Questions will need answering

In spite of this, the most recent revelations concerning the conduct of the investigation pose questions that are of such importance that they must be asked and eventually answered.

Those questions, of course, revolve around the object which was first the remains of a child, then a fragment of skull no larger than a 50p piece, then an item of evidence that could be excluded from the inquiry because of its probable age, and then, finally, a piece of wood or coconut shell.

It will have escaped no one’s attention that it was that piece of plant material which brought the national and international press to our shores and fuelled speculation, almost all of it so far unfounded, that Haut de la Garenne was the site of mass murder. Less directly, it also spurred the press hysteria which branded Jersey as the ‘Island of secrets’ and worse.

The first question, therefore, is this – was deputy police chief Lenny Harper, the man in charge of the investigation, right to announce that remains had been found before they had been identified as human or their provenance had been established?

Mr Harper argues that his course of action was, in policing terms, utterly justifiable because it encouraged so many people to come forward with accounts of their experiences of child abuse, providing invaluable evidence in the process. Time will tell whether he is right or, as others see it, whether his strategy will prove a blunt instrument which, thanks to the baser instincts of some of the media, has inflicted tremendous collateral damage on the Island’s reputation.

The necessity of putting policing first lends weight to Mr Harper’s position. However, his subsequent handling of the flow of information about the skull that was no skull has been odd to say the least, posing more difficult questions.

Why, for example, was Home Affairs Minister Wendy Kinnard kept so firmly in the dark that she misled the States about the nature of the fragment, still saying, long after its identity had been established, that it represented the remains of a child?

And was it really wise, right or necessary for Mr Harper to sit on the information about the true nature of the fragment for six weeks – and potentially longer had it not been for the weekend’s revelations – on the grounds that it was no longer relevant to the investigation?

Other discoveries could yet substantiate the gruesome idea that Haut de la Garenne is the site of one or more murders. For that and other reasons, now is not the time for detailed examination of the conduct of the police inquiry, but the bizarre saga of the skull fragment and the legitimate questions it poses will, ultimately, have to be addressed.