Jimmy Savile, Haut de la Garenne and the State Media.

Back in February this year (2012) we published a BLOG highlighting a campaign run by Zibby Yates, a courageous survivor of Child Abuse, and taken up by THE GUERNSEY PRESS

Readers might be aware that the Guernsey Press is owned by the same company as Jersey's only "News"paper, the Jersey Evening Post, yet their reporting (or not) on Child Abuse, in our opinion, couldn't be any different. This suggests to us that the agenda of the editors is where the difference lies.

In the Jersey Evening Post we have seen attack, after attack, on the Former Senior Investigating Officer of the Jersey Child Abuse Investigation Mr. Lenny Harper and NO campaigning for the plight of the victims/survivors who suffered at the hands of their abusers for DECADES. This is in stark contrast to their sister paper in Guernsey.

After receiving an e-mail last night with a cutting of the Guernsey Press' latest comment we once more felt that this had to be shared with our readers (below) to highlight the difference in the reporting of both newspapers and how the Guernsey Press, once more, is doing the job its Jersey counterpart SHOULD be doing.


Beasts like Savile don't work alone.Wednesday 31st October 2012, 3:12PM GMT.

"EARLIER this year, a 7,000-plus signature petition was handed to the then-new Home minister as our Voice for Victims campaign to help those who had endured childhood sex abuse came to a successful conclusion.

Since then, there have been other local cases highlighting the scale of the problem – and now there are the daily disclosures about Jimmy Savile, which are, in every sense, off the scale and almost beyond comprehension.

Yet what the unfolding horror illustrates is how these predatory beasts operate, cultivating an acceptable exterior while creating a support network to ensure that their abuse can proliferate undetected. And it happens here.

One of Guernsey’s worst paedophiles is the formerly respected judo teacher Eugene Hughes, who, like Savile, systematically set about destroying the self-confidence of his victims, convincing them that complaint was futile and ensnaring them in the illusion of acceptability that he weaved around himself.

As is now clear following Savile’s death, this is confidence trickery on a sinister and epic scale: how could so many people and institutions be taken in for so long?

In part, it is that cultivated aura of ‘niceness’, that ‘old Jimmy might be a bit odd but he’s no pervert’ response it is designed to trigger. And in part it is due to the network of support that paedophiles build up around them and which will now be examined within the BBC and elsewhere as part of the inquiry process.

Statistically, each abuser will have a group of about 30 people around them, which makes the claims in Jersey that children from Haut de la Garenne were loaned out to rich boatowners particularly disturbing.(Emphasis added)

As we said when we launched our anti-abuse campaign, it is through increased awareness, demanding that the protection of children and help for victims be prioritised and fighting for the adoption of a zero-tolerance approach to these types of crimes that Voice for Victims aims to combat the silence which allows the sexual abuse of children to persist.

Those aims remain just as proportionate and achievable today.

And as the appalling revelations about Savile and others demonstrate, they are more urgently-needed than ever."(END)

When one compares this comment from The Guernsey Press alongside some of the reporting of the Jersey Evening Post's then it is not difficult to see where the priorities lie in the two very different newspapers/Editors.

The Jersey Evening Post appears to believe that how much Lenny Harper spent on a meal in a London restaurant takes priority over campaigning for Abuse Survivors and encouraging its readers to adopt a Zero-Tolerence concerning Child Abuse. One only needs to look HERE to get an idea of the Jersey Evening Post's "journalism" and agenda. Then take note of the words written by the Former Chief Police Officer Graham Power QPM;

"The attempts to divert this debate into discussions concerning the trivia of expense claims, is a scandal of which all involved should be thoroughly ashamed."

Jimmy Savile was invited to Haute de la Garenne and allegedly abused children while he was there. Who invited Savile, not only to the Children's home but to Jersey........So often? Who were his contacts in Jersey? How could children be abused FOR DECADES in Jersey's State run institutions before Lenny Harper and Graham Power came along? Has a powerful paedophile ring been active in Jersey for decades? Why won't ANY of the island's State Media expose the alleged Child Abuse suspects still in position of power/authority today? Why won't BBC Jersey, or ANY of the State Media, publish Graham Power's interim defence case to the Wiltshire allegations? Could decades of Child Abuse have occurred without the complicity of the island's State Media?

Isn't it time that Jersey's "journalists" started getting some of these questions answered? Should there be a "job swap" between the editors of The Guernsey Press and The Jersey Evening Post? What part, if any, has the State Media played in the concealment of paedophilia on this island?

Bloggers (Jersey's only independent media) with documented evidence have torn to shreds the official version of events concerning the decades of Child Abuse which has mostly been ignored by the State Media.........why?

Credit must go to the Guernsey Press, and its editors, for their willingness to rock the boat. Credit must be given for its Zero-Tolerence to Child Abuse and its campaigns for the Abuse Victims/Survivors. 

In the meantime Bloggers (Jersey's only independent media) will continue to ask the questions that should be asked by the State Media in an attempt to protect the vulnerable from the "Predatory Beasts" like Savile and those closer to home! 

This post, once more should demonstrate the need for an independent, Journalist to report on the Jersey Child Abuse scandal and related issues.

Please sign and share the petition to restore the visa of US Journalist LEAH MC GRATH GOODMAN?