Former Jersey Politician, Deputy Daniel Wimberley has issued a Press Release (below) where he raises a number of concerning points involving the actions/inactions of the Jersey Child Abuse Committee of Inquiry (COI) and believes it could be a Fake.
Mr. Wimberley worked tirelessly, as a States Member, and continues to work tirelessly, to get to the truth behind the decades of paedophilia/Child Abuse so prevalent on the Island for so long. He, along with the Jersey Care Leavers Association, (JCLA) Team Voice, and a very small number of politicians, was instrumental in the formation of the Terms Of Reference (TOR) for the current Inquiry. Terms Of Reference that were extremely hard fought for against a determined Council Of Ministers (COM) to keep the TOR's to a bare minimum. Which will explain why Mr. Wimberley, and stakeholders, insist they are implemented and not watered down more than they have been by the COM.
ABUSE INQUIRY MAY BE
A FAKE SAYS CAMPAIGNER
On the eve of the first public hearings of the child abuse
inquiry, the Panel faces the accusation that it is set to be a fake.
Campaigner Daniel Wimberley has put 13 questions to the
inquiry chairman, Frances Oldham and her panel.
The questions challenge the panel to pledge that it will
take all abuse committed in Jersey as being within its remit and also that it
will consider all the issues surrounding the suspension of Chief of Police
Graham Power.
“As things stand, there is a bias towards concealment”, said
Mr. Wimberley. “The team have narrowed down the inquiry to just children within
the care system. And yet Ministers amended the Terms of Reference (TOR) to
include “
third party providers of
services for children and young people” So
the Inquiry Panel are going
directly
against the wishes of the States and their ownTOR. It is completely and utterly
unacceptable and so I am asking for an explanation.”
In his letter to the Panel Mr. Wimberley says that his
giving evidence depends on getting satisfactory answers. He writes:
“The questions at
the foot of this letter are your last chance to show the public in general and
stakeholders in particular that you are the real deal, offering a comprehensive,
robust and resistant-to-influence inquiry and not a sham and narrow inquiry
offering a whitewash. And only then can I consider giving evidence.”
“Jersey is a polarised society” he writes. “where there is widespread cynicism about the way
our island is run. The mistrust extends to believing that it is entirely
possible that the COI is in fact “in the pocket” of the ruling apparatus and
will not recommend anything, and will not allow to be public knowledge,
anything that would upset their rule and the way they rule. To have procedures
which create difficulties for potential key witnesses, or Terms of Reference
which narrow down the scope of the Inquiry would then be interpreted in this
light.
“The concerns of
the public and stakeholders are even more understandable when one recalls that
the first inquiries at Hillsborough and in North Wales both failed and had to
be repeated for the truth to at last come out. We do not want the same to
happen in Jersey.”
ENDS
ATTACHED letter to the abuse inquiry
Friday, July
18, 2014 by
email from dwimberley
Dear Chairman
and Panel of the Committee of Inquiry into child abuse in Jersey,
Before
launching into what this letter is really about, I should perhaps introduce
myself to you. I played a leading role in the States in pursuing the
issues around the suspension of Chief of Police Graham Power, including the
role of the “media consultant” Matt Tapp and the “Interim report of the
Metropolitan Police”, and in seeing that the Napier report was commissioned and
in securing the very existence of the
Committee of Inquiry (COI).
If you inspect Hansard you can confirm that I contributed
major speeches in all the big debates in this area and asked numerous States
questions. For me justice for the
victims and securing a better and safer future as regards child abuse is
intricately linked with the governance of the island. And so to the matter in
hand.
Many people:
victims, stakeholders, and members of the public had great expectations of the inquiry
into child abuse in Jersey.
We wanted to
believe that the inquiry would be fearless, comprehensive and independent.
We wanted to
believe that after all the evidence had been heard, after the ensuing public
attention and debate, after you had written your report and recommendations and
after these were acted upon, then Jersey would be in a better place and we
could all be certain that systematic child abuse of the kind which happened
across the island could never happen again.
