Document sans nom

Channel Television suggested yesterday that among those people who should perhaps have known what was going on at the home was Reg Jeune, once one of the island’s most powerful politicians. Mr Jeune, a retired former senator and Finance Minister, was president of the education committee from 1971 to 1984, when police claim abuse was at its worst.

Former staff at the home include the island’s current director of education. Mario Lundy, who worked at the Haut de la Garenne before its closure in 1986, is one of a number of States of Jersey employees connected to the home. Mr Lundy declined to comment.

Frank Walker, the island’s Chief Minister, said that no current government employees were the “subject of any police recommendation”.

Mr Jeune declined to come to the door of his pink granite farmhouse on the outskirts of St Helier yesterday.

Others who should perhaps have known the facts were named by Channel Television last night as John Le Marquand, education committee president in the early 1960s, Herbert Wimberley, the director of education, and Patricia Thornton, the children’s officer. At the time, Colin Tilbrook was a headmaster at Haut de la Garenne.

Mr Jeune was replaced as education committee president in 1984 by Phil G. Mourant.

Charles Smith, the assistant children’s officer since 1964, succeeded Mrs Thornton in 1973. In 1974 John Rodhouse succeeded Mr Wimberley as director of education. Jim Thomson, now dead, became superintendent at the home in 1979.

29/02/2008 - Senior officials were Jersey home staff - Irish Times

A number of staff at the Jersey children's home where claims of child abuse are being investigated include former senior education officials and a former minister for finance on the island.

The names of officials and senior staff at the Haut de la Garenne home, now a youth hostel, that were working during the time of the abuse claims were released today.

Jersey news station Channel TV revealed 13 names, but police would not confirm whether any of them were being interviewed as suspects or witnesses.

A child's skull has been found in the cellar of the home, and it was confirmed today that "significant" finds announced yesterday included a shallow bath and shackles. Former residents had claimed such devices were kept in the cellar where children were allegedly drugged and abused.

The inquiry covers more than 160 victims and 40 suspects. Detectives said that the majority of the allegations of physical and sexual abuse occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.

The names released today include the island's former senator and finance minister Reg Jeune, who was president of the education committee from 1971 to 1984 and lives on the island.

One of the home's former staff is Jersey's director of education, Mario Lundy, and previous education directors were John Rodhouse, who held the position in 1974 and Herbert Wimberley in 1962.

John le Marquand was president of the island's education committee from 1960; it is understood he lives in a care home in St Helier.

Terry Streetle was a children's officer in 1986 and is now thought to live in west London. Patricia Thornton was the island's children's officer in the early 1960s and Charles Smith, also a children's officer, retired in 1984.

Frank Walker, the island's chief minister, said that no government employees were the "subject of any police recommendation".

Inside Jersey's chamber of horrors - By DAVID JONES - 29th February 2008 - Daily Mail

Some 160 children horribly abused. A special room for rape - and even murder. An alleged cover-up at the highest levels. As the Jersey care home dungeon offers up its secrets, David Jones sends this haunting dispatch from an island in shock ... and denial

Perched high on a windswept promontory overlooking an ancient Channel fortress, Gouray Church provided the suitably austere setting last Tuesday for an emotionally-charged service designed to bring comfort and unity to the scandaltorn people of Jersey.

With the island embroiled in a rapidly-evolving child sex abuse scandal, there was standing room only in the church as the Dean of Jersey, the Very Reverend Robert Key, used fire-and-brimstone rhetoric to damn those faceless perverts who, for decades, are alleged to have sexually abused vulnerable children in a grisly torture chamber beneath a now-closed children's home, just along the lane.

"We come together at a time when our island is experiencing the darkness of evil and fear,"' he intoned, his voice echoing off the thick stone walls. "Any abuse of a child ... is not just an affront to civilised society, it is a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God! When the helpless are victims, He cries out to us to render them justice."

It was powerful stuff. Ironically, though, while his words were intended to draw the 90,000 islanders together after a week of unrelenting misery, they invoked sharply contrasting reactions among members of the congregation.

From their muffled sobs, the victims, mainly middle-aged and careworn now, were all-too-easily identifiable. One ghostly-pale woman wept from start to finish. Meanwhile, at the front of the church, the island's great and the good wore righteous expressions.

Most prominent among them was Jersey's beleaguered Chief Minister, Frank Walker, who had been heard on BBC2's Newsnight the previous evening accusing his bitter political rival, Stuart Syvret, of "trying to shaft Jersey internationally" by speaking out about the House of Horrors.

And then, finally, if one looked around for long enough, one saw others who appeared to shift a little uneasily in their pews as the Dean demanded that the culprits be called to account for their terrible sins.

The service said much about Jersey's fractured society, with its well-heeled "haves" in their elegant seafront homes, and its underbelly of "have-nots" consigned to the grim sink-estates which spawned the vulnerable, misplaced children who were, it is claimed, violated at Haut de la Garenne.

Not all that long ago, these lowly-paid casual farm labourers and dockworkers were virtual serfs in an anachronistic system which dates back to Norman times and retains strong feudal elements. Then, they dared not criticise the island's overlords for fear of deportation, or worse. Now, they are angry that so many suffered at Haut de la Garenne while nothing was done, and they are determined to be heard.

Their main target is Chief Minister Mr Walker, who owned Jersey's only newspaper eight years ago when it declined to publish a damning report into child sex abuse in the British crown dependency, and is now accused - fairly or otherwise - of trying to sweep this latest scandal under the carpet.

Given the untold damage it could cause to one of the world's wealthiest offshore enclaves - Jersey's income derives largely from finance houses and investors attracted by the island's discreet, respectable reputation as well as her generous tax laws - his reticence becomes perhaps more understandable.

Also, it explains the unspoken resentment among some politicians towards Deputy Chief Police Officer Lenny Harper, the "outsider" detective whose admirable determination to root out long-buried truths and bring belated "closure" for the 160 alleged victims is driving this painful investigation.

The antithesis of Jersey's smooth fictional sleuth, Bergerac, the balding Mr Harper - a no-nonsense, old school policeman from Londonderry - is 56 years old and due to retire this September.

After a career spanning the Met, Strathclyde and the RUC's interrogation centres in West Belfast, he says he is utterly determined to leave Jersey this autumn - whether or not he has completed his inquiry - and relax in Scotland with his wife and three grandchildren.

According to close colleagues, he is well aware that there are many who also can't wait to see the back of him.

"The day Lenny sails out of Jersey harbour, the dockside will no doubt be lined with members of the Jersey Establishment delighted to wave him goodbye," one well-placed police source told me.

Mr Harper, for his part, maintains that he is receiving all the support he needs for the swansong investigation for which he will be remembered. When he discovered that a small number of the 40 identified suspects were still working with children, they were immediately removed to positions where they posed no threat.

