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by agitprop » Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:57 pm
by winston smith » Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:25 am
by dqueue » Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:05 am
Jersey child abuse victims compensation announced: Victims of child abuse at Jersey care homes are to be offered up to £60,000 compensation from the States.
More than 100 former care home residents will be able to make claims, with the level of payout dependent on the nature of the offences.
Carrie Modral, from the Jersey Care Leavers Association, said it was a long time coming.
She said: "A lot of the survivors are living on the poverty line so it will be a huge boost to help with debts."
She added: "But for some people it's just not enough for the abuse that they suffered."
'Fairly and sensitively'
Jersey's Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst, said: "Whilst we recognise nothing in some ways can compensate for that abuse, we as ministers feel this financial recompense is appropriate at this time."
The scheme is open to anyone who was in a Jersey care home between 9 May 1945 and 31 December 1994 and was subjected to abusive behaviour.
Senator Gorst added: "The Council of Ministers wants to ensure claimants are dealt with fairly and sensitively."
People making a claim will give their details to law firm Mourant Ozannes who will then assess each claim.
Alan Collins from the UK law firm Pannone, which is representing 43 victims, said this was about justice rather than compensation.
He said: "The victims have been driven by a need for recognition.
"Many of them had been placed at Haut de la Garenne - and other homes in Jersey - through no fault of their own and often because of tragic family circumstances, only to endure often harsh conditions, deliberate cruelty and sexual abuse.
"Those who were supposedly caring for them either abused or were complicit."
All claims need to be into Mourant Ozannes by 30 September 2012.
An inquiry into historical abuse at Jersey's children's homes ran between 2007 and 2010.
by AhabsOtherLeg » Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:48 pm
by AhabsOtherLeg » Sat Jun 30, 2012 9:33 pm
Jersey's 'secrecy culture' led to my suspension, says former police chief
Graham Power claims he was punished for daring to investigate allegations against some of the island's power players
Helen Pidd in St Helier
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 19.00 BST
Before moving to Jersey to take charge of the island's police in 2000, Graham Power had served in the senior ranks of four other forces in a career spanning more than 30 years. A recipient of the Queen's Medal for distinguished service, he had been vetted by UK authorities to "top secret" level and was so well regarded that he had also been appointed an assessor for the body that selects chief officers for UK constabularies.
But after eight successful years on Jersey, Power found himself suddenly suspended in what one local politician supporter believes was a "coup d'etat engineered by a small group of powerful people who denied him natural justice".
The initial suspension, which related to Power's management and supervision of a child abuse inquiry centred around Haut de la Garenne, a children's home on the island, continues to be a hugely controversial topic in Jersey. It's an episode which Jersey's critics see as a prime example of the way the island's elite treats those who dare to challenge their authority.
Nine months before Power's suspension on 12 November 2008, the historic child abuse investigation made headlines around the globe after Power's deputy, Lenny Harper, told the world's media he thought his team had found human remains buried under Haut de la Garenne. He told hordes of journalists that suspicious forensic material discovered during excavation tallied with accounts given by various abuse victims of hearing children dragged from their beds at night who were then never seen again. .
By the time Power was suspended, Harper had retired. The very day Power was suspended, the new officer in charge of the inquiry, Detective Superintendent Mick Gradwell, said at his first press conference that there had never been compelling evidence to justify the excavation, and much of what was found there did not suggest murder, contrary to initial police reports.
"There are no credible allegations of murder, there are no suspects for murder and no specific time period for murder," said Gradwell. To this day, Harper vigorously defends the way he carried out the investigation.
Forensic experts still disagree over whether suspicious material found during the excavation of the home was 20th century human bone or a piece of coconut shell, and no one has ever been able to explain the discovery of 65 milk teeth found in the building's cellar. But Jersey's authorities eventually accepted they had failed some children in their care "in a serious way", and earlier this year opened a compensation scheme promising to pay victims up to £60,000 each for their distress.
The States of Jersey have also agreed to hold an independent "committee of inquiry" into child abuse within the island's care system.
By the time the historic abuse investigation was closed in December 2010, eight people had been prosecuted as a result of the Power inquiry – a far lower number than initially expected. Just four related to Haut de la Garenne, with one abuser receiving a light sentence having himself been abused at the home.
Power, as well as child abuse survivors the Guardian has spoken to on the island, claim that after his suspension, some victims lost faith in the investigation. He said: "After my suspension a police officer working in the incident room approached me in the street and told me that incident room staff were busy dealing with calls from victims who were distressed after hearing that I had been suspended and were saying that 'it would all be covered up again'. I have had similar messages from people close to victims and from individual victims who do not wish to be named."