But your
actions so far have dashed the faith which I, in common with so many others,
wanted to place in you. It looks as if
your COI will be a fake. So much so that I am driven to write this letter to
you offering a last chance to prove to us all, by answering the questions at
the end of this letter in a satisfactory manner, that your Inquiry will not be
a fake, but the genuine article.
At the moment
this is billed as a “care” inquiry and not as an inquiry into abuse. It
is billed as an inquiry into abuse at States-run institutions or programmes
(such as fostering) and not as an inquiry into abuse wherever it occurred
– be it Victoria College, the Sea Cadets or elsewhere. It is billed as an
inquiry into the abuse of children, thus excluding the abuse of young
people who would not see themselves as children, when in fact such people can
be, and were, abused in Jersey, as I recall.
I describe the
actions which have dashed my faith in you in detail in Appendix 1 but in
summary:
i) you have limited the scope of the abuse to be covered by your inquiry;
ii) you have excluded victims from coming forward by putting out the message
that the inquiry is not for them. This
is an astonishing outcome for an inquiry into child abuse and is inexcusable.
iii) in limiting the scope of the inquiry you
have set aside the clearly expressed
wishes of the States
iv) in limiting the scope of the inquiry you
have breached your own Terms of Reference (TOR)
v) you have failed to consult people about
the TOR as requested by the States;
vi) you have failed to consult people on
the procedures to be followed at the inquiry, as requested by the States;
vii) You have maintained that the TOR could not be changed, when this is patently untrue.
viii) you have undermined your relationship with stakeholders by the way you have treated them
All the above,
taken together, looks like incompetence or partiality or both. It also looks
like a deliberate attempt to limit the COI. This ties in with the COM’s
resistance to widening the scope of the TOR. Many on the island want stuff NOT
to come out. The narrowest possible interpretation of the TOR serves this
purpose.
Jersey is a polarised
society where there is widespread cynicism about the way our island is
run. There are very good reasons for
this – such a high degree of mistrust has is likely to be based to a degree on
reality. I give you more detail both about the degree of cynicism and mistrust
and about the reasons this situation has arisen in Appendix 2.
The concerns of
the public and stakeholders are even more understandable when one recalls that
the first inquiries at Hillsborough and in North Wales both failed and had to
be repeated for the truth to at last come out. We do not want the same to
happen in Jersey.
The mistrust extends to believing that it is entirely
possible that the COI is in fact “in the pocket” of the ruling apparatus and
will not recommend anything, and will
not allow to be public knowledge, anything that would upset their rule and the
way they rule. To have procedures which create difficulties for potential key
witnesses, or Terms of Reference which narrow down the scope of the Inquiry
would then be interpreted in this light.
The credibility
of the Inquiry is absolutely essential, as I’m sure you are aware. We all have
to be certain that in spite of our worst fears, the Inquiry is not “in the
pocket” of the ruling apparatus. To repeat, the questions at the foot of this letter
are your last chance to show the public in general and stakeholders in
particular that you are the real deal, offering a comprehensive, robust and
resistant-to-influence inquiry and not a sham and narrow inquiry offering a
whitewash. And only then can I consider giving evidence.
Yours
faithfully,
Daniel
Wimberley
QUESTIONS FOR THE COI
NOTE many of these
questions are capable of a Yes/No answer. In all cases the answer Yes is the
answer which will demonstrate to me that you intend this inquiry to be
comprehensive, robust and truly independent and influence-proof.
1
You have excluded
a certain victim, and this is not a hypothesis but a fact. It is likely given
the limits you have placed up to now on this COI, that she is not alone and that others have
got the message that this inquiry is nothing to do with them.
So my first
question to you is this: do you see that
this incident is extremely damaging to the credibility of your Inquiry?
Some victims of abuse will be heard, some will not.
2
Will the Inquiry include in its
remit abuse as it affected not only children but also young people in Jersey?
Will the Inquiry include in its
remit abuse carried out in organisations, institutions, settings not run directly by the States?
Will the Inquiry include in its
remit abuse carried out in organisations, institutions, settings not providing “care” to young people or
children, but rather doing any other provision?