Asked whether he finds it uncomfortable - in the island's goldfish bowl environment - to probe into dark matters rumoured to have been covered up (at the very least) by the senior politicians and civil servants among whom he works, he replies tersely: "I'm a cop, and cops investigate people. I don't find it difficult investigating paedophiles."

According to more colourful descriptions, the Haut de la Garenne children's home was a forbidding cross between Colditz and Bluebeard's castle. The reality is rather different.

On a sunny day, this rectangular, two-storey Victorian edifice, set amid rolling farmland replete with Jersey Royal potatoes, is an elegant building. Only the blue tarpaulin tunnel now concealing the entrance and the occasionally frenzied barking of a sniffer-dog betray the unspeakable acts that were perpetrated against children here.

Abandoned to the 100-bed home, with its Dickensian workhouse regime and fearsome discipline (one boy had his finger severed when beaten with a sharpened cane), some were as young as eight when their innocence was violated in a 12ft square cellar hidden beneath the main entrance hall.

The questions are almost unending: why did this happen in Jersey, whose image is one of bucket and spade holidays and a timelessly bucolic ambience, reminiscent of Fifties Britain?

Why at this home, in particular? How many abusers were there, and how wide did their network spread? The police investigation into Haut de la Garenne (which has since widened to encompass other institutions on the island) began when officers realised that several people responsible for child care had been convicted of paedophile-related offences.

When they appealed for further information, dozens of former residents began coming forward.

Statements have now been taken from some 230 people living as far away as Australia. The scale of the scandal has staggered detectives.

In the most sickening public testimony yet to emerge, one woman who spent four years at the home as a teenager in the mid-1970s described how drunken staff would dose her with Valium before using her to satisfy their macabre sexual perversions.

Sometimes they would invite friends from outside to select "weak" victims from the dorms, she said - which gives credence to fears that the house on the hill was a magnet for sexual predators in other walks of the community, and perhaps even visitors from the mainland.

"The things that happened are indescribable - the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of," said the woman, who called herself Pamela.

Other residents recall seeing children being snatched from the dorms, never to return.

Their most chilling fears were confirmed last Saturday, when the police search team unearthed the partial remains of a child.

Meanwhile, the evidence of cruelty in the cellar continues to mount. An old bathtub has been found down there; and builders have revealed how they stumbled upon a set of shackles while converting the home to a youth hostel in 2003.

All this leads Mr Harper to believe there are "strong indications" that more bodies will be found soon.

He believes the "culture of abuse" spanned some 30 years, and went on right up until 1986, when the home was closed as "uneconomic".

In fact, some former residents claim they did; but that their warnings were ignored.

According to Senator Stuart Syvret, 42, a Left-leaning thorn in the Establishment's side, who claims to have been sacked as health minister for speaking out about the scandal, this can be explained by "a culturally appalling attitude to children in Jersey".

He points to "'failings over child protection dating back decades", and says that he still can't be sure that young people in the island's three remaining care-homes, and two adolescent units, are safe.

Jersey's child welfare system certainly lags a long way behind that in Britain. On the mainland, broad-ranging legislation was introduced in the wake of successive scandals, and is augmented by a watchful voluntary sector.

However, according to Simon Bellwood, recently sacked as head of the Greenfields secure unit on Jersey after raising grave concerns about its system of rewarding and punishing the children in its care, such safety nets are singularly lacking in Jersey.

"The people who run the system operate in a vacuum and create their own rules," he told me. "Any member of staff who complains is likely to end up digging potatoes for a living." A damning indictment.

Delving deeper into the Haut de la Garenne scandal, however, one discovers that its pitifully forsaken children were, in many ways, victims of Jersey's peculiar history.

The home was opened in 1867 as an "industrial school" - an integral plank of Victorian-era social engineering, which aimed to turn delinquent boys into disciplined farm and factory workers.

It later supplied recruits to a nearby Naval training centre. (Since there appears to have been a link between sexual abuse in the Sea Cadets and the children's home, this may yet prove significant.)

But it is during the late Fifties and Sixties that sexual abuse appears to have become endemic.

In this post-War period, the proportion of children in care in Jersey sky-rocketed, greatly exceeding that on the mainland.

Historians point to a number of reasons. Jersey was invaded by German troops in 1940, and the island occupied for five years. Before the invasion, the majority of able-bodied men were evacuated, and many unwanted babies resulted from sexual liaisons between the local women and the occupying troops.

As these abandoned children grew older, a culture of delinquency developed. Later, when the age of sexual permissiveness arrived, the illegitimate offspring of seasonal farm workers increased their numbers.

Then there were those boys and girls whose impoverished parents could not afford to keep them; and others who simply misbehaved - scrumping apples, perhaps, or stealing - only to be branded beyond parental control and packed off to the dreaded "house on the hill".

In Britain, of course, a court order would have been required to place them in care. Yet on Jersey, incredibly, they were often deposited at the doors of Haut de la Garenne without anyone outside their families knowing their fate.

Small wonder, then, that even as late as 1989, 269 children were in care on the island - a colossal number considering the size of the population. Today the number stands at just 66.

Kenny Le Quesne, now 58, told me how his father took him there for pilfering a few pounds from his mother's purse.

Mercifully, his worst memory is of being forced to eat a bowl of gruel into which a bully had flung a piece of chewed-off fat, just like Oliver Twist. Thus it was that more than 1,000 children spent time at the home during the years the police are investigating.

From 1960, they included girls as well as boys; and shortly thereafter, when the island's only creche was closed, abandoned babies would be taken there, too. Disturbingly, I have discovered that entire families fell victim to the sadistic abusers of Haut de la Garenne.

For example, what 49-year-old "Pamela" did not reveal this week is that her uncle is among those who have complained to the police. Pamela's step-brother also disclosed that his close friend, Paul Lynn-Mulholland, is among an untold number of past residents who have committed suicide because they could not live with their demons.

His story was corroborated by Mr Mulholland's younger sister, Carol, who was among those who wept at last Tuesday's church service. Carol, now 37, described how her parents met as teenagers in Haut de la Garenne, and went on to have two children. But then her father committed suicide, her mother was no longer able to cope, and she and her brother Paul were sent to the home.

Carol - perhaps because she was a resilient character, she surmises - was not abused back then, but Paul claimed to have been raped, and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, his sister discovered the truth only after he took a fatal overdose six years ago. She is convinced that the sex attack precipitated all the troubles which led to his death at the age of just 33.

"The pervert who abused my brother should be done for murder," she told me. The name of the man alleged to have raped Mr Lynn-Mulholland has now been passed to the police, though whether it will be possible to prosecute him remains to be seen.

In all events, his friends and relatives can be sure that the dogged Lenny Harper will do his utmost to give them justice.

Although he has drawn up a list of 40 suspects, so far just one has been charged: a 76-year-old former warden at Haut de la Garenne named Gordon Charles Wateridge.

Now in hiding on Guernsey, he faces accusations of indecent assault on three girls between 1969 and 1979.