David Warcup, Power's replacement, insisted at the end of the investigation that there was "no evidence from which it would be possible to mount any further prosecutions."
As Power sees it, his suspension was a punishment for daring to challenge Jersey's "secrecy culture" by investigating serious allegations made against some of the island's power players. Worse, by allowing Harper to talk freely to the media during the investigation, both men were damaging Jersey's reputation abroad – a nightmare for a small place with an economy so dependent on foreign finance that it as Power claims, had a "heightened sensitivity to reputational damage". Or as the Liberal MP John Hemming puts it: "I think he was suspended because he was too ethical. That is very worrying."
On Tuesday this week, politicians in the States of Jersey, the island's parliament, debated behind closed doors whether Andrew Lewis, the minister responsible for Power's suspension, had misled States members as to the reasons why he removed Power from office.
The deputy who demanded the debate, Mike Higgins, said disclosure was needed to "right a wrong". He wanted the parliament to agree to release a transcript of a States session held "in camera" shortly after Power's suspension, in which Lewis gave what Higgins believes is a misleading statement relating to Power's suspension.
But at the closed session on Tuesday, States members voted to keep the transcript secret.
Power was never found guilty of any charges of misconduct, and remained on full pay throughout his two-year suspension, which lasted until his retirement in July 2010. Contacted by the Guardian this week, Lewis insisted the reasons for suspending Power were "compelling". He said: "The act of suspension was fully in line with the disciplinary code and was a neutral act in order to give the chief officer sufficient time to defend his position uncompromised by the constraints of office." He could not go into more detail about the evidence which led him to suspend Power, he said, because he was "bound by the confidentiality requirements in the chief police officer's discipline code." He strongly rejected any allegations of a conspiracy.
Power is not the only one who feels cast out after asking difficult questions. In 2012, an American author and journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman, found herself banned from the UK and Channel Islands, which she says followed the Jersey establishment discovering she was writing a book about the historic child abuse inquiry focussed on Haut de la Garenne. Both the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and Jersey's customs and immigrations service insist her ban was unrelated to her journalistic investigations. But Goodman believes differently, having been flagged by Jersey customs officials as a potential criminal as soon as they found out what she was doing on the island – information she says she offered voluntarily after requesting a meeting to check that a flat and office she had leased in St Helier conformed to Jersey's strict rules on accommodation for so-called "non-qualified" residents.
A spokeswoman for the UK Border Force told the Guardian: "Ms Goodman was refused entry to the UK because we were not satisfied she was genuinely seeking entry as a visitor for the limited period she claimed. Further enquires showed that she attempted to mislead the Border Force officer about her travel plans and the reason she required entry to the UK."
Goodman disputes this. She said: "To date, the UK Border Force can do little more than accuse me of intending to possibly commit a future transgression, as it has been forced to admit there has been none. This has been a bit like the film Minority Report, in that I am being pursued for something that hasn't actually taken place. As a former Tier-1 visa holder with a spotless record, I was surprised to be locked up, denied legal representation and banned from a country for which I've always held the highest respect. I have never misled the UK Border Force, nor have I ever intended to. I do realise it is a delicate situation, but I hope I might finish my work."
Charities have also encountered problems after questioning Jersey's modus operandi. In May, ActionAid and Christian Aid, both of which have been critical of the island for providing shelter to tax avoiders, were two of 20 charities that lost support for their general overseas aid projects from Jersey's Overseas Aid Commission.
Funding was pulled following a threat floated last year by the commission's executive officer, Kathryn Filipponi, who warned Jersey may "reconsider" donating hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to UK charities which repeatedly attacked the island for being a tax haven.
Announcing the decision last month, the commission chairman, Paul Routier, insisted the move was not motivated by political or religious factors, and said the two charities had still received approval to collect funding to provide disaster and emergency relief.
As Hemming sees it, Jersey's current system is compromised by nepotism and conflicts of interest which result in the most powerful protecting each other. "For the checks and balances to work, people cannot be related or close friends," said Hemming. "The problem in Jersey is that things are covered up rather than dealt with. That arises with any small group of people where conflicts of interest are built into the system."
Arriving on Jersey at the start of the new millennium after a successful spell as deputy to HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland, Power soon realised there were special challenges policing a small island where everybody knew each other. "In Jersey there are often school and family connections between police officers, lawyers, politicians and criminals," he told the Guardian.
