IT was during the cold, wet and blustery month of February that the Island – and the world – began to hear about allegations of abuse and perhaps even murder at Haut de la Garenne, the former children’s home.

Then, as now, the criminal investigation and bringing offenders to book were the matters of principal concern, but it soon became apparent that Jersey’s good name was also going to be dragged through the mud and that politics as well as criminality were going to loom large on the Haut de la Garenne front.

Now, more than four months on, we have seen potentially gruesome evidence of what might have occurred at the home – or during its earlier incarnation as an industrial school. We have also seen a small number of people arraigned for alleged offences that have come to light during the investigation, but almost as many questions remain unanswered as when the international press corps descended on St Martin expecting bodies to be unearthed at any moment.

With necessary confidentiality surrounding much of the evidence that has so far been collected and collated, Islanders and everyone else longing for a conclusion to the Haut de la Garenne case will have to wait for police and judicial processes to run their course. In spite of this, it is undoubtedly true that the investigation has just entered a new phase. Haut de la Garenne itself is about to be handed back to its administrators and new inquiries are focusing on a second site at a German bunker identified by some witnesses.

However, from the Jersey point of view, another change of great importance is also discernible. Bizarre national and international press hysteria sought, in the earlier stages of the investigation, to show, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, that child abuse was a problem peculiar to the Island and somehow connected to a broth of vague charges of secrecy linked to everything from the Occupation to the finance industry. This, mercifully, has abated.

It is also true that the political battle provoked by Haut de la Garenne and its possible relevance to wider child care concerns is receding into the background. To emphasise again that the police investigation and not politicians’ agendas or shortcomings of presentation on the part of senior figures in the executive must be paramount, this is just as it should be.