However, Mr Harper says he will continue to work slowly and methodically, as is his style, resisting the temptation to make publicity-catching arrests until he feels sure he has sufficient evidence to put before the red-robed jurors in Jersey's arcane Royal Court.

But supposing this enormously complex inquiry remains unresolved come his retirement day in September?

Surely he won't depart the island while the house on the hill sex fiends remain at large?

But when he fixes you with an old-fashioned Londonderry stare and talks about all those tortured little children, it is hard to believe he could rest until he has closed the last file on the House of Horrors and locked all its evil predators away.

'Abuse was anything from rape to torture. It happened every night'

Victims call for house to be demolished as they reveal full scale of horror at Haut de la Garenne

Former residents at a Jersey care home where police are searching for the remains of up to six children described yesterday how they were repeatedly drugged, raped and abused while supposedly under the protection of the institution's staff.

Testimonies, including one from a leading local trade unionist, painted a horrifying picture of life inside Haut de la Garenne, where more than 1,000 children were housed in the decades before it was closed down.

Peter Hannaford, 59, who lived at the home until he was 12, called for the building to be demolished. Speaking for the first time in public about his ordeal, he described his childhood there as "hell". "The abuse was anything from rape to torture. It was men and women who abused us. It happened every night and it happened to everyone. I was scared to go to bed. You were threatened with punishment if you said anything, which could have been a whip or anything," the union official said.

A mother-of-two, identified only as Pamela, 49, said she spent two years inside the home in the early 1970s. She alleged that the weakest children were selected by members of staff during drunken parties and plied with cigarettes and alcohol.

"The things that happened there are indescribable – the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of," she said.

Children who fell foul of the authorities were stripped naked and locked in a 10ft "punishment room", she claimed.

"I was sent there if I slipped up in any way – not eating all of my dinner, looking at one of the staff in a funny way, basically any excuse they could find," she said.

"When I fought back a female staff member came in and gave me huge dose of valium that knocked me out, and sexually assaulted me. I was always being drugged."

Some 150 people have contacted police since the discovery of human bones at the care home on Saturday. It also emerged that the notorious paedophile Edward Paisnell, known as the Beast of Jersey, visited Haut de la Garenne during the 1960s.

The political fallout on the island from the affair continued yesterday. The Chief Minister, Frank Walker, issued a statement conceding that "a cloud hangs over Jersey". However, he sought to calm fears of an island-wide cover up by insisting there was "no hiding place in Jersey for anyone who abused children or, who in any way may have colluded with that abuse and no stone will be left unturned to bring them to justice".

But the former health minister who was sacked after blowing the whistle on the children's care home scandal claimed senior figures on the island had concealed evidence of an earlier sex abuse scandal at a school. Senator Stuart Syvret handed out copies of a confidential report from 2000 on the activities of Jervis Dykes, a teacher at the local Victoria College, who was jailed for abusing six pupils between 1979 and 1996.

Mr Syvret also accused the island's newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post, of failing to publish the critical findings, which he had leaked to journalists. The newspaper said the document contained no new information and it had decided not to publish "in deference to the feelings of victims and their families".

Excavation work at the Haut de la Garenne was due to resume today after it was suspended for a structural survey.

Kenny Le Quesne, 57: 'The principal beat me with a birch cane. I used to cry myself to sleep'

Mr Le Quesne stayed at the home for six weeks during the mid 1960s when he was a young teenager. "My mother sent me there after she caught me stealing some money from her purse," he said. "I should have been there for only a couple of days, but within hours of arriving I ran away. When I returned the principal beat me with a birch cane.

"There were a lot of older boys who had done far worse than steal a shilling. They were all part of gangs and they were terrifying. I used to cry myself to sleep every night.

"On one occasion, one of the boys chucked a lump of fat into the stew I was eating in the lunch hall. One of the guards saw me take it out and hit me. He told me to eat it. When I refused he hit me again. It made me retch, but I had to get it down because everyone was watching me."

Island 'needs mainland judges' - February 27, 2008

Jack Straw is to be asked to send independent judges to Jersey to take charge of cases after claims that previous abuse allegations have been covered up. Senator Stuart Syvret said he would also ask the Justice Secretary to appoint independent prosecutors from the mainland. “I have no confidence that there will be proper separation of the executive and judiciary without the appointment of independent judges,” he said.

Mr Syvret claimed that his fears were raised by a damning report on a child abuse scandal at Jersey’s only boys’ public school which he claimed was “swept under the carpet” by the authorities. Andrew Jervis-Dykes, a maths teacher, was jailed for four years in April 1999 after pleading guilty to indecent assault in connection with the offences at Victoria College. An independent report was commissioned by the college and education chiefs said officials had acted to protect the school’s reputation and the member of staff, not the pupil.

Mr Syvret said that two senior members of Jersey’s judiciary were closely involved with the school at the time.

Children 'also abused on Guernsey - David Batty - guardian.co.uk - Wednesday March 5 2008

A former resident of a Jersey care home at the centre of a child abuse investigation said today children were assaulted on a second Channel Island.

Carl Denning, who was a resident at the former children's home Haut de la Garenne on Jersey, said he and other children were punched and beaten by staff at a care home in Guernsey during the 1970s.

Denning, now 49 and married with four children, said the physical abuse he and other children suffered while in care on Guernsey was covered up by the authorities.

"There was definitely abuse going on in Guernsey, not to the same level as on Jersey but it was there," said Denning, who lives in North Wales.

"There was one bloke, he's dead now so he can't be brought to justice, he used to punch us and beat us. So did other staff.

"It wasn't sexual abuse but it was violent and there were other boys who suffered. But no one would listen. I feel like the authorities really didn't believe what went on."

He stayed in two homes on Guernsey in the 1970s and said the abuse took place while he was in the first home.

A spokesman for the Haut de la Garenne investigation said any reports of abuse on Guernsey would be handled by police on that island.

He said: "It would be passed on to Guernsey but if the allegations are connected, then the constabularies would work together."

A spokesman for Guernsey police said they had not received any reports of abuse but any such claims would be investigated fully.

More than 160 people claim they were physically and sexually abused at Haut de la Garenne during the past 40 years.

Police excavating the site have found a child's skull buried under a stairwell and a network of secret underground chambers where victims said they were drugged and raped by both staff and other children at the home.

A specialist military team is using hi-tech radar equipment to search for more bodies at the site.

More than 40 suspects have been identified in the abuse inquiry and a specialist police team has been based at the port in case any of them attempt to flee the island.

Most of the alleged abuse is understood to have taken place in the 1970s and 1980s.

Home abuse 'took place in Guernsey'
A former resident of a Jersey care home at the centre of a major abuse investigation has claimed that attacks on children were rife on a second Channel Island.

Carl Denning stayed at the former children's home Haut de la Garenne on Jersey until he was 11 years old before being moved to two care centres on Guernsey.