"This can of course happen in any small community. In the UK, forces deal with this by ensuring that police officers are rarely asked to police the community they were brought up in. In Jersey that is not possible. The island is nine miles by five and there is only one police station. We were constantly having to deal with issues where somebody involved in a case appeared to have a conflict of interest, or worse than that, where there appeared to be a leak of intelligence from inside the force which benefitted criminals who might have had some connection within the organisation."
In a signed affidavit he submitted when applying for judicial review to his suspension in 2009, he claimed that one of the officials on the island who played a "significant role" in his suspension publicly defended a suspect in the historic abuse investigation. "If anyone wants to get ____[the suspect], they will have to get me first," said Bill Ogley, chief executive of Jersey's civil service, according to Power. This show of support was applauded by a number of civil servants present, he added. Ogley denies having made these comments.
Power believes his suspension sets a disturbing precedent which needs to be challenged. Otherwise, he said in his affidavit: "There are potentially serious consequences for the independence and integrity of law enforcement in the island and an additional risk that future police actions will be subject to inappropriate political pressure and intimidation."
Power firmly believes his suspension was orchestrated by Frank Walker, then occupying the top political job on the island as chief minister.
In his signed affidavit, Power says he attended a meeting just before Lewis took over where Walker unleashed a "verbal attack on the historic abuse inquiry claiming that it was causing damaging publicly for the island."
When contacted by the Guardian last week, Walker declined to comment on this or any of 14 other claims put to him, saying: "I am surprised that you are seeking to raise questions which have been asked and answered many times in the years since Mr Power's suspension. I'm afraid I am not prepared to yet again go over such old ground. I will merely say that I was then, and remain today, absolutely confident that Mr Power's suspension was necessary and appropriate. His conspiracy theories are entirely baseless."
He refused to explain why he believed Power's suspension was justified, nor to comment on a claim made by a deputy in the Jersey's parliament, Paul le Claire, who in the debating chamber alleged that he took part in a conversation between Walker and Lewis in which they discussed "getting rid" of Harper. Le Claire only went public on this two years after the fact, explaining in an interview with the Jersey blog Voice For Children that he had been too scared to talk out. He claimed there was on the island a culture of fear which deterred ordinary people from speaking out.
Higgins, the Jersey politician who tried to "right the wrong" of Power's suspension in Tuesday's parliamentary sitting, told the Guardian: "Jersey, like other small island states, has a small powerful elite which pervades all sections of public and private life and which uses its positions and influence to its advantage. In my opinion, the investigation and handling of the police investigation into Haut de la Garenne was not only acutely embarrassing to them but it also opened up a can of worms that they did not want exposed.
"In my opinion, Mr Power's original suspension resembled a coup d'etat engineered by a small group of powerful people who denied him natural justice and have attempted since then to thwart enquiries, investigations and scrutiny into this affair and the original child abuse investigations. They have been aided and abetted by a politicised civil service, compliant media and other well meaning but naive politicians".
[I'll stop bolding now, the Gurdian has done sterling work here]
It is a common complaint on Jersey that the island's media, particularly the only newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post (JEP), were more concerned with protecting the island's reputation than the victims of child abuse. In January, the Jersey Care Leavers' Association complained to the island's Health and Social Services department, after a JEP article seemed to disparage the compensation scheme soon to be announced for the victims. In a column, a JEP journalist had written: "By the way, you're about to pay out millions upon millions to abuse victims in civil compensation claims. That'll do wonders for the island's image, right?"
It is largely due to two tenacious bloggers, Rico Sorda (ricosorda.blogspot.com) and Neil McMurray (Voiceforchildren.blogspot.com) that Power's suspension has remained so high on the political agenda. Both complain that the JEP has failed to investigate what they see as the injustice of Power's treatment.
Senior politicians were also accused of putting Jersey's interests ahead of the vulnerable and abused. In a notorious 2008 speech to mark the island's liberation from the Nazis, Sir Philip Bailhache, then the island's bailiff, came under fire after he said : "All child abuse, wherever it happens, is scandalous, but it is the unjustified and remorseless denigration of Jersey and her people that is the real scandal."
Bailache, now an elected politician in the States of Jersey, was one of 19 MPs who on Tuesday voted against holding the "in camera" debate on whether Lewis as home affairs minister misled the States over Power's suspension. He is also known to have opposed the committee of inquiry soon to be set up to investigate how so many children being looked after by the Jersey authorities were abused.
