WHEN we argued yesterday that the child abuse inquiry in Jersey was putting the island in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, that was before its chief minister’s disastrous appearance on Newsnight before Jeremy Paxman.
Living up to his fearsome ‘axe man’ reputation, the TV programme’s anchorman wrong-footed Senator Frank Walker into apparently denying something that viewers had just heard him say in an earlier clip.
The senator yesterday rejected criticism of his performance saying - correctly - that Paxman had misquoted him and said the programme was hugely disappointing and thoroughly unprofessional.
The casual viewer, however, will have seen it differently. Asked a question broadly about putting reputational issues ahead of child abuse, Jersey’s spokesman appeared to be covering up what he had already uttered. Since a central part of the Jersey inquiry is whether systemic abuse was covered up, the senator’s stonewalling remarks appeared to play to that, which was very damaging.
From Guernsey’s perspective, the events unfolding and the handling of them show just how easily these things can spiral out of control.
Jersey is now centre stage in the world’s media and virtually every report will somewhere include the expression ‘tax haven’. That is not helpful for these islands and far from the international personality that either wishes to cultivate, especially since the chief critic of the affair is using his dislike of the system of government to extend allegations of abuse to Guernsey.
Meanwhile, the breaking of his near 50-year silence by one victim yesterday holds out a particularly chilling possibility.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of children passed through Haut de la Garenne - including some from Guernsey - and in the absence of proper records, there will be no way of knowing who left to be fostered, because of age or for some other more deadly reason.
The imminent investigation of at least six potential sites of child remains provides a very real prospect of this story becoming immeasurably worse.
Article posted on 27th February, 2008 - 9.00am
4 Article Comments
Having seen, here in Auistralia, quite a number of television reports including the BBC World Service and also read a number of Newspaper reports on the Haut de le Garenne affair. I can honestly say not one, yes not one of them has referred to Jersey as a tax haven, but simply the Channel Island of Jersey.
Really? How about this in paragraph two, from the Melbourne Age… http://tinyurl.com/6
Amazing! Kids have been raped, sexually abused and, possibly, murdered in what looks like a case of systemic, institutionalised abuse and yet here’s Guernsey worrying about the damage to it’s international reputation on the back of what’s happening in Jersey. You folks need to get some perspective!!!!
It’s no wonder everybody suspects a cover up in Jersey given the obsession these little islands seem to have with protecting their reputations.
Kids have suffered terribly. Please focus on that.
Perhaps because these, however terrible, are still allegations at this stage. Until it is proved in court - which it may well be - one is entitled to show concern about what is said and the way it is reported.