Haut de la Garenne, dubbed "the house of horrors", is being investigated after more than 160 people claimed they were physically and sexually abused during the past 40 years.

Police excavating the site have also found a child's remains buried under a stairwell and a network of secret underground chambers where victims said they were kept in solitary confinement.

Now the scandal threatens to engulf Guernsey as Mr Denning, who lives in North Wales, claims that not only did he and other children suffer violent attacks while in care on the island, but they were covered up.

He said: "There was definitely abuse going on in Guernsey, not to the same level as on Jersey but it was there. There was one bloke, he's dead now so he can't be brought to justice, he used to punch us and beat us. So did other staff.

"It wasn't sexual abuse but it was violent and there were other boys who suffered. But no-one would listen. I feel like the authorities really didn't believe what went on."

The 49-year-old, who is married and has four children, said he stayed in two homes on Guernsey in the 1970s and the abuse took place while he was in the first home.

A spokesman for the Haut de la Garenne investigation said that any reports of abuse on Guernsey would be handled by their police. He said: "It would be passed on to Guernsey but if the allegations are connected, then the constabularies would work together." A spokesman for Guernsey police said they had not received any reports of abuse but if they did, they would be investigated fully.

The news comes as Jersey tourist chiefs suspended a £1 million advertising campaign in the wake of the abuse scandal. Tourism officials said that to continue with the campaign, which began on Boxing Day, would have been "inappropriate".

Scottish Matron Named As Suspect In Jersey Abuse Scandal - Mar 3 2008 Victoria Ward In Jersey - Daily Record

A SCOT who was matron of the Jersey abuse scandal children's home has been named as a suspect.

Morag Jordan, who now lives in Kirriemuir, Angus, is one of 40 people police on the island are investigating over allegations of physical and sexual abuse of up to 200 children. She and her husband Tony spoke to the Record last week to deny any involvement in abuse. They also claimed that the Haut de la Garenne home was not as bad as it had been portrayed.

But one man, now 38, who lived at the home from the ages of two to 12, claims he vividly remembered being abused by Morag Jordan.

He said: "I personally received a black eye as she pulled my school tie over my head. I also remember seeing her beating other kids and she forced us to take cold baths upon rising."

The 40 suspects include former care staff, health workers and ex-police officers.All were being closely monitored and Jersey's ports and airports are being watched to ensure those who still live on the Channel Island cannot flee.There have been claims of a sustained cover-up by former employees.

The move follows the discovery of bricked-up cellar rooms at the home where, ex-residents say, they were stripped and abused.

The intricate work by the police in the "torture chamber" includes searching between every floorboard for hairs of potential victims or suspects.

Among those being quizzed is a female former member of staff who was accused of trying to intimidate a victim.

Part of a child's skull found in rubble in the cellar is being examined in England using carbon dating technology.

The Jordans left two years before the home closed and came to Scotland, where they do voluntary work with kids.

When quizzed about his time at the home, Tony Jordan said last week: "I saw nothing when I worked there. I did nothing wrong. "The kids had a swimming pool and a pool room and we also had a disco regularly. We used to put discos on every two weeks."

Jersey Police spokesman John Wood warned that the investigation could last at least another year as they attempted to contact every former resident of the home, known locally as Colditz. He admitted that it was an "almost impossible task" to trace all those who went missing.

Police sources confirmed last night that a politician dubbed The Fat Man would have been on the list of suspects. One former resident claimed he was repeatedly raped by Senator Wilfred Krichefski - a leading Jersey politician in the 1960s who died in 1974. It was alleged that he was "presented" with boys from the home with the words: "Here's a boy for you, sir."

'I have known about Jersey paedophiles for 15 years,' says award-winning journalist - By EILEEN FAIRWEATHER - 2nd March 2008

The award-winning journalist who exposed terrible abuse in Islington children's homes now reveals horrifying links to sinister discoveries at Jersey's Haut de la Garenne.

I met the frightened policeman at an isolated country restaurant, many miles from his home and station. Detective Constable Peter Cook had finally despaired, and decided to blow the whistle to a reporter. He was risking his career, so made me scribble my notes into a tiny pad beneath the tablecloth.

He had uncovered a vicious child sex ring, with victims in both Britain and the Channel Islands, and he wanted me to get his information to police abuse specialists in London. Incredibly, he claimed that his superiors had barred him from alerting them. He feared a cover-up: many ring members were powerful and wealthy. But I did not think him paranoid: I specialised in exposing child abuse scandals and knew, from separate sources, of men apparently linked to this ring.

They included an aristocrat, clerics and a social services chief. Their friends included senior police officers.

Repeatedly, inquiries by junior detectives were closed down, so I, a journalist, was asked to convey confidential information from one police officer to others. It seemed surreal.

I duly met trusted contacts at the National Criminal-Intelligence Squad. That was more than 12 years ago, and little happened - until now.

Last weekend, a child's remains were found at a former children's home on Jersey amid claims of a paedophile ring. More than 200 children who lived at Haut de la Garenne have described horrific sexual and physical torture dating back to the Sixties. When I heard the news, my eyes filled with tears. I felt heartbroken, not least at my own powerlessness. I have known for more than 15 years about Channel Islands paedophiles victimising children in the British care system.

I was relieved that the truth was finally emerging. But I felt devastated. Children had probably been murdered. I had so not wanted to be right.

I stood outside the forbidding Victorian building of Haut de la Garenne this week and watched grim-faced police in blue plastic forensic suits hunt its bricked-up secret basements for children's bones.

Outside, a large cross commemorates the 35 former residents who died fighting for their country: "Their names liveth forever." Oh yes?

What are the names of the children whose bodies may now be dug up - and why did no one miss and search for them earlier? Jersey's residents and political class must ask these questions.

Disturbing allegations about the murder of children in care have characterised other scandals I investigated in Britain, but today I can reveal for the first time the links between the abuse I uncovered at care homes in Islington, North London, and the horrifying discoveries on Jersey.

I have never before written that 14-year-old Jason Swift, killed in 1985 by a paedophile gang, is believed to have lived in Islington council's Conewood Street home.

Two sources claimed this when I investigated Islington's 12 care homes for The Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the London Evening Standard, in the early Nineties.

But hundreds of children's files mysteriously disappeared in Islington and, without documentation, this was not evidence enough.

We did, however, prove that every home included staff who were paedophiles, child pornographers or pimps. Concerned police secretly confirmed that several Islington workers were believed "networkers", major operators in the supply of children for abuse and pornography.

Some of these were from the Channel Islands or regularly took Islington children there on unofficial visits. In light of the grisly discoveries at Haut de la Garenne, the link now seems significant, but at the time we were so overwhelmed by abuse allegations nearer home that this connection never emerged.

What we did report prompted the sort of vehement official denials that have come to characterise child abuse claims. Margaret Hodge, then council leader, denounced us as Right-wing "gutter journalists" who supposedly bribed children to lie.