Two years ago, a QC from the mainland, Brian Napier, was commissioned to produce an independent report into Power's ousting. He found no evidence of any conspiracy, but ruled that the suspension could not be justified by hard evidence.
In his report, Napier wrote: "Whatever view may now be taken of the substantive criticisms that have been made of Mr Power's conduct of the historic abuse inquiry, there was at the time a lack of hard evidence against him showing lack of competence in relation to the running of the historic abuse inquiry, the basis on which he was suspended on 12 November 2008 was in my view inadequate."
He added: "There were indications that Mr Power had not done his job well. But that is as far as it goes."
Napier found that at the time of the suspension meeting, Lewis had not read a key report later relied on to justify Power's ousting. The report, conducted by the Metropolitan police, was a standard critical appraisal, fairly common between police forces. It was never intended for any disciplinary use. And, as Napier noted, it was labelled "interim", carrying a warning that it was unfinished, that Harper had not yet been interviewed, and that views expressed in it could change when it was completed.
Napier suggested Lewis was wrong to suspend Power "without waiting for the results of a preliminary investigation into the facts in order to allow him to decide whether the matter was of the more serious kind or not."
What's more, Napier found that Lewis and colleagues were "actively preparing for suspension" some time before anyone on Jersey, let alone Lewis, had read the interim report: Warcup, Power's new deputy and anointed successor, only received it on 10 November, two days before Power was suspended.
Napier said: "It would appear that the administration was actively preparing for suspension some time before the interim report was sent to Mr Warcup on 10 November and that those responsible for making preparations for suspension, should the minister so decide, were making significant assumptions about what the Metropolitan police report would contain."
While accepting that mistakes were made in the inquiry, Power insists that had he ever been given a chance to appeal his suspension in a fair and impartial hearing, he would have "torn apart" the case against him. This week, Ian le Marquand, the current home affairs minister, said there was insufficient time to conclude such a complex hearing before Power retired in July 2010. While admitting the original suspension hearings were hasty, and that Power should have been given a proper hearing, Le Marquand maintained that sufficient grounds existed at the time for Power to be suspended. He argued that a report commissioned a long time after Power's original suspension –
written by the chief constable of the Wiltshire force – confirmed there were grounds for doubting Power's management.
Power is adamant he was targeted by an establishment riddled with conflicts of interest. "At the core of it all is the fact that as chief of police I was overseeing an investigation into serious child abuse in institutions run by the Jersey government which were themselves overseen by people who were still in positions of power within that government. In the midst of this I was suspended by the very government whose institutions were being investigated. You cannot get much more conflicted than that. It is not often that an organisation subject of a major criminal inquiry is able to suspend the police chief responsible for that enquiry. But in Jersey that happened."
It's an allegation Ian le Marquand rejects. "This simply does not stand up to any serious examination. The nature of the disciplinary complaints against Mr Power in relation to Haut de la Garenne is that he failed to exercise proper oversight over the deputy chief officer of police [Harper] who was acting as the senior investigating officer... By the time Mr Power was suspended he had had no role in relation to the investigation for some months. To therefore suggest that his original suspension had anything to do with his conduct of the investigation is simply untrue. In any eventuality there never was any evidence of criminal misconduct on the part of politicians or the government of Jersey in general."
• This article was amended on 29 June 2012. The original referred to charities that have been critical of the island for preventing, rather than providing, shelter to tax avoiders, and to allegations being refuted rather than rejected. This has been corrected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/2 ... cy-culture
by winston smith » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:37 am
by Hammer of Los » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:49 am
by winston smith » Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:01 am
by hava007 » Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:44 pm
by Byrne » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:45 pm
by lucky » Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:49 pm
by Byrne » Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:25 pm
June 29, 2012
Anarchy In The UK?
Haut de la Garenne, Jersey, 2011
The following story was commissioned by The Guardian after I was detained, questioned and banned from the United Kingdom in the wake of research for my next book in the Channel Islands, a $1 trillion tax haven off the coast of England. Many of you have asked what I have been working on — this is what I have been working on. My misadventures, along with those of several others whose names I am honored to see mine beside, are cited in The Guardian’s print edition today. I am fine, although I may now be the only member of the London Speaker Bureau not allowed to speak in London. I will truly miss the UK’s savory fish pies.
—
When I was 29 and first embarking on my writing career in London, I discovered a beautiful island off the coast of England that I would return to many times in the years to come. Jersey not only has heavenly beaches and culinary delights, but the people of the island are some of the loveliest I have known. After a busy week in the City, a puddle-jump flight could see me there in less than an hour, soaking up the sun on the white sands under wildflower-draped cliffs. The island’s locals would sometimes hint that Jersey’s pristine exterior belied a dark side. But I couldn’t imagine it. How could a place with such warm people have a dark heart?
