Former States Deputies Trevor and Shona Pitman were discharged from Bankruptcy in the Royal Court of Jersey on 19 January 2018 with immediate effect.
The Bailiff Sir William Bailhache presided with two Jurats in attendance.
The Viscount presented details of the application - although she was virtually inaudible from the public seats even when using the hearing aids provided - and had no grounds to object and did not claim costs.
Trevor appeared for his wife and himself and addressed the court but the Bailiff said he would not allow him to make certain allegations about the role of Jurat Le Breton in the proceedings that led up to the couple's bankruptcy.
Trevor Pitman persisted and said that he would be issuing a Press Release following this hearing.
This is the Press Release issued for publication today;
PRESS RELEASE: THE UNCLEAN HANDS OF THE ROYAL COURT
- THE JERSEY WAY ROLLS ON?
FROM: FORMER DEPUTIES TREVOR & SHONA
PITMAN
DATE: 19 JANUARY 2018. EMBARGOED:
UNTIL 22 JANUARY 6.00AM
Extract from the sworn testimony of former Investigating
Police Officer Anton Cornelissen: Day 102 October 2015, of the Jersey
Independent Care Inquiry:
‘John Le Breton was clearly responsible for covering up abuse
at Victoria College, and, as yet, he has not faced public scrutiny. Clearly
questions must be asked as why this is, and how he was allowed to continue as a
Royal Court Jurat. What message does this send out?’
It is with reluctance that we find ourselves obliged to issue
this press release today. The truth is, as the following facts make clear, we
should never have been put in this position.
We nevertheless make this statement now, simply to turn mainstream media
attention away from the smokescreen irrelevance of whether or not we were right
to bring our defamation action against the Broadlands Estate Agents and the
Jersey Evening Post, to court.
Instead, having taken legal advice, it is as a consequence of
damning evidence provided to the Island’s Independent Care Inquiry (ICI), that
we now turn the spotlight on to the real issue underlying our manipulated
bankruptcy: the dishonesty of the Royal Court, in keeping the stark truth of
the serious question marks regarding the past actions of the senior of the two
Jurats allowed to preside on the case, from our knowledge. The Royal Court thus subjected us to a
‘legal’ process that can now be seen to be at the very best wholly unsafe. And
one which by any standards, is in clear breach of Article 6 – the right to a fair
trial – of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the summer of 2012, after the brief window of opportunity
to appeal the decision of the two Jurats who decided on our case, with
allegations regarding Jurat Le Breton’s past actions reaching both us and our
then lawyers via members of the public (not least in regard to the never
publically released Sharp Report (1999)), we had consequently approached the
Bailiff who’s Office had appointed Le Breton to judge on our case.
As set out in Mr Pitman’s own sworn statement to the ICI, in
the course of both written correspondence and a face-to-face meeting with the
then Bailiff Sir Michael Birt, he subsequently opined that all who had worked
with Jurat Le Breton would state him to be scrupulously fair and conscientious
in his work; further still, that he himself could not recall there having ever
been any complaint about either Jurat Le Breton’s judgement or integrity. The sworn, in depth testimony of former
Investigating Police Officer Mr Cornelissen before the ICI, in our opinion now
shows these 2012 claims to be without merit.
Indeed, amidst extensive ‘on Oath’ evidence, this brave
former Police Officer stated how the then College Vice-Principle John Le
Breton, ‘bullied’ one pupil who
complained to him of being abused by Maths teacher Andrew Jervis-Dykes into
silence. In describing what the child said within his disclosure to the police,
Mr Cornelissen told the ICI the abused pupil, who was apparently from a poor
background and on a scholarship, had stated, he was told:
‘Don’t go down this route. We don’t like your sort here. If
you want to progress, if you fail your exams your scholarship will effectively
be finished.”
According to Mr Cornelissen’s testimony what the abused pupil
disclosed he was told by Le Breton left him feeling threatened; and in the
former Police Officer’s words had ‘Put the fear of God’ in him. Incredibly, in his evidence Mr Cornelissen
also goes on to state how once made a Jurat, Le Breton also attempted to ‘obstruct
the arrest’ of his colleague and alleged friend Jervis-Dykes, by ‘disputing
the facts of the warrant’. Yet
perhaps most disturbing of all, to our mind, the former Officer told the ICI
how the police were ‘not allowed to put any pressure’ on Jurat Le Breton regarding
any of this. Further still, how it was conveyed to the police that ‘a
Jurat had never been prosecuted before’.
While the Bailiff at the time of the Victoria College child
abuse scandal was Sir Philip Bailhache; the Attorney General with
responsibility for prosecutions was Sir Michael Birt – the very Crown Officer
who as Bailiff, later evidently saw fit to let his Office place Jurat John Le
Breton to judge on the defamation case of two States Members, who were amongst
the handful who consistently championed the cause of securing justice for the
multitude of victims of Haut de la Garenne and other Jersey ‘care’
institutions.
In the course of our discharge hearing today, the basis of
the evidence within this press release was put to the current Bailiff, William
Bailhache by Mr Pitman. Incredibly, in light
of Recommendation 7 arising from the ICI’s report (the need to put an end to
‘The Jersey Way’) in response, having first asked the Viscount if there was any
way by which the Court had ‘discretion’ to refuse our discharge (there wasn’t –
we had complied with everything despite the injustice) Bailiff Bailhache then
made the truly shocking claim below.
The ‘word of one man’ he stated – never
mind that this was the Police Officer charged with identifying child victims at
Victoria College – ‘carried little weight’. A
Chief Judge dismissing sworn testimony from a police officer regarding
disclosure from an abused child! Of course, we do recall that in
early 2015, shortly after becoming Bailiff, Bailhache’s Office brought Jurat Le
Breton out of retirement to sit on a child abuse case. Finally, in what was
passed off as advice, but which was certainly taken as a veiled threat, it was
then stated that we should ‘be very careful’ about putting this
sworn evidence out within a press release.
We firmly believe that the reason for those at the helm of
the Jersey ‘justice’ system refusing to remedy a court process that was
demonstrably unsafe remains that, as strong critics of the Jersey
Establishment, they saw our court case as a convenient means by which to force
us out of politics and, hopefully, silence us.
After all, contrary to what has been spun to the public, we have been
barred from standing for election for a period of nine years – quite an irony
given that had one of us been a Constable and the other a Deputy, in 2014 only
the Deputy would have lost his/her seat.
To this regard, we further suggest the public should also ask
themselves why we were made bankrupt, when though not having an income as high
as before Mr Pitman entered politics, we were still earning a joint salary of
£90,000. We thus conclude this press release with the paraphrased words of
Jersey’s former Police Chief Graham Power – suspended on the back of a ‘damning
report’ we now know to have been a lie whilst he and his Deputy Lenny Harper had
fought to shine a light on decades of ‘Jersey Way’ cover up:
‘If they can do this to two high profile politicians and get
away with it then think what they can do to you…’
Make no mistake – ‘the Jersey Way’ is just as prevalent today
as it ever was.
We nevertheless now
request, for the second time, that the Chief Minister, whom claims he is
committed to tackling ‘the Jersey way’, investigates this!
