Former Jersey Opposition Politician and "The Jersey Way."

Last month at his inauguration as Bailiff, former Attorney General William Bailhache, a man who like his brother Sir Philip bears responsibility for so many unanswered questions on child protection failings, told the Jersey Evening Post how he wanted to ‘reclaim’ the ‘Jersey Way’. According to William Bailhache, the term had been hijacked to falsely portray something negative and even suggest ‘corruption’.

In the short interview (below) former three-times elected St. Helier Deputy Shona Pitman, an outspoken critic of the ‘Jersey Way’, when in office, offers disturbing and highly compelling new evidence into how, for those who dare to stand up against apparent  judicial corruption, and the type of State-concealed abuse now being confirmed in the Independent Care Inquiry, on an almost weekly basis the apparent politicisation of Jersey’s Police force and ‘Justice’ system appears very much alive and well.

As former Deputy Pitman explains, knocked down on a pedestrian crossing in October 2014 due to the apparent negligence of a driver who failed to stop in time at a red light crossing - even with the said driver’s admittance of responsibility and three independent witnesses confirming this – after months of inexplicable procrastination, she was finally informed by Mr Mike Bowron’s States of Jersey Police would not be prosecuting the driver.

Incredibly the reason given was that there apparently ‘wasn’t enough evidence’ to charge an individual whose excuse had been that the angle of the sun had prevented him seeing what colour the traffic lights were! In the words of the Police Officer ‘some things are just accidents’. The driver ‘had tried to stop’ so the Officer said. Which in his Sergeant’s view meant there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with driving without due care and attention!

All shocking enough in itself one might suggest. Particularly when many readers will still recall the contrasting response from the Police in the case of a young woman driver, prosecuted and convicted just a month after an incident having narrowly missed colliding with a mother and baby buggy on a pedestrian crossing in St. Helier!

Yet for former Deputy Pitman this deeply disturbing treatment at the hands of the Jersey Police did not end there. A full six months on, she has still been denied the insurance details of the driver who knocked her down and even a copy of her own Police statement. Indeed, having promised he would return with the insurance details ‘within a couple of days’ the Police Officer, reportedly, simply never bothered to return.

By her own admission, former Deputy Pitman is just pleased to have been lucky enough to have escaped serious injury. She was nevertheless left with painful bruising, stiff muscles and wholly understandable psychological symptoms manifesting as anxiety as a consequence of the driver knocking her down. Team Voice find the action  (or lack of )  on the part of the Police as incredible, as it at first appears to be inexplicable.

However, when one considers the evidence the former Deputy flags up of just some of the treatment she and her husband have experienced as a consequence of challenging the Jersey Establishment over recent years, perhaps the real motivation behind otherwise inexplicable action becomes somewhat clearer?

As a States’ Deputy, Shona Pitman did of course bring the first ever Vote of No Confidence in a Bailiff – then Sir Philip Bailhache - for his appalling child protection failings including both the Roger Holland affair, and the now infamous Liberation Day speech which so offended the child abuse survivors and others. As readers will recall, she was then rapidly prosecuted by Bailhache’s Attorney General brother William. Dragged through the Royal Court along with a solitary colleague (the only other Deputy who voted for her proposition) for her having assisted two elderly and disabled constituents register for a postal vote – even though it was apparently evidenced and subsequently proven that other election candidates had breached the very same Article 39A law, yet faced no such prosecution.

The subsequent abuses suffered by former Deputy Shona Pitman and her husband at the hands of the Jersey ‘Justice’ system have of course been numerous. Suffice to say that when one listens to the interview and tries to marry up the Police behaviour one has to conclude that if Bailiff William Bailhache really wants to reclaim the ‘Jersey Way’ as something positive he has rather a lot of work to do…