. Suspension, as opposed to sacking, was the chosen option as it did not need the approval of Parliament and he would be still within the polic force and denied all opportunity to put his case in public.

The second policeman (to quote Myles na gCopaleen), was Lenny Harper who had made a lot of enemies when he arrived on the island and confiscated some of their bazookas. Lenny was straight and to the point.

He became senior investigating officer in the police abuse investigation (Operation Rectangle) and suffered and unremitting stream of abuse and obstruction in his efforts to get to the bottom of it. Lenny had retired to Scotland in the latter stages of the investigation and to give you an idea of how much he trusted the administration, he refused to come back to the island to testify at the later "Independent" Jersey "Care" Inquiry as he was convinced that the administration would find some spurious grounds for locking him up.

He did testify and his testimony like that of his Police Chief are more than worth a read. Unfortunately they are no longer online.

That beings me neatly to the administration and their attempts to keep the whole scandal under wraps. They had a plan to sack the Health Minister (Stuart Syvret) in which they attempted to involve the Police Chief and one of his officers. The two officers concerned held their ground.

Anyway, here we have two Home Affairs ministers, Andrew Lewis and Ian le Marquand. Two gobshites if ever there was one. Andrew Lewis, a weak man, was installed in the job to sack the Police Chief and he followed his script, even though it was clear he was not on top of his brief, and subsequently perjured himself over the whole affair. His successor, Ian le Marquand, who gave a good impression of appearing thick, and in my opinion was, got the job of keeping the Police Chief in suspension ad infinitum, while others were being dealt with. And we'll come to those in a minute.

A name you may not hear in the programme is Simon Bellwood one of the first whistleblowers who was hounded out of his job, and maybe off the island for all I know.

Trevor Pitman and his wife Shona Pitman were, at various times, Deputies in the States of Jersey (ie members of parliament). Both did sterling work on behalf of their constituents and were highly respected by those who mattered.

In my view, not shared by everybody, they were set up. The Jersey Evening Post, the island's only newspaper, published a cartoon which inter alia suggested that they were in politics for the money when it was clear to anybody who took the trouble to find out they were not. Trevor, perhaps unwisely as this was Jersey, decided to sue. They then lost what ought to have been an open and shut case and were subsequently bankrupted by the "justice" system.

Bob Hill, a former MET officer, ran a fantastic blog. He championed the cause of HG, an abused woman, gave evidence to the "Care" Inquiry, but sadly suffered a severe stroke and is now out of action.

Philip Sinel a Jersey commercial (non-criminal) lawyer has been the only Jersey lawyer to stand up to the establishment. His evidence to the Inquiry is stunning reading, but can no longer be accessed on line since all the evidence, transcripts and documentation, from the Inquiry has been taken offline.

I would comment here that when it was up online I made extensive use of some evidence in my blogposts. Philip's views and some submissions can still be read on Neil's blog. In one of his cases (fraud) Philip got the run around from the Jersey authorities and had to go to an American court to get justice for his client. Needless to say the authorities in Jersey are out to get him.

Leah McGrath Goodman is a reputable financial journalist and her initial interesst in the island was financial. However, when she got to know about the abuse she campaigned on behalf of the abused and exposed malpractice.

She contemplated writing a book but she diverted her energies into making a film/programme on the island. That, or some form of it, is what will be aired tonight. While intimately involved in the research and filming of the programme, she has not been involved in its sale to the BBC, and did not agree with this. It will be interesting to see how much credit she gets in tonight's programme from the BBC or whether the programme covers the full range of her concerns.

Deputy Mike Higgins is the current thorn in the side of the authorities and he has brought many cases to the floor of the parliament chamber in addition to all of those he has pursued outside of it. The authorities have so far failed to silence him despite attempting to bankrupt him through purposely withholding promised financial support for the air show which he has promoted over the years.

I couldn't leave out Emma Martins, daughter of the finctional "Jersey" Detective Bergerac. She conspired to get Stuarts blog taken down via a show trial where she had trawled the streets to find people prepared to testify against him. Reminded me of Christ and the invitations to the wedding feast in the gospels.

Anyway she managed to assemble a motley crew of the usual suspects, including those rightly denounced by Stuart on his blog, and the job was oxo. The names of Stuart's accusers were not allowed to be published but they eventually appeared in an early day motion (EDM) in the Westminster House of Commons.

She also unsuccessfully attempted to scuttle the publication of the final report of the "Care" Inquiry.

And as for her daddy, John Nettles, the detective in the BBC Bergerac series shot on the island, the BBC crew were shooting the series with the police headquarters based in the infamous home of abuse, Haut de la Garenne, while there were still children on the premises. When this was revealed in more recent times the BBC pulled the rerun of the series in the face of hostile public reaction.

I'll only make one further point about the inquiry. Through careless redaction it actually revealed the name of John Averty whom it had been valliantly trying to protect. John had been accused of the rape of an adult woman.

He was deeply involved with the Jersey Evening Post and was also a part of the Jersey Financial Regulator. He was interviewed by the police as a suspect under caution but that is the last that was heard of it.

I can't leave the subject without drawing attention to the number of strokes connected to the Jersey Inquiry: the person originally picked to chair the inquiry, the publicity officer on the inquiry, one of the witnesses subsequent to him testifying, and one of the witnesses prior to her testifying. All just coincidence I'm sure.

So there are a lot of angles which should be covered by the programme and the above are only a selection of the most obvious.

I look forward to hearing the reports.