JERSEY CHILD ABUSE COVER-UP:

FORMER POLICE CHIEF SAYS

‘THE ISSUE OF COVER-UP’ HAS ‘NOT BEEN ADDRESSED’.

“There is still a perception – and I have to say I share this – that there may still be people in positions of authority who are associated – even with abuse -  or with covering it up. And I think that is where people still feel uncomfortable and where there is more work to be done.”

Graham Power, Queens Police Medal.

Part 3 of the interview with Graham Power has now been published by Voice For Children. It can be watched here:

http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/2011/03/graham-power-qpm-interview-part-3-of-3.html

Graham Power is the recently retired Chief Officer of the States of Jersey Police Force – and you might imagine that journalists would be very eager to interview him? Given the nature and gravity of the investigations Mr. Power led – and the resultant illegal suspension enacted against him by a frightened and inadequate local oligarchy who are used to always having direct political control over the Police - you wouldn’t need to be a lead reporter on the New York Times to recognise the story as dynamite.

And so it has proven to be.

In addition to the three-part video interview with Graham Power – it’s also worth reading the earlier, written interview he gave to VFC, here:

http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/2011/02/interview-with-graham-power-qpm.html

In these interviews, you have no-less a figure than a nationally respected Chief Constable openly and bluntly describing what is nothing less than a breakdown in the rule of law; the illegal, political repression of a police investigation into decades of concealed child abuse.

Why have none of Jersey’s mainstream media produced this reportage?

Not even the BBC.

You really do have to wonder just how many people are included in the bribery / blackmail circuit that constitutes “The Jersey Way”?  After all – money was never any object to the Jersey oligarchy.

In the most recent part of the interview, Mr. Power makes some observations concerning the media in Jersey:

“The Jersey paid media has generally been very disappointing on this issue. They haven’t subjected senior politicians to a type of robust challenge that is common in other places. They do seem to be able to get away with an awful lot of sleight of hand without anybody pulling them up. I’ve worked in a lot of jurisdictions where some of the things that Ministers have done over the past couple of years had been done in Scotland or parts of England some serious journalist would have been on them like a dog on a rabbit; they would have savaged them for behaving in the way they did.”

And: -

“I can only observe that there seems to be an absence of serious challenging journalism in relation to people who are in powerful positions.”

And:

“The point is there are certain opinions and voices that need to be heard, and they’re not getting heard through the conventional media and political process......

.......You don’t get a big mix of views in the paid media in Jersey – but the unofficial media often presents a very different picture.”

One of the earliest observations I made when I first started writing this blog was just how remarkable – really quite startling – was the success by which the Jersey oligarchy had so wholly tamed and suborned the media in the island. Seriously – I invite anyone to point out an example of another established Western democracy that even gets close to having such an wholly co-opted and pacified media.

But thanks to the epochal change brought about by the democratisation of news enabled by the World Wide Web, the successfully implemented traditional ‘wall-of-silence’ established by the local discredited media has been rendered redundant.

Which is why the Jersey oligarchy have been reduced to desperate acts of illegal political repression – of the very kind that so many other gangster regimes around the world engage in.

Allied troops are fighting and dying in certain countries, in efforts to overthrow repressive, criminal regimes, and to give to the people of those places a law-abiding environment, in which the weak are protected from the gangster oppressions of the strong.

Meanwhile – much closer to the United Kingdom - the British Channel Island of Jersey is in the iron grip of an entrenched, criminal, repressive regime which controls the courts, the police and media as well as the legislature. Those who form this regime – the Jersey oligarchy – are so brazenly confident in their sense of invulnerability – they don’t even attempt to hide their lawlessness. For example – the illegal suspension carried out against Graham Power – or the illegal raid and arrests conducted against me – a then opposition politician - which included a five-hour search of the home – conducted without a search warrant.

So British servicemen are in action, attempting to protect ordinary people, and assist in the overthrow of Gaddafi – a gangster, to be sure, that his country would be well rid of. But in that inimitable colonialist and hypocritical attitude that so characterises the British establishment – they’re quite happy to turn a blind eye towards a collection of anti-democratic and child abuse concealing thugs right on their own doorstep.

