Jersey Evening Post reports:

A HIGH Court judge has spoken of the importance of a community taking notice of the stories of victims in historical child abuse cases as a way of moving forward.

The Hon Sir Ernest Ryder, a High Court Judge of the Family Division, was formerly Counsel to the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal of Inquiry from 1996 to 1998. He was in the Island on Friday as the principal speaker at the Children’s Voices conference at the Hotel de France which explored the representation of children in England and Wales, Jersey and Guernsey.

Sir Ernest said that it was vital for all the findings in a major historical child abuse inquiry, like the current investigation in Jersey, to be made public. During the tribunal in Wales some of the alleged victims had given their evidence in open court in front of the world’s media, whereas others had sought and gained anonymity. What was important, he said, was that the community took notice of what the victims had to say so that the best practice could be put in place to ensure that it did not happen again.

He said: ‘The telling of those stories once and for all is a very cathartic experience for the individual victims involved, as well as for members of the community who take notice of them. Once that has taken place, the very best preventive measures can be introduced.’