Will the Inquiry include in its
remit abuse carried out within families, or by organised groups, but not covered by the above? In particular
will the Inquiry include in its remit the response of teachers, schools, and
the education authority, and the response of Social Services to reports or
evidence of such abuse?
3
Will the COI include in its remit both independent and
in-house reports and investigations relevant to the abuse being considered by
the COI in all of the “period under review”
as defined in TOR 1 (and not just “after 2007” as per TOR 6)?
4
Will the COI include
in its remit the following issues: the suspension of Graham Power, the
denigration of the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer), the handling of the
changeover from the Power / Harper team to the Warcup / Gradwell team, the
handling of the evidence, and so on?
The reason I ask this is that in your reply to this point
Peter Jones wrote:
“In relation to
paragraph seven of your letter, and the list of issues that you set out, the
extent to which they (and any number of possible permutations of evidence) will
be examined will depend on what evidence emerges, and where that evidence needs
to be pursued, given the
focus that the Inquiry must necessarily have on its Terms of Reference.
Many of the Terms of Reference will call for consideration of the
motivation of people who have done things, as much as the acts themselves. But the starting point will be
whether the Terms of Reference are engaged on the evidence, and
where does the evidence then need to be followed?” (my emphasis)
In other words the COI will follow where the evidence leads
– but only if where it leads is within the TOR. But surely what matters
is: are these questions important – and not “are they within the TOR”?
Clearly then, if these matters are to be taken seriously,
then they should be made explicit within the TOR. You have refused my request
to include them in the TOR, hence this request that you formally state that
these essential matters will be treated in the same way as any other important
evidence, and not just politely listened to but not heard, because they
are not explicitly mentioned in the TOR
5
It is
quite clear that the COM and States
members expected you to consult and instructed you to consult, on the TOR, but you did not. Why?
6
Why did the legal team insist that the TOR could
not be changed, when in
fact they can?
7
Will you adopt from now on appropriately inclusive language in all communications?
Thus: referring to “children and young people” and not just “children”;
referring to care settings, schools, youth work, remand centres, indeed any
setting and abuse conducted in no “setting” at all? – and not just “care”?
8
Any victim of abuse outside the care system may think
– ‘this Inquiry is nothing to do with me’ because of its name. What exactly will the Inquiry do to address this issue?
9
In the light of the above two questions, how will you correct the false impression
given in the past that this COI is only concerned with abuse which happened
to people “in care”?
Please outline the
steps you will take to reach witnesses with this new approach, and to
encourage them to come forward.
10
Will you have a set
target time for oral evidence to appear on the Inquiry website? Will you
publish reasons for any failure to meet your own target? Will documents read by the COI appear immediately on the website?
Will these documents be properly
searchable as with the Hillsborough Inquiry?
11
What is the research
capacity of this inquiry? And what will
the Panel do if the research staff prove to be not enough?
In asking this I have in mind some potentially large users
of research capacity: contacts with the Jersey care system from authorities in
the UK such as Birmingham, Islington etc.; research into how out of line Jersey
is statistically both with the scale of historical abuse and with the
continuing spate of cases of abuse, online pornography, grooming and so on (in
other words, is there a Jersey factor”?) ; situations where you have to soldier
through vast amounts of emails.
12
The Lord Chief Justice said in September 2012, concerning
the Hillsborough disaster, and the ensuing inquiry and inquests, that there had
been “deliberate misinformation surrounding the disaster”
If you find this is the case in Jersey, what
will the Panel do?
13
If you find evidence of criminal behaviour, (which has not
been before the courts already) what action will you take?
14
How did the name “Independent Jersey Care Inquiry”
come to be given to the inquiry? When was it suggested and by whom?
Thank you in advance for answering these questions.
I would point
out that if I say that other stakeholders will take note of your response to my
questions, I think you can see that this is a true statement. The reputation, possibly the continued
existence of the COI, is at stake here.