Our findings were eventually vindicated by Government-ordered inquiries, and two British Press Awards. Yet I knew we had only scraped the surface of Islington's corruption.

Now Jersey police under deputy chief Lenny Harper - a 'new broom' outsider - have been secretly investigating a paedophile ring linked to the island's care homes for months, I have been struck by common factors with the British abuse scandals: innocent-sounding sailing trips, where children can be isolated and abused, away from prying eyes, then delivered to other abusers; the familiar smearing of whistle-blowers; and the suppression of damning reports.

Jersey social worker Simon Bellwood was sacked early last year after speaking out, and popular health minister Stuart Syvret, 42, was fired in November after publicising the suppressed Sharp Report into abuse allegations.

"The smears on me are water off a duck's back," this brave man told me yesterday in a St Helier cafe. But his hands shook.

I have never assumed that the officials, politicians and police who cover up abuse scandals are all paedophiles, nor does Syvret.

"They just want a quiet life and their competency unquestioned. I'm angrier with them than the abusers, and want several prosecuted for obstructing the course of justice. The police are considering charges," he added.

Traditionally, police fear paedophile ring inquiries as expensive and unproductive. Traumatised witnesses can be hazy and collapse under cross-examination.

Convictions are rare. Police therefore raid suspected abusers for paedophile pornography, which more easily yields convictions.

Well - in theory. In June 1991, police in Cambridgeshire raided the home of Neil Hocquart who abused children in Britain and Guernsey and, with a social worker from Jersey, supplied child pornography for a huge sex ring.

It should have been a major breakthrough. But, as DC Cook told me, it went horribly wrong.

A handful of child sex-ring victims become "recruiters". They are not beaten but rewarded with gifts,

money and 'love'. In return, their job is to procure other victims. Such a man, my whistle-blower believed, was Neil Frederick Hocquart.

Hocquart, original surname Foster, was abused while in care in Norfolk and was eventually 'befriended' by an older man, merchant seaman Captain H. Hocquart of Vale, in Guernsey, whose surname he adopted.

Captain Hocquart was not the only Channel Islands man with an interest in children in care. Satan worshipper Edward Paisnel, "The Beast of Jersey", was given a 30-year sentence in 1971 on 13 counts of raping girls and boys. The building contractor fostered children and played Father Christmas at Haut de la Garenne in the Sixties.

Cambridgeshire police, in a joint operation with Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad (now the Paedophile Unit), raided Neil Hocquart's Swaffham Manor home in June 1991.

They found more than 100 child-sex videos and 300 photographs of children. At nearby Ely they found his friend, Walter Clack, trying to dispose of a sick home video of a middle-aged man abusing a boy.

Who were the children in these films and photos? Police needed properly to question these men. But they never got the chance.

Hocquart secretly took an overdose of anti-depressant dothiepin and died at Addenbrooke's Hospital soon after his arrest. Was his suicide a last act of loyalty?

DC Cook told me incredulously that a senior officer broke with normal procedure and informed Clack, before he was questioned, that the other suspect was dead. Clack then blamed the dead man for everything, and escaped with a £5,000 fine - and inherited one third of Hocquart's wealth, at his bequest.

Wills featured strongly in the fortunesof the Islington and Channel Islands paedophiles. Police discovered that Neil Hocquart inherited his wealth from the Guernsey sea captain. But Captain Hocquart possibly paid dearly for befriending orphans: he died soon after making out his will in the younger man's favour. Scotland Yard detectives told me they found at least "two or three" wills of older men who died of apparent heart attacks shortly after leaving everything to Neil Hocquart. The officers cheerfully called him a "murderer". These deaths were never investigated: the suspect, after all, was now also dead.

Hocquart wasn't the only person in his circle to become rich this way. A Jersey-born friend of Hocquart's, who started his childcare career on the island before becoming a key supplier of children from Islington's care homes to paedophile rings, similarly inherited a fortune.

Nicholas John Rabet was for many years deputy superintendent of Islington council's home at 114 Grosvenor Avenue.

He and a colleague, another single man later barred from social work by the Department of Health, both took children on unauthorised trips to Jersey. Allegations mounted but nothing was done.

Rabet's opportunities to obtain victims massively increased after he befriended the widow of an American oil millionaire. She died after rewriting her will in his favour. He inherited her manor house at Cross in Hand near Heathfield, Sussex, where he opened a children's activity centre, and regularly invited children in Islington's care to stay.

Hocquart spent £13,000 on quad bikes for the centre, called The Stables, and he and Walter Clack became "volunteers" there.

Hocquart befriended one young boy and took him on a sailing trip, where there would be little risk of being spotted. Police found disturbing film from the trip of men spraying the naked child with water.

But Hocquart left the boy another third of his money, and he denied abuse when questioned.

Police also found at Hocquart's home naked photos of a boy of about ten, whom they learned was in the care of Islington social services. I shall call him Shane.

Sussex police raided Rabet's children's centre. But he had plenty of warning and, they believed, emptied it of child pornography. However officers still found a "shrine to boys", with suggestive photographs everywhere, including pictures of Shane.

They approached Shane, at his Islington children's home. He tearfully confirmed months of abuse. But their attempts to investigate further were thwarted by Islington Council.

Many professionals had, for years, expressed grave fears about Rabet, and put their concerns in writing. But Islington falsely told Sussex officers it had no file material on Rabet or his alleged victim.

Staff had in fact been ordered to find the complaints and deliver them to the office of Lyn Cusack, Islington's assistant director of social services - but they were handed over to Sussex police only when I revealed their existence.

Islington's appalling mishandling of vital records was highlighted by the independent White inquiry into the abuse in Islington children's homes, which found that "at assistant director level . . . many confidential files were destroyed by mistake, although there is no evidence of conspiracy."

During the investigation into Rabet, Islington also refused to interview any other children in care, or, scandalously, help Sussex police identify other children in Rabet's photos. With only Shane's evidence to rely on, police decided not to prosecute.

I traced Shane. He was furious that Rabet was never prosecuted, but not surprised. "This goes right to the top," he said, "You have no idea how big this is." He showed me photos of another victim, a young Turkish boy with a sweet shy smile whom Rabet also regularly took from the Islington home to spend weekends at his manor house.

Shane didn't know where the boy was now, he just disappeared. I was never able to find the boy, either. Many children in care are missed by no one.

I retraced Shane two years ago to tell him that justice had finally caught up with Rabet. Third World police had succeeded where Britain's finest in Cambridgeshire, Sussex, London and Jersey had failed.

Rabet fled to Thailand's notorious child sex resort of Pattaya after the White inquiry. He was arrested there in spring 2006 and charged with abusing 30 boys, some as young as six. Thai police believed he had abused at least 300. But he was never tried: on May 12, 2006, Rabet died of an overdose at the age of 57.