When I returned to the U.S. in late 2008 with my first book contract, it came as a shock when I witnessed, from a distance, Jersey’s horrific child abuse scandal. Day after day for weeks, I watched the deputy chief of police, Lenny Harper, give interviews to a crush of international press outside the shuttered orphanage of Haut de la Garenne. Harper seemed increasingly alarmed over the human remains his team was finding inside, although what to make of them was hotly debated by the media.
The islanders, who are quiet people, were quietly devastated. The notion that, for decades, their children’ homes might have been used as a sexual cafeteria for the rich and privileged – as hundreds of the victims contended – was distasteful in the extreme. During the probe government officials repeatedly stated that they fully intended to run a thorough investigation. Yet, within months, Harper and his boss, the island’s head constable, Graham Power, had been smeared by the local newspaper, The Jersey Evening Post, as unfit for their jobs and driven from the island. Their main advocate, Senator Stuart Syvret – then-health minister and one of the island’s most popular politicians – also found himself under siege, eventually sacked and jailed twice. The cases made against each man were as flimsy as the headlines were flashy.
It seemed that anyone who attempted to stand up for Jersey’s underprivileged or conduct a proper investigation into their treatment soon found themselves in the fight of their lives.
Evidence found at Haut de la Garenne – including bones that were “fresh and fleshed” before being burned and dozens of children’s teeth with the roots still on them in the furnace area – was turned over to a new police chief who downplayed its significance but also admitted to throwing some of it out. As an investigative journalist, I found it hard to understand how this could possibly inspire confidence. It seemed the situation needed to be looked at by someone without an axe to grind or an ass to save.
After I passed in my first book, which also focused on cultures of corruption (The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked The World’s Oil Market, HarperCollins 2011) I began to travel to the UK on a regular basis to conduct interviews with the victims, senators and law-enforcement officials.
This is where my own troubles began…A couple years into my research, my trips to the UK were becoming frequent enough to justify my renting a flat for overnight stays and an office for my paperwork. Jersey has strict rules about outsiders renting property, so I arranged to meet with Jersey’s Customs and Immigration officials in July 2011 to make sure my accommodations passed muster. I was told they did. The first officer I met with, Jim Griffiths, told me not to worry and that as long as I did not intend to live in Jersey or take a job there – and my trips did not exceed the six-month time limit for visitors – I could proceed with my work. When he asked what I was researching, I was completely honest. He quickly excused himself and then returned with his superior. The two men proceeded to shout at me. I was told that I needed to get a long-term entry visa to conduct my work on the island. I asked if they had changed their minds due to the nature of my research. The two men would not answer the question and immediately escorted me out.
A week later, I went home to the States to do other work and did not return to the UK until early September. I was on my way to speak at a bank conference in Salzburg, but had meetings in London and Jersey with other journalists. This time, the border check at Heathrow Airport asked me if I would go to a waiting area to answer additional questions about my stay. This had never happened to me before, but I was not very concerned and agreed. No one asked me any questions, though. Instead, a second border official took me to an empty room beneath the airport and simply locked the door behind me. I did not at any time consent to being imprisoned. My luggage, wallet, phone, bank cards and my identification were taken from me. If I’d been turned out on the street at that moment, I would have been utterly helpless to feed myself or prove who I was. There is no way to explain what this feels like until it happens to you, but until then I never realized the razor-thin line between feeling secure and feeling endangered.
I asked the guards what was happening and I was handed a piece of paper that said, “You have been detained under paragraph 16 of Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act or arrested under paragraph 17 of Schedule 2 of that Act.” What did this mean? Was I being arrested? No one would say. I was fingerprinted and photographed. I asked the personnel watching me if I could call my solicitor or my consulate. “That’s what people always say,” one of the staffers said. I asked: What are my rights? A second staffer answered: “This is the border. You have no rights.”
It got worse from there. For several hours, I waited for any concrete information about how long I would be trapped in a basement. The border guards repeatedly told me they needed time to go through my luggage and papers before deciding what questions to ask me. This struck me as an attempt to reverse-engineer a case against me. I demanded to return to the States unless there were grounds to keep me there. I was told by the border officials they could make things much more painful if I did not cooperate.