APPENDIX 1
i) you
have limited the scope of the abuse to be covered by your inquiry;
your website
Here is the
text of a news update on your Inquiry website dated July 8th
2014 which appeals for more people to come forward in the following words:
The people who were abused or who worked in Jersey
schools, youth organisations, remand centres do not get a mention. People who
may have been abused outside any formal or semi-formal setting do not get a
mention. All such people are not
invited.
Opening speech
by the chair
How did
the COI end up with such an extraordinary limitation? Well, it happened from
day 1. The chairman’s opening speech at the first preliminary hearing on
April 3rd showed that she actually does think that this
inquiry is only about abuse which happened in care. Again and again she
referred to “care” and “care system” and “children’s’ homes and foster care.”
No other setting was specifically mentioned, so far as I can see. For the many
extracts which prove this point please see Appendix 3.
In particular she interpreted TOR 8, which is about “how
and by what means concerns about abuse were raised and how, and to whom, they
were reported,” as
only being about children in care, when in fact TOR 8
is completely open and could and should be interpreted to be about
all
abuse.
The choice of name for the inquiry
The COI is
now known as the “Independent Jersey Care Inquiry.” And yet the COI has
always
been referred to in the States as an ‘Inquiry into child abuse’ or the
“Historical Abuse Inquiry.”
And of course that is what it is – or should be. So why was the name changed?
This needs an explanation as the implications of this name change have been
profound.
ii) you
have excluded victims from coming forward by putting out the message that the inquiry is not for them. This is an
astonishing outcome for an inquiry into child
abuse and is inexcusable.
Your actions
have led to at least one victim being told directly that the Inquiry did not
apply to her. She was excluded by your Inquiry.
What happened
was this.
A victim of serious abuse
asked your legal team words to the effect of ‘is it (the Inquiry) only for
children in care?’ The answer was effectively ‘yes.’
She is
almost certainly not the only one as your website, as quoted above, sets out to
exclude any victim who was not in
care.
This
matter is at the heart of my complaint to you. You have excluded certain
victims, and this is not a hypothesis but a fact. So my first question to you
is this: do you see that this incident destroys the credibility of your
Inquiry? Some victims of abuse will be heard, some will not. And my second
question to you is this: What are you going to do about it?
iii) in
limiting the scope of the inquiry you have set aside the clearly expressed wishes of the States
The title
of the proposition setting up the COI was “COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY: HISTORICAL CHILD ABUSE.” The report
accompanying the proposition opened with these words: “This proposition,
seeking the establishment of a Committee
of Inquiry into Historical Child Abuse in Jersey, reflects both the belief
of the Council of Ministers that this course of action is the correct one for
the whole community and that it is the will of the States, following the
approval of P.19/2011” And paragraph a) of what the States passed , for the
avoidance of all doubt, was: “to agree that a Committee of Inquiry should be
established in accordance with Standing Order 146 to enquire into a definite matter of public importance, namely historical child abuse in Jersey;” (my
emphasis)
It could not be clearer. I am minded to ask: did your
Panel read the report and proposition? And if so, how did the COI change into
the “Independent Jersey Care Inquiry”? This feeds into the suspicion
surrounding this COI, that certain areas are being excluded deliberately.
iv) in
limiting the scope of the inquiry you have breached your own Terms of Reference (TOR)
The wishes
of the States are of course ultimately embodied in the actual words of the
proposition as approved, which in this case include the TOR.
Two of the
TOR specifically point to a wider interpretation than the “care settings only”
one which you seem to have adopted. TOR
2 reads:
“Determine
the organisation (including recruitment and supervision of staff), management,
governance and culture of children’s homes and any other establishments caring
for children, run by the States and in
other non-States run establishments providing for children, where abuse has
been alleged, in the period under review and consider whether these aspects of
these establishments were adequate.” (my
emphasis)
And TOR 14 reads:
“14. Set out
what lessons can be learned for the current system of residential and foster
care services in Jersey and for third
party providers of services for children and young people in the Island.” (my
emphasis)
Clearly for these two TOR’s to be properly
investigated, children and young people in such non-care and non-States settings
would have to give evidence, and for that to happen the Inquiry has to
actively seek them out. Instead, as we have seen, they are excluded, because
only people who have been in care are invited or even considered.
