Minister ‘imposing his will’ on survivors

Minister ‘imposing his will’ on survivors

Deputy Jeremy Maçon was appointed as minister earlier this week, but is facing criticism for telling States Members he intended to scrap controversial plans for a memorial. Campaigners Cheyenne O’Connor and Neil McMurray have both urged Deputy Maçon to speak to survivors and said he should not have outlined his intentions before learning more about the matter.

Miss O’Connor – who organised a protest against the proposed memorial last month – said: ‘I don’t think he should have come out and publicly given the idea that we definitely aren’t going to have it. In his defence I don’t think he knows a lot about it but he should sit down with myself and the citizens’ panel and find out what we think.’

She added that the Deputy ‘needs to sit down and find out what’s going on behind the scenes’.

And Mr McMurray – who runs the Voiceforchildren blog and campaigned to expose decades of child abuse in Jersey’s care homes – said the new minister had ‘alienated’ those survivors who do want a memorial and was ‘imposing his will’ on them.

‘He’s going with the loud popular voice of being anti-memorial and picking a side,’ said Mr McMurray. ‘What Deputy Maçon has basically said to the survivors who do want it is that he is going to impose his own vision. When what he should be doing is getting the survivors around the table and hearing their opinions – he should not be imposing his own will.

‘In his opening speech as Children’s Minister he has alienated many of the survivors. It’s shocking.’

Deputy Maçon replaced Senator Sam Mézec as Children’s and Housing Minister, after the latter resigned from the position to back a vote of no confidence in Chief Minister John Le Fondré.

The proposed memorial has become a divisive topic – with some arguing the statue would serve as a traumatic and insensitive reminder for abuse survivors – and even provoked a petition that was signed by nearly 3,000 Islanders calling for the citizen’s panel’s decision to be reversed.

Speaking in the States, Deputy Maçon said that the panel had ‘not made the right recommendation’ and instead proposed that the funds be put towards training schemes that would help children with mental health skills to help deal with trauma, ‘or to help those who have come through the care system’.

Senator Mézec accused his successor of trying to ‘score cheap votes’ by abandoning the discussion with survivors around the legacy of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry and ‘impose his own vision’.

He said: ‘He has suggested that the funding for the memorial is diverted to provide more training for those in care, care leavers and carers. This sounds commendable on the face of it, but what is he suggesting that isn’t being done already? The previous Government Plan allocated literally millions of pounds into extra training for intensive foster carers, educational support for those in care, and extra mental health support, including trauma therapy.’

The Senator added that Deputy Maçon should have spoken directly with the citizen’s panel beforehand, ‘rather than to let them hear through the media that he wants to put two years of their hard work into the bin’.

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