Police remove child abuse report from their website

Saturday 23 July 2016

Jersey Police have removed a report written by one of their former top officers from their website because it “could potentially undermine or prejudice any future criminal proceedings.”

The report was written by former Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper who was the Senior Investigating Officer heading up Operation Rectangle – at the time, a covert investigation into alleged historic child abuse.

In a written question to Home Affairs Minister Deputy Kristina Moore, Deputy Mike Higgins wanted to know why the report had been removed, and if it was going to be put back up.

In her reply Deputy Moore said the report would not be going back up: “the Independent Care Inquiry has considered Operation Rectangle as part of its Terms of Reference and the Inquiry Panel is expected to submit a final report by the end of this year… For these reasons, the States of Jersey Police will not be posting any Operation Rectangle reports on their website.”

Deputy Higgins is also angry the police have uploaded a critical report of how the former chief handled the investigation, but have not posted his response.

The Wiltshire Report concluded Police Chief Officer Graham Power’s handling of Operation Rectangle did not comply with best practice, and that he should have handled the media fallout better.

Although Mr Power’s rebuttal can be found on the Independent Care Inquiry website, Deputy Moore says there are no plans to put it on the police site because “it is already in the public domain and secondly, it represents the views of the former Chief of Police and is not a report commissioned by the States of Jersey Police.”