Excellent Police Strategy at Haut de La Garenne

I see that an internal (and rather informal and jokey) email sent only to the council of ministers by Ben Shenton has been leaked to the press. At least he had the grace to apologise publically - unlike a certain Chief Minister, whose continual refusal to apologise continues to damage Jersey's reputation, and (for those of us of an older generation) is inconcevable. The sooner he goes, the sooner Jersey has a chance to redeem its reputation, but - as readers of C.P. Snow's "The Affair" would note - some people are so thick-skinned and determined to keep the reigns of power that they never do the honourable thing. But enough of that.

It looks as if Shenton's disapproval of the way the Council of Ministers press conference was "unanimous" without telling him has been damaging, and the knives are out. Hence the leaked email.

The problem is that some serious concerns he raised will now be ignored in preference to the more Sun-Readership issues.

Let's look at one of these.

One question was about the initial press reporting was handled. "Remains of a child" was very ambiguous, and for most of us who heard that police report, it suggested far more that "fragment of a child's skull"; the issue over whether than pre-dates the inquiry was also not made clear at the time.

I imagine that the reason for this was twofold:

a) The police don't want, if they can help it, to release all the information at one time. That way, if a suspect does emerge from the woodwork, they know something that only that suspect also knows, and if they can get him or her to admit that, they are well on the way to building a very credible case. That is true of police work in practice, not just for this inquiry. Admission of "hidden details" is a fundamental strategy; the more that is in the public domain, the more it can be excused by a potential suspect.

b) Lenny Harper undoubtably also wanted to grab a lot of media attention in order to get as large a field of publicity as possible, and spread the net widely. This was so that former residents or staff of Haut De La Garenne, who had left Jersey, and might have pertinent information, would be more likely to come forward. Indeed, some people have come forward from as far as Australia. Also by publicising the numbers of people who had come forward, he hoped to have an escalating effect; as more people came forward, those who had been indimidated by the usual silencing blackmail and threats of the abusers would feel safer speaking out as part of a crowd, and this would snowball. I would say that strategy has been a great success.

I would think that the police strategy has been an extemely good one, and gaining reports from victims before opening the cellar has also led to corroborative evidence coming to light, which again supports the picture what took place there. Once the information about the cellar was public, there is always the danger that a clever lawyer could argue that victims modified stories to take account of that; by taking interviews first, Lenny Harper has avoided that possibility, and can produce a very strong case.

So while Shenton was right to raise these concerns, I think that he should have thought a bit more about why the police adopted the strategy that they did, and even to talk to Lenny Harper directly.