Two other Jersey-born social workers, who for legal reasons I cannot name, also worked in Islington and later with young offenders. One arranged more of those mysterious sailing trips to Guernsey, the other sent children to Rabet's centre. Both were accused of abuse.

In 1995, we reinvestigated Rabet and met DC Cook at the restaurant. He had gone through Hocquart's papers, investigated other members of the paedophile ring and met their victims. He was horrified at what he discovered. One man, for example, married a single mother purely so he could abuse her two young sons. "He told these poor children to keep quiet, that their mother had been lonely so long they would ruin her life if they said anything," the officer told me.

The vicar who married them knew the groom was a paedophile but did not care: he was one too, and got his victims from a British care home.

DC Cook travelled to Guernsey, which Hocquart regularly visited. There local CID officers drove him round, and he met two brothers whom Hocquart abused, then delivered them to a high-ranking, respected local man to rape. DC Cook traced another distraught victim in England who provided invaluable information about the man, based in Wales, who copied the ring's child pornography for distribution. This man clearly needed his door kicked in by police, as did Hocquart's other contacts in Britain and the Channel Islands. But no action was taken.

Then word came from on high to drop his inquiries. DC Cook accepted that there might be an innocent explanation - that his local force might not want the financial burden of a national investigation. But he became deeply troubled when told not to forward his vital intelligence to specialist officers elsewhere.

Britain's new National Criminal Intelligence Squad (NCIS) had the job of disseminating intelligence on paedophiles across the country. Would I, asked the troubled officer, take his information to the squad's Paedophile Unit for him?

And so we pretended to share a meal while I secretly scribbled down the names, addresses, dates of birth and believed victims of dozens of suspects.

My diary records that I met NCIS on January 4, 1996, at 10.30am, and I also channelled the intelligence to Scotland Yard. Neither, unfortunately, had the power to make local forces take action, so I was not optimistic.

This was not the first time I had acted as a go-between. In 1994, another police officer was barred from investigating a paedophile ring, which included an Islington social worker of Channel Islands origin.

We alerted Scotland Yard. This man was, I learned, involved with five overlapping paedophile rings - but he has never been convicted. Peter Cook has now retired and agreed to go on the record. He told me the partner of Hocquart's video producer was eventually imprisoned for abusing his own sons. "But we could have stopped so much else, so much earlier," he said.

"The news from Jersey is horrifying. I've thought of Rabet all week. The hierarchy does not like these inquiries, they're expensive and produce embarrassment, so people shove it all under the carpet, they don't want to know even when children are dying.

"There will be people now crawling out claiming they were always worried. What cowards, what bastards!"

Jersey police confirmed this week it was aware of Nick Rabet and keen to learn more about his friends. Peter Cook told me: "I will help all I can."

Michael Hames, the former head of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad, once told me that he never doubted paedophiles were killing children in care. But the climate of disbelief was fierce, and he asked sadly: "What police chief will dare risk his career by hiring JCBs [to search for the bodies]?"

Courageous Ulsterman Lenny Harper has. Deposed Jersey health minister Stuart Syvret told me: "My family has lived here since William the Conqueror. But if an indigenous police officer were in charge, this investigation would never have happened. Jersey is an oligarchy, where the elite look after each other."

When I flew home late last night, in time for Mother's Day, I felt utter relief. This tiny island with its high-hedged lanes looked so pretty when the police series Bergerac was filmed here, but to me said just one thing: that there is no escape from here for a terrified child. If witnesses who want, finally, to help these tragically un-mothered children, now is the time to speak out.

'Significant' new finds corroborate Jersey child abuse claims By ANGUS HOWARTH - The Scotsman

POLICE searching a former children's home for human remains said today they had found "a couple of finds of some significance" in a bricked-up cellar room.

Jersey deputy police chief Lenny Harper said: "They are items which witnesses have said were in there when offences were committed against them."

Mr Harper declined to say what the items were but he did say that no more human remains had been found.

The Haut de la Garenne building is at the centre of a major child abuse investigation involving more than 160 alleged victims and 40 suspects going back to the 1960s.

A child's skull was discovered in the building on Saturday.And police have begun to excavate more sites of interest around the building. Mr Harper would not confirm widespread reports that one of the items found in the underground was a bath. Nor would he describe the second item.

Victims' accounts have described a bath in a small underground room where children were drugged and abused. Builders who worked on the home have described finding shackles to fit a child.

Mr Harper said police would wait until they had gathered all the evidence they needed before making arrests. He was reluctant to arrest people who might be branded as paedophiles despite later being released, he said.

Police do not have a list of missing children and are trying to piece together identities from the reports of former residents, he said. "We do not have a definitive list of missing children.

"What we do have are anecdotal statements along the lines of 'we were in there with such and such a person' and maybe a first name and they got in to a row and there were screams one night and they didn't appear again the next day and someone said they had run away to the UK."

Mr Harper went on: "When we bring people in we want to be able to say we have the best evidence available."We are looking for all sorts of evidence which would include, I would have to say, human remains." He said that, despite not making arrests, police were confident no children were at risk from suspects. "At this stage there is no evidence that we have that any child is in danger from any of the people we are considering to be suspects."

Victims who have spoken of their alleged abuse claim the cellars were used to abuse children and keep them in solitary confinement. They have revealed stories of beatings and sex attacks, claiming they were raped, drugged and flogged. Mr Harper said what they have found in the first chamber corroborates some of the evidence they have received from victims.

Police have received more than 70 calls in the past few days. Some callers have mentioned the cellar.

Mr Harper said the operation is world-wide and detectives have taken statements from witnesses in Australia and Thailand.

The NSPCC childrens' charity said it had received more than 100 calls from adults reporting allegations of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse in Jersey.

More than one-third of these calls were made in the last two days and 45 have been referred to the States of Jersey Police, the charity said.

Victim Tells Of Jersey Care Home Horrors - Lisa Dowd - Sky news - Friday February 29, 2008

Sky's Lisa Dowd meets Steve, one of only a handful of youngsters who spent their whole childhood at Jersey's Haut de la Garenne - the former care home at the centre of a police abuse investigation.

Steve arrived at the home as a babySitting in Steve's lounge it's hard to believe that his later life has been so normal.

He owns a number of houses, the 38-year-old has a well paid job in IT and is looking forward to getting married in the summer. He also has an 11-year-old son.

It's hard for him to recount the terrible things that happened to him at a much earlier age.

He didn't know if the man was a staff member or a visitor - there were so many people coming and going from the care home.

"I was also made to stand in a corner until I couldn't stand up anymore because I wouldn't go to sleep at night.

"When that didn't get the desired effect they got all the people from the care home to come to the bottom field and we were paraded out in our pyjamas and chased around the field by a staff member with a bamboo cane and when he caught up with you he'd whip you.

"At the end of it all my pyjamas were ripped, I had cut back legs and could barely breath and I remember one of the staff said 'this isn't right'."

