Monday, March 15, 2021

Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne

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This evening BBC4 is showing Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne in its documentary series Storyville.

The film was made by Camilla Hall, who wrote about its genesis in the Financial Times:

As I dug back into Jersey, I wanted to know what the hell had happened at Haut de la Garenne. A covert police investigation had begun in 2006, going public in late 2007.

The tabloid reporters alongside me had reported on mass graves and a “house of horrors” but the whole story disappeared after the Mail on Sunday reported that what had been referred to as a fragment of child’s skull was just a piece of wood or coconut.

Why did the media stop caring when it turned out to be a sexual abuse story rather than murder? Why did children have to die for us to care? What was normal about any of this? There were so many unanswered questions that I couldn’t comprehend but they all pointed back to Jersey, this tiny island that was at the same time a huge financial powerhouse.


1 comment:

Frank Little said...

A word for John Hemming then Liberal Democrat MP who, along with your good self, did a lot to keep the scandal before the mainland online community.

Sadly, the programme's conclusion was that the unreformed government structure on the island would permit a repeat of the abuses.