Two people, two years and £200k: the cost of archiving abuse

Friday 10 November 2017

Two archive staff will be employed for over two years to catalogue the thousands of pages of harrowing stories generated by the recent Jersey Independent Care Inquiry, as part of a project set to cost £200,000.

The project, which will be the largest the Archive team has ever handled, will see staff initially work through 250,000 individual pages in digital format. They will later be placed onto an online database, which will then be available to internet users across the world.

Records will include everything from witness statements to government and care home reports - many of which will be redacted. More documents will follow during the process, which could take up to three years in total to complete.

In her £23m report, IJCI Panel Chair Frances Oldham QC accused the government of failing to foster a culture of openness and transparency. The States hope that supporting the archive project will help them rectify this “fundamental failing”.

The Council of Ministers agreed to pour £200,000 into the initiative in March, which will help to cover the costs of transferring the material, the development of the archive online catalogue, increased provision for digital storage, as well as staff costs for two individuals to undertake the detailed cataloguing and indexing process.

Pictured: Frances Oldham QC, who led the IJCI Panel, hands over the digital documents to Linda Romeril, Archive and Collections Director.

Chief Minister Ian Gorst commented: “While the Inquiry report documents are painful to read, we must do so and keep open to the public and wider world as part of Jersey’s history. It allows us to better understand the pain and hurt experienced by children and ensure the greatest level of safety and protection for our children in the future, in order that they may flourish.”

Given the scale and sensitivity of the documents involved, the two members of staff given responsibility for the potentially chilling task will already have a knowledge of Archive processes.

Linda Romeril, Archive and Collections Director, commented: “Staff will work with sensitivity and care over the next couple of years sorting, cataloguing and indexing the material to do justice to the important and often harrowing aspects of Jersey’s history they contain.”

This isn’t the Archive’s first contribution to the IJCI. The home of the island’s history provided 500 boxes’ worth of documents to the Panel. Amongst those were Haut de la Garenne registers and case files, and staff and foster carer files, as well as documents from Social Services and the Education Department. Those files have already been reabsorbed back into the Archives’ collection.

Not all will be kept at the Jersey Archive, however. Highly confidential files that could potentially name witnesses or identify victims are to be kept off the island for the next century.

Pictured: The hundreds of thousands of documents that were considered by the Panel that wrote the Care Inquiry report will be made publicly available in an online catalogue.

“Any Inquiry material that could identify witnesses who’ve asked to remain anonymous will be kept off-island and out of the public domain for an extended period determined by relevant legislation, likely to be at least 100 years,” Ms Romeril said.

Frances Oldham QC, who recently turned over the data to Ms Romeril, added: “The public domain material from the Inquiry will be an important part of Jersey’s heritage and the Panel is confident it will be carefully curated and managed in perpetuity by the highly skilled professionals of the Jersey Archive.

“Anonymous witnesses to the Inquiry were assured that information that could identify them and their families would not be shared with any agency or individual in Jersey. In these unique circumstances, the Panel have sought secure, off-island, archive facilities with experience of handling inquiry material, where the confidential data can be lodged. The Panel will consult with the Jersey Archive and representatives of the States of Jersey regarding the facilities it is considering before arrangements are finalised.”

Those documents, which will be available to internet users across the world, will start to appear online by 2018. In the meantime, Ms Romeril is welcoming suggestions on how would be best to present the records online.