You might
wish to argue that TOR’s 2 and 14 mean that accounts of abuse in non-States run
organisations need not be considered, but only evidence about the “organisation
(including recruitment and supervision of staff), management, governance and
culture” of such organisations.
But this is to strain credulity. Such a reading is
possible but would lead to extraordinary hair-splitting as witnesses gave
evidence – ‘you can say this, no, you can’t say that.’ And it flatly contradicts
the intentions of the States.
The Amendment which inserted the words in italics
into TOR’s 2 and 14 as cited above was tabled on 27th February 2013
by the Council of Ministers (COM). The
opening words of the Report accompanying this Amendment are as follows:
“The Council of Ministers, having discussed the
amendments to Terms of Reference with Deputy M. Tadier of St. Brelade and the
Attorney General, is of the view that it is reasonable to expect that children who may have suffered abuse in
non-States run establishments and third party providers of services for
children may also wish to be able to raise their concerns with the
Committee of Inquiry. The further amendments outlined in (a) and (c) above (sic) therefore
intended to widen the scope of the terms of reference beyond that of States-run
establishments, as described.” (my emphasis)
So the
intention is clear: the COI must cover non-States run establishments and must
cover providers of “services” and not just providers of care.
In
ignoring the wishes of the States in this way you are setting aside months of
struggle to have truly comprehensive TOR.
I am minded to ask: if your Panel read the
proposition and if you read the reports which accompany the original
proposition and the third amendment and if you did study the TOR themselves and
dig into their implications, then how could you find yourselves in the
situation you now find yourselves in?
It is abundantly clear that this is an Inquiry into
child abuse, and that the intention was quite rightly, to cover all abuse in
the island, wherever it occurred. How else can the COI get the full picture?
And how else can the Panel make effective recommendations?
v) you
have failed to consult people about the TOR as requested by the States;
There can
be no dispute that this is a true statement. When the States set up the
COI they agreed under paragraph e)
“that the proposed Chairman should be requested to
recommend any final changes to the Terms of Reference for the Committee of
Inquiry referred to in paragraph (b) above for approval by the Assembly, and
also to set out the proposed process for conducting the Inquiry having
consulted with interested parties where necessary;”
(P.118/2012,
paragraph e))
The point
was spelt out repeatedly in the debate, as I showed in my submission to you
about suggested improvements to the TOR. It is quite clear that the COM and
States members expected you to consult and instructed you to consult, on the
TOR. But you did not. The question is: why?
vi) you
have failed to consult people on the procedures to be followed at the inquiry, as requested by the States;
Paragraph
e) quoted in the preceding section applies here also. You were requested by the
States to “set out the proposed process for conducting the Inquiry
having consulted with interested parties where necessary.”
Your not doing so had important consequences.
Stakeholders were put in an impossible position, thus seriously eroding
trust.
In an email dated 17th April, I wrote this
to the legal team:
………………………
“I too
may wish to become an IP (Interested Party) - however I cannot
decide this due to the reasons before cited on the various threads. But I am
concerned that if one's application for IP is not put forward within the
"deadline" - which as I have pointed out does not appear in the
General Procedures protocol - then the process is subject to the caveat
that the Panel will deal with it when they can. So, assuming that after all the
clarifications and negotiations which will take place, I do decide to ask for
IP status, then the COI may proceed gaily for months before I get it.
This would mean that all that had transpired
before that time would be inaccessible to me.
So applying for IP status later down the
line is very much a second best for the person concerned. And yet, as I have
said in my previous email today: “the problem (of unresolved issues within the
protocols) exists solely because the inquiry has pressed ahead with these
without any consultation in direct contradiction with what the States charged
the COI to do at paragraph e) of the proposition which set the COI up.” So
why should I be made to suffer because of the failings OF THE COI?”
(My emphasis)
Under Standing order 147 you may have had the right to do what you did and
write the protocols in private and then release them to the world,
but in doing this you created serious problems which could, and should, have
been avoided. The burden of these problems fell entirely on stakeholders, and
not on you.
vii) You
have maintained that the TOR could not be changed, when this is patently
untrue.
