AS THE fallout from the blighted Jersey police investigation into historic child abuse continues, what is increasingly clear is that the two frontline casualties in the affair are trust and confidence. Sadly, the very people – the police – who are responsible for a catastrophic loss of public confidence are also the same people who are doing little to restore it.

When we made the suggestion that so angered Jersey’s chief minister that an independent third party should verify the credibility of the Haut de la Garenne investigation, it was on the basis that everyone needed reassurance that the inquiry was on track and that prosecutions were not being blocked.

In other words, there needed to be public disclosure that no one could doubt.

Instead, while the inquiry run by Lenny Harper is being rubbished, the evidence supporting that is being suppressed. The Metropolitan Police report on the affair will not be released.

That means a police force whose statements about child murder, disposal by fire, torture and incarceration shouldn’t have been believed is now changing its tune. The fresh version of events is backed up by nothing more than a ‘well, you’ll have to take our word for it…’.

In the emotional maelstrom that the abuse case has whipped up, this leaves the field wide open to the conspiracy theorists and to those who believe there was an establishment-wide cover-up. In particular, the victims (or, as that same establishment would have it, the alleged victims) now feel as though they have been used and then let down.

As one despairing Guernsey victim said yesterday, justice will never be done.

The absence of a public explanation of what went wrong has another consequence. If Lenny Harper’s inquiry was a tissue of myth, why wasn’t it stopped? Such a high-profile and reputationally damaging investigation must have been subject to internal scrutiny unless the entire senior team went around with blinkers on.

The latest developments have done nothing to restore confidence in what the wider world regards as the Channel Islands’ handling of the affair.