Child abuse: We need an inquiry immediately

From Clifford Wilson.

I REFER to your letters to the editor section (JEP, 3 February) which featured a letter from a certain Mr Lenny Harper.

It dealt with the announcement by the States that there would not, after all, be a committee of inquiry into the Jersey child abuse tragedy, and a number of grave allegations against Jersey’s government were made in this letter.

Mr Harper is, of course, this Island’s former deputy police chief. He enjoyed a long and highly successful police career and was honoured in the form of a commendation from the Queen. He should clearly be recognised as a person of excellent integrity and intelligence and not as one whose comments or allegations are thought worthy of being summarily rubbished or ignored.

In his letter Mr Harper indicates that there are perhaps covert conspiratorial reasons why the Jersey government is now seeking to renege on its earlier promise to hold a committee of inquiry. He further states that such an inquiry would reveal the lengths gone to, in attempts (presumably by no less than Members of our States) to cover up what would have been exposed.

Mr Harper’s allegations, which I believe echo the views of numerous others, are of the most serious possible nature. They snap most uncomfortably at the very core of the integrity of this Island’s establishment. I believe it is essential that both our governmental representatives and we, the electorate, should work in harmony to face up to and investigate those allegations, head-on.

We must firmly cast aside fears that uncomfortable or embarrassing truths will ‘out’ and be mindful that any suggestion of an ongoing conspiracy to conceal or launder the truth will engender still more uncertainty and suspicion.

That suspicion would then fester and grow in the minds of us all, as indeed it is already doing in the case of Mr Harper.

Now is the time, for the sake of both the victims and us all, as well as the depleted reputation of this Island, to seek to honorably bring an unsavoury, most damaging and wholly shameful episode in Jersey’s recent history towards a close.

This can only be arrived at by a full committee of inquiry, whose sole and unfettered aim must be to reveal the whole truth, thus laying the basic foundation blocks for a new beginning. Only then can the essential healing process begin.

I believe our Chief Minister, Senator Terry Le Sueur, as an honourable Christian man of integrity, will no doubt, in the face of protest, carefully reflect and seek guidance from the minority ‘thinking sector’ of States Members and will reach the right and proper decision, to instate without undue delay a proper committee of inquiry.