At the
very first meeting with them on April 3rd, immediately after the
preliminary hearing, your agents i.e. Eversheds legal team told stakeholders that
the TOR ‘could not be changed.’ Later they told Carrie Modral of the Jersey
Care Leavers’ Association that they were ‘set in stone.’ This is untrue, as we
demonstrated to them. When this line evaporated your Eversheds moved to a
different position, in this email of 10th April:
“First, any Inquiry - including this Inquiry - is
bound to investigate such matters that are referred to it from the appointing
body, as set out in the Terms of Reference. It has no power or authority to
inquire into matters that go beyond those terms of reference. It was for this
reason that I set out to Carrie Modral that the Terms of Reference set the
boundaries for what the Inquiry can, and cannot, do.
Further, no Inquiry has the power to extend its own terms of reference.
That can only be done by the appointing party, in this case the States of
Jersey. In the event that the Inquiry Panel wished to extend or clarify
its Terms of Reference, I anticipate that the Inquiry Panel would need to go
back to the States for clarification/modification.
I interpret your email and your letter on behalf of the signatories to be an
application that the Inquiry should invite an extension to its own Terms of
Reference.”
Quite. So why could the legal team not have come clean
about this in the first place, and told us that yes, it is open for people to
suggest changes to the TOR and these will be considered?
To maintain from our first meeting on April 3rd
that it was not possible to suggest changes, and again to Carrie Modral, and
then to say, well yes, it is possible and you just did not put it quite right
gives a strong impression of deceit. It is exactly what we had to contend with
in the States repeatedly, namely the use of words to obscure rather than to
illuminate, the use of language to obstruct instead of to assist. It does not
inspire confidence in the Panel when your agents behave in exactly the same
obfuscating and obstructive way as the Ministers whose words and actions you
will be scrutinising.
viii) you have
treated stakeholders in a way which has undermined your relationship with them.
Sections v) and
vi) and vii) above describe how stakeholders could not engage with you over key
matters of procedure (in effect you shielded yourselves from them and their
concerns) (sections v) and vi)), were misled by words which were in a very
strict sense true, but to any lay person were untrue, (section vi)), and put at
a disadvantage (section vii)).
I believe this
damage to the relationship with stakeholders could have been avoided. In retrospect maybe you think so too.
Taken together
this is a sorry state of affairs. These are your witnesses, these are the
activists, the very people who desperately want this inquiry to get to the
truth, yet it seems as if they are not wanted – the very same syndrome I have
noted under section i) above.
I am not asking
that there should have been privileged access. Of course all stakeholders would
have been able contributed to any possible improvements to the TOR and to the
formation of the protocols. Yes it would needed careful handling, but it would
have avoided the damage.
APPENDIX 2
I stated that such depth of mistrust does not spring up
entirely by itself from nowhere. It is fed, constantly, by the actions of the
ruling apparatus. The evidence is out there on the blogs and occasionally in
the mainstream media. To mention just three recent examples, there was the
pledge made in the hustings for the position of Treasury Minister by the
current holder of that office, that “I will not increase GST (Goods and Service
Tax)” which was then broken. The excuse given, namely that the world economic
situation went unexpectedly into meltdown was nionsense as the meltdown was
well and truly under way when he made the pledge.
There was the golden handshake of over ½ million for the
Chief Executive at the time of the suspension of Graham Power, Bill Ogley, which
many believe was the price for silence.
There was the raid on Stuart Syvret’s house when the police not only arrived
on his doorstep in large numbers to enforce an infringement of the Data Protection
Law, but took his partner’s box of evidence about planning graft! There was the absurd use of the DP law to silence
a blogger. There are 8 or 9 examples of dishonesty in my proposition to deal
with States members misleading each other in the States Assembly (P.169/2011).
This mistrust was noted by the former Chief of Police for
Jersey Graham Power
“. . . .The challenge of
achieving this (viz. establishing in the public mind that the police would
behave with independence and integrity) is comparably difficult in Jersey.