He didn't leave until he was 16Steve was a baby when he entered the care home - he didn't leave until he was 16. He says the abuse wasn't just administered by staff but also by other children.

"When I was eight I was cornered one day. I thought I was in with the gang but I was grabbed and stripped of my clothes and told to have sex with this girl who was about 15 years old.

"Of course I couldn't because I was too young but I had to pretend. If I didn't they'd whip me with stinging nettles and chuck stones at me."

Steve recalls that the Haut de la Garenne was split into four different sections.

'Aviemore' was for the babies and younger children. 'Dunluce' was for the older children. 'Claymore' was for 'normal' youngsters who hadn't done anything wrong. But 'Baintree' was the cellar area where the children who misbehaved lived.

"As a child I'd hear the other kids talk about it. They'd say if you're naughty be careful you'll end up down there in 'Baintree'.

Today, people want to silence Steve"When the group closed down and they started winding down the number of children there we went for a snoop with a member of staff and he said in a candid way: 'Oh yeah, under here is a rugby bath which has been covered over and if you mess around you'll end up down there'.

"We laughed it off, but we knew there were canes down there, I don't know about shackles but we knew about pillory stock things."

Steve told a teacher about the abuse he suffered and, after he'd left the home, a probation officer. Both took no notice of his allegations.

Even today people wish to silence him. He was told of a phone call an associate had received from one of his former childcare officers.

"This person had suggested I have a good life, a very good job, a family, I've left the island, it's all in the past and that dredging it up won't help matters - it will cause more problems.

"I said I'd already spoken to the police about it and she said 'well I know that' but if they speak to you again, certainly about the remains it would be in my best interests to say: 'I've told you all I know and keep a low profile'."

Steve's greatest fear is that it's likely he'll know who the remains belong to once they're identified.

Jersey child abuse inquiry focuses on bricked up cellar

Officers were alerted to the site, which used to be an orphanage, after a child abuse investigation was launched last November with allegations dating back to the 1960s. Lenny Harper, Jersey’s deputy chief police officer, could not say how long the cellar had been sealed.

There have been reports that children at the home were forced into solitary confinement, and when asked if the cellar was used for this Mr Harper declined to comment. “We are concentrating on a cellar that was at one stage bricked up,” he said.

“It is a very slow methodical process. We have had some positive indications from the dog but there could be a number of explanations. “At this stage we just don’t know if there are more bodies.”

Mr Harper said that ten more alleged victims had come forward after the story appeared in the media. Police were already in contact with 140 alleged victims and witnesses, including former employees at the home. Mr Harper said the investigation was also looking at accusations that allegations of abuse were not properly investigated when children made complaints in the past.

“Part of the inquiry will be the fact that a lot of the victims tried to report their assaults but for some reason or another they were not dealt with as they should be,” he said.

“We are looking at allegations that a number of agencies didn’t deal with things as perhaps they should, we are looking at all the agencies.

"We’ve no evidence of a cover-up by any Jersey government.”

Mr Harper confirmed that detectives have the names of some children who may have gone missing, but would not comment on how many. He confirmed that part of the human remains found on Saturday was a skull but warned it may not be possible to identify the child from it.

“The difficulties of trying to identify that (the skull) are immense,” he said. “It’s going to be looked at but we may never know.” He said they did not expect to make any arrests in relation to the remains in the near future and they would continue to treat the investigation as a “major crime”.

Forensic teams at the site have expanded their search, which is expected to last two weeks, and put up two more investigation tents. The child abuse investigation is focusing on the period when Haut de la Garenne was used as a centre for children in care or who had behaviour problems.

Mr Harper said that the police investigation began when a number of former members of staff were arrested on suspicion of paedophile crimes. Detectives were looking into historical allegations of sexual and physical abuse of children, said to have occurred on premises run by the state or voluntary groups.

The allegations spanned a period from the 1960s up to the early years of this decade, although police said the bulk of them focused on the 1970s and 1980s. The Haut de la Garenne closed as a children’s home in 1986. It opened as a youth hostel in 2004.

The Youth Hostel Association released a statement today stressing that the alleged incidents being investigated by police pre-date the building’s use as a youth hostel by two decades. The statement went on: “This is a deeply regrettable matter and we are doing all we can to assist the police in any way possible.”

Meanwhile Stuart Syvret, the island’s former health minister, came under attack today after he described talking to former residents in the home who claimed that floggings and solitary confinement were used as punishments. Senator Syvret said that he believed that years of abuse at care home across the island had been concealed and covered up.

Senator Frank Walker, Jersey’s Chief Minister, today said that Senator Syvret had “no evidence” for his claims and was a “disaffected member of Government”. “He first made these allegations in June and so far has produced no evidence,” he said.

“We are concentrating all our resources on helping the police and that includes looking at any allegations of a cover-up.

“If anyone is found guilty they would be arrested and prosecuted in exactly the same way as the people who perpetrated these evil crimes.”

FAQ: Jersey child abuse inquiry - The Guardian, Saturday March 1 2008

Haut de la Garenne was established in 1867 as the Jersey Industrial School "for young people of the lower classes of society and for children neglected and in a state of destitution". During the second world war German forces used it as a signalling station, and it also featured, as a police station, in the television detective series Bergerac.

The investigation began in November 2006 when detectives discovered that victims of paedophiles at the Jersey sea cadet unit had also been assaulted elsewhere. The inquiry spread to a number of children's homes and was successfully kept secret for 12 months.

Around 160 victims have come forward and police expect more to contact them in coming days. NSPCC officials say that experience tells them that around 30% of victims will never come forward. The publicity surrounding the case has encouraged more people to contact the police in recent days.

One man, Gordon Claude Wateridge, 76, has been accused of indecently assaulting three girls under the age of 16, between 1969 and 1973.

Police say they have 40 suspects, most of whom worked at the children's home at Haut de la Garenne over the last 40 years. Police have also said that some suspects are prominent figures in the island's establishment.

Daffodile protest in Jersey: Flower of Spring, a new beginning, of truth

Saturday 8th March 2008 - Royal Square - 12 noon.

Outrage after the recent terrible news, the Jersey community will show support for the victims of child abuse in Haut de la Garenne, failed by the public administration system, to register concerns about the need for change. The request no more cover ups,No more overlap between judiciary and legislature, No more culture of secrecy and to ensure this never happens again.

Police intimidating victims of Child Abuse? by Niccolo M

Why is Lenny Harper, the Police spokesman into the Haut de la Garenne child abuse, telling victims that they should not speak out? He justifies it in terms of damaging future prosecutions. This sounds like a valid point, but surely it should be the Crown Officers making this point firmly, otherwise it looks like trying to tell victims to shut up and stop embarrassing revelations. Would the story about Senator Krichevski have come out had a victim not had the courage to speak?

If there are clear dangers in speaking out, could the Police please explain exactly what those dangers are – chapter and verse. Better still, it should be the Crown Officers, since it is clearly they conducting Harper. They will never speak publicly, especially after the Walker media gaffs.