Jersey has always been the back-street ‘bank’ for the British elites – the place where the UK’s rich and powerful have channelled their wealth so as to avoid the taxes that the ordinary people of Britain must pay. So perhaps we shouldn’t really be so surprised that such openly practised criminality by the Jersey authorities is not only tolerated – but pro-actively protected by the powers-that-be in London.

The strange, quasi–fictitious legal jurisdiction of Jersey has long rendered the place a very handy little sewer - by which those in power in the UK can flush away their filth. Why jeopardise that very ‘convenient’ arrangement by cleaning-up the corrupt regime that runs the place?

After all, it’s only a hundred or so abused orphans and a couple of ‘difficult’ police officers and trouble-making activists who ‘still haven’t learnt to keep their mouths shut’.

But this is one scandal that is never going away.

The illegal conduct of Jersey’s authorities since early 2007 onwards – was a step too far; an exercise in hubristic over-reach.

And the longer it has gone on, the more and more people - and institutions - become entangled and contaminated by it. Consider Jersey’s present Home Affairs Minister, for example.  Ian Le Marquand made no secret of the fact that he was seeking election in 2008, to “bring the police under political control”. It not occurring to him and other Jersey oligarchs that, actually, the police should not be under political control, but should, instead, be non-political. Le Marquand believed that the clock should be turned back – to the bad old days – when former politicians like Dick Shenton and Mike Wavell would, essentially, tell the leadership of the police force who they were - and who they were not - to investigate.

With all of the self-deluding vanity so typical of Jersey oligarchs, Ian le Marquand imagined that he would succeed in that ill-judged plan, and, moreover, he’d be eternally thanked for it by a grateful populace. Instead, he’s been a fool – and his reputation lays in smoking ruins.

In typically restrained manner, Mr. Power makes these observations concerning Ian le Marquand:

“I would have thought what you would look for in a person who was Home Affairs Minister would be somebody who would be a champion of fair play and justice. And who would understand that positions of power and authority ought to be used for the benefit of people who don’t have power and authority.........

“..........The role of a Home Affairs Minister is to champion human rights, equality and fair treatment for everybody. My perception of how that position is being discharged now, as I said earlier – it’s become an advocate for a particular establishment view. Maybe people just see it as ‘that’s the way it has to be’. But I don’t see it as the way it ought to be. You should look to the incumbent in that position to have a strong sense of fair play and equal treatment.”

Ian Le Marquand has wholly failed to deliver any of those qualities to the great majority of decent Jersey people. Instead – as Mr. Power observes – Le Marquand has become an “advocate” for the agenda of the Jersey oligarchy. He has failed to support fair play – let alone regard his Office as being one that should work to the protection of the powerless, from the abuses of the powerful.

The terrible lesson that Ian Le Marquand has had the misfortune to learn - is that the days when the Jersey oligarchy controlled what the public did – or did not – get to know, are over. No more can Jersey’s corrupt public authorities act with brazen lawlessness, secure in the knowledge that – after a little bit of fuss – and keeping their heads down for a while – it would all fade away and be forgotten.

The Jersey oligarchs – and those who have supported them, and who do their bidding, are struggling to come to terms with a paradigm-shift. This time – none of it is going away.

In his interview, Graham Power says:

“I’m not going to give up on this. If the Jersey authorities, want to keep,  if you like, picking this argument, then I’m going to stay with the argument, I’m going to say ‘look’ don’t talk about  the abuse inquiry, talk about the abuse.”

One of the lessons of history, for those who would control society, has been, “choose your enemies carefully”.

I would never have chosen to make an enemy of a man like Graham Power.  

It is of such errors that empires are lost.

“What is Jersey going to do about its historic child abuse problem, and how it’s going to convince everybody that that sort of thing cannot possibly happen again and that everything possible has been done? I’m not sure that I’m convinced that everything possible has been done; I’m not sure that the island is convinced that everything possible has been done already.....

“I’m not quite sure that the issue of cover-up has been addressed in a forthright way. ‘Who knew about this? Who should have known about it? What did they tell and who did they tell it to and what was done about it?’  There is still a perception – and I have to say I share this – that there may still be people in positions of authority who are associated – even with abuse - or with covering it up. And I think that is where people still feel uncomfortable and where there is more work to be done.”

“More work to be done.”

I’m so very glad that I’m on the right side.

Stuart.