In the U.K. and other
jurisdictions the authorities may have
their
problems, but it would
be unusual to find any comparable part
of the
British
Isles where
suspicion and cynicism regarding those
in authority was so ingrained
in the
popular culture.”
Any incumbent of that role gets a pretty close-up and
immediate view of a society. The words above come from his submission to a
disciplinary inquiry into his conduct of Operation Rectangle and so can
reasonably be taken as a considered view. Further credibility is given by his
CV, as reported by himself.
APPENDIX 3
These are
extracts from the chairman’s opening speech at the first preliminary
hearing of the COI on April 3rd 2014 which showed that she actually does
think that this inquiry is only about abuse which happened in care.
All emphases are of
course mine.
Extract 1
“The
Inquiry has been set up to establish what went wrong in the Island’s care system over many
years and to find answers for people who suffered abuse as children. We have
been asked by the States of Jersey to investigate the abuse and mistreatment of
children placed in children’s’
homes and in foster care in Jersey from the Second World War.”
Lines 26-30
Extract 2
“5.
On 6 March 2013 the States Assembly agreed the Terms of Reference for a public
inquiry to undertake a wide-ranging investigation into historical child abuse
in Jersey.”
Lines 36-37
NOTE: I include the above quote for the sake of
completeness and balance. It is indeed there, but it is the only reference to
this form of words. Everywhere else this COI is about the care system and children
in care.
Extract 3
“Our purpose
is to establish the truth; the truth about what happened to children in residential and
foster homes”
lines 43-44
Extract 4
“In summary .
. . . . . Finally, we will consider what lessons can be learned for the current system of residential
and foster care services in Jersey and make recommendations for the
future of those services.”
Lines 48,
59-61
Extract 5
“TERMS OF
REFERENCE
……..
A. Establishing the extent of abuse in Jersey’s children’s’ homes and other statutory
child care provision since 1945 – how pervasive was abuse in the statutory care
system?
B. What systems operated in the child care system within
which abuse took place and how effective were these?
C. Who was accountable for the running and oversight
of residential child care
?
Lines 93-98
Extract 6
“45. I
recognise that the Inquiry asks a great deal of you (this refers to the abuse survivors) : quite simply , that you
should come and tell us about what happened to you as a child - an account of
your life both before
being taken into care and whilst in care. We want to hear about how you
were treated; complaints you may have made etc. . . .
lines 249-252
Extract 7
“51. The
eighth Term of Reference asks us to consider who raised concerns about abuse,
and to whom, and what, if anything, was done about them. It also invites us to
conduct an historical review of the systems in place for handling the
disclosure of abuse by children. Although not expressed as such, we will be
looking at disclosure of abuse within the setting of children in care.
Lines 283-287
NOTE: This
extract is especially revealing. The TOR 8 does not specify which settings
abuse occurred. It reads: “Identify how and by what means concerns about abuse
were raised and how, and to whom, they were reported . . .” Yet the chair assumes that the TOR
must be limited to “disclosure of abuse within the setting of children in care.”
Extract 8
“70. Evidence
in relation to the 14th Term of Reference will be taken in 3rd
Phase of the Inquiry, by which time we will have gathered a wealth of evidence.
71. We will hear evidence from those who have
conducted recent reports on statutory child care provision in Jersey; experts
in this field and independent of the States. We will also be assisted by
witnesses from the relevant departments, giving their views on the lessons to
be learned. We wish to set out clear recommendations for the future structure
and management of statutory child care services in Jersey.
72. The purpose and value of this 14th Term of Reference,
and indeed the 15th Te r m of Ref e r e
n c e , c a n n o t b e u
n d e r e s t i m a t e d . I t i s t o s
e t o u t w h a t
l e s s o n s can be learned for the benefit of child and foster care
services in Jersey”
Lines 379-390
NOTE: The
actual TOR 14 is: “Set out what lessons
can be learned for the current system of residential and foster care services
in Jersey and for third party providers of services for children and young
people in the Island.” So the words added by amendment by the COM are left out.
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