At this point, I wanted to call my family to let then know where I was, but this, too, was denied. None of the officers would provide their full names and the paperwork they signed and occasionally handed me was indecipherable. Closed-circuit TV cameras were everywhere, but none of them took audio recording (which made sense, seeing what the officers were saying to me).
The fascist world depicted by Terry Gilliam in the film Brazil is alive and well under the Heathrow airport.
In all, I was there from 0645 GMT to 1900 GMT, 12 hours without food or sleep on the back of a redeye flight. Ultimately, I was denied entry to the UK and sent back to the U.S., the black stamp of death I’d always heard about, but never seen, punched in my passport. The two officers who interrogated me later that day asked very personal questions — some of them about where I lived, my exact addresses in New York and the Channel Islands, and some of them about the people who were closest to me. I was deeply reluctant to discuss my personal relationships or my addresses, as I got the feeling security and safety were not high on the UK Border Force’s priority list. Once the questions had ended, there was another hours-long wait, after which I was informed that I was being ousted. By the time I received the verdict, I did not care anymore; I just wanted to sleep, shower and eat — things, by the way, you cannot do under Heathrow Airport. Flying home, I lay across the plane seats and cried.
As I later found, the UK was not accusing me of doing anything wrong. My big mistake, apparently, had been to meet with the Jersey officials. According to a subject access request filed with the UK Border Agency after I’d returned home, Jersey’s officials flagged me well before I arrived at the border. I filed a second subject access request with Jersey itself, but received a form letter stating that information had been withheld for “the purposes of the prevention, detection or investigation of a crime; or the apprehension or prosecution of persons who have committed an offence.” I can only assume this refers to me – a journalist who, until last summer, held a clean record in the UK and a Tier-1 visa. (I have since learned from the Jersey officials that I am not being investigated for a crime or offense, but it is all still a bit perplexing.)
At the border, UK officials encouraged me to file for another long-term visa but when I did, I was slapped with a two-year ban from entering the country in January. My legal team in London said they had never seen the UKBA act with such swift malice. Three times, from January to April, I requested administrative reviews – an appeals process to which all are entitled for the reconsideration of a visa – and was denied three times. My two-year travel ban was mysteriously reduced to one year, however, after a member of Parliament, John Hemming, wrote a letter of support. A representative from the UK’s National Union of Journalists also wrote a letter backing me, noting that I was the first journalist to be banned from England in years.
Until two weeks ago, the investigation into my case was active and since my detainment (I eventually learned it was not an arrest) I have written several times to get a copy of my CCTV footage – to which all also are entitled – as proof that I was denied my rights at the border. For months, my requests went ignored, but another appeal made on my behalf by MP Hemming finally received a response from Immigration Minister Damian Green.
He said my CCTV footage had been destroyed.
Several days ago, another letter arrived at the MP’s office from a high-ranking official. It said my CCTV footage had not been destroyed. Who knows which is true?
While my treatment pales in comparison to the treatment of many of the islanders — particularly the abuse survivors — who have dared speak out against some of the nastier acts of tyranny in Jersey since the Haut de la Garenne scandal, I am beginning to understand their immense bravery. As an American, it is not terribly difficult to challenge authority from an ocean away. But for those who live on the tiny island of Jersey and have done so all their lives it is an act of supreme heroism to risk persecution when they have nowhere else they can call home.
(For those of you who may be reading this with information about Haut de la Garenne, please email me through this site. All correspondences will receive personal responses and be held in the utmost confidence. For anyone looking for a deep drill into Jersey’s ongoing political imbroglios, two outstanding citizen bloggers have been working slavishly for years to lift the curtain: Neil McMurray at Voice for Children and Rico Sorda. On an island where the established media serve as the de facto mouthpiece of those in power, these self-taught journalists, who work for free under grave pressure in thankless conditions, are the only independent press around.)
Filed Under: banking, corruption, cover-up, crime and intimations of, economy glory and vainglory, Europe, finance, generally embarrassing events, politics of the surreal, tax haven, UK Tagged With: child abuse, cover-up, murder, orphanage, scandal, supposed conspiracy, torture 37 Comments
http://leahmcgrathgoodman.com/2012/06/2 ... in-the-uk/
by winston smith » Sun Oct 07, 2012 12:59 pm
“This is the border. You have no rights.
Immigration Minister Damian Green.
He said my CCTV footage had been destroyed.
While my treatment pales in comparison to the treatment of many of the islanders — particularly the abuse survivors
by semper occultus » Mon Dec 08, 2014 4:23 am
by lucky » Mon Dec 08, 2014 6:47 am
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