IT is time for Lenny Harper, the former deputy chief of the States Police, to stop trying to justify his highly questionable conduct when he was the chief investigating officer in the Island’s historical child abuse inquiry.

As well as preparing to offer evidence in a court action seeking to show that UK judges should preside in Jersey ‘to ensure that justice is done’, Mr Harper now claims that he is being used as a scapegoat for the lack of progress in investigations. As anyone with respect for the facts as they have plainly been revealed will appreciate, this is a distorted view of the present situation and the events leading to it.

The plain truth is that Mr Harper embarked on a sensationalist strategy which, in the light of concrete evidence – or the lack of it – backfired on him in a big way.

The national and international press can without doubt be blamed for seizing on every prurient detail knowingly half-revealed at the former deputy chief’s dramatic press conferences. Only he, however, can bear the responsibility for not nipping sensation and ridiculous speculation in the bud when in possession of salient but unrevealed information.

We now know that scientific opinion that would have given the lie to the most lurid accounts of what was supposed to have happened at Haut de la Garenne was withheld in favour of allowing continuing exaggeration.

We also know, through the evidence of our own eyes, that objects that Mr Harper was happy to see referred to as ‘restraints’ and ‘shackles’ were no more than an uncoiled upholstery spring and the sort of ironmongery that many Jersey people would immediately recognise as old wall fittings for holding pipes and cables.

If Mr Harper cannot see the farcical nature of the picture he was instrumental in painting, then he should be aware that most of the rest of the world can.

But there is deep tragedy in all this. As a result of the muddying of the waters at Haut de la Garenne, the true extent of the crimes that were without doubt committed there may never emerge.

Far from encouraging more useful witnesses to come forward and building up a web of corroborative evidence, Lenny Harper’s high-profile strategy has produced an investigative mess in which fact and fantasy have melded into each other and which might have severely prejudiced the course of justice as well as dragging Jersey’s good name through the mud.