Harper is performing well. He comes over as authoritative, eloquent and calm, in complete contrast to Walker’s frenzied attacks on Syvret. Its Harper that deserves the medal on retirement, not Walker his knighthood.

On BBC Radio Jersey this morning (Tuesday 04.03.08) the presenter started joking about the fragment of child’s skull as an old bone and implicitly seeking to undermine the credibility of murder story as mere sensationalism. John Uphoff was in full-on flippant mode. Further evidence of that sensationalism was the story in the Sun newspaper with its lurid and evocative language about “Tomb”, “Dungeon” and “Horror” at Haut de la Garenne. We all know that the Sun newspaper is sensationalist and their standards of journalism are low. That said, low standards of journalism are not confined to the Sun. Such comments are evidence that the local media are trying to take the anger out of Jersey public opinion, to reassure us that all is well. Next we will be hearing that the victims of abuse are lying and only making their revelations to seek unwarrented compensation.

Overall an attempt is being made to silence victims, because victim stories are profoundly disturbing to our cosy self satisfied existences. How could paedophilia and abuse have been occurring over fifty years on such a scale and not be revealed? Children grow up and realise when adults, that what they experienced was wrong, and surely would have spoken out to expose the abusers. No it seems. The climate of fear that prevails in Jersey has served to perpetrate the abuse and protect the abusers. We all understand the expression “don’t rock the boat”. This must culture of conformity and secrecy must change. We must speak out vehemently against the many injustices and inequalities in our society. We must protest, not hide away for another fifty years

Dumbing down the evidence – Establishment spin machine in action - by Niccolo M

Frank Walker is such a liability that his minders have had to keep him off the media less he make more gaffs like the two last week. Instead the Jersey Evening Post (aka Pravda to those in the know) has taken the lead to damp down the story. The front page was a line that the child’s skull found in Haut de la Garenne rubble was Neolithic, an unfortunate import with in-fill to the underground rooms. Rob Shipley the Deputy Editor has been on Sky TV singing the praises of Jersey. One national journo found it most peculiar that a fellow journalist should be defending the government. Not really if one lives in Jersey and understands that the JEP is the organ of government. Where is it we live? Burma? No, its North Korea stupid.

Ben Queree followed up with balanced comment telling us that Walker, despite his many faults, was basically a good bloke. Pull the other one Ben. Who told you to write such utter trash? Its just so transparent that its an apology designed to pull the wool over eyes of a gullible Jersey public. Ben you just lost major creditability. Nul points.

The revelations that the late Senator Wilfred is involved in allegations of child rape must have shaken not a few. The good Senator was one of the founders of the Jersey Progressive Party, whose successors still run the island. The party was formed to fight the post war elections on behalf of the wealthy business interest. It would seem he was not alone and that there are senior contemporaries of his possibly involved in similar activity. How the mighty are falling. Of course there was and is no cover up.

Non of the elected States Members has broken ranks to criticise the government. Some who might are inhibited by the loathing they hold for Stuart Syvert and his antics. Surely its time for a reassment? The Jersey Public deserves better and the national media has noticed the deafening silence from that quarter. One party State? No, that’s only in Burma, and North Korea.

Expect the JEP to try and eviscerate the Demonstration and Rally to be held in the Royal Square next Saturday. Its going to be a big one.

"There will be no cover up in Jersey" Frank Walker - by Niccolo M

The present crisis is the gravest the Jersey Establishment has faced since 1945. Indeed it has the potential to be a turning point in Jersey's history comparable to the political changes that followed the German Occupation.

Jersey needs its own Revolution of Colour, like Ukraine and Georgia, to oust the corrupt old guard. The Spring Time of the People is upon us - let the Yellow Daffodil of Spring be our symbol of cleansing and rejuvination.

This looks like the end of Frank Walker, the Chief Minister of Jersey. Exile may be the only honourable way out.

Police discover more bones inside chamber of horrors at Jersey children's home, By REBECCA CAMBER and ARTHUR MARTIN - DAILY MAIL - 5 March 2008

Police digging up the "Colditz" care home discovered more bones yesterday as the inquiry into sickening child abuse allegations escalated.

The remains were found close to where forensic officers found a skull beneath several inches of concrete on the ground floor of Haut de la Garenne in Jersey. A sniffer dog went "berserk" when he was led close to the bones, sparking police fears that they could be the remains of another body.

The discovery came after the first picture of a "punishment room" at the home was released, revealing a haunting message written on the wall. A giant stone bath tub stood in the centre of the room and up to 25 children at a time would be forced to sit in freezing water as the abusers watched. On a nearby wooden post is the message scrawled by an inmate: "Iv been bad 4 years & years."

The bones have been sent to a laboratory to ascertain if they are human and if they date back to the period when the abuse took place at the children's home in St Martin, Jersey.

In a day of dramatic developments, police revealed they have been overwhelmed by hundreds of phone calls from victims and witnesses reporting allegations of abuse over the last few days. They may have to set up a dedicated call centre to deal with the volume of calls more effectively.

The number of full-time officers investigating the child abuse case has almost doubled in this week as officers continue to work long hours in the hope of achieving a significant breakthrough. Deputy police chief Lenny Harper revealed that the number of suspects had risen to 40, which includes many now living on the British mainland.

It was reported today that one suspect is Wilfred Krichekfski, a leading member of Jersey's political establishment, who died in 1974. Former senator Mr Krichekfski allegedly visited the home regularly to abuse boys up to his death, the Times claimed. A former resident says he was raped in the early Sixties by the senator after being woken up by a care worker with the words: "There is someone here to see you." The only person he told about the abuse was a psychiatrist who reportedly told him he would be placed in a mental hospital if he repeated the allegations.

A police spokesman said today: "We do have a list of suspects but we will not reveal any of the names on that list."

Asked if the team was any closer to making an arrest, Mr Harper said: "Suspects are one thing, we need evidence to convict people. If we get any evidence that they are trying to leave the island we have got a team at the ports and we will take the necessary action."

Detectives have questioned victims and witnesses in Australia, Thailand, the UK and several countries within Europe, including Germany. Mr Harper, who is leading the inquiry, said there was a "culture" of abuse at the home during certain periods. "I think we are looking at a culture of abuse rather than a paedophile ring," he said "There is an excavation of a second site within the house.

"Archaeologists have taken out a few items. But it is too early to say whether they are significant. They're possibly pieces of bone."

Police are also trying to establish how many children killed themselves at the home.

This line of inquiry emerged after relatives of a child who committed suicide contacted police to ask for an investigation into the death. Mr Harper said he felt there were issues surrounding the suicide claims which need "to be looked at" but he dismissed the suggestion that the victim was murdered.

The number of alleged victims who suffered physical or sexual abuse at Haut de la Garenne is now more than 160. Many claim they were repeatedly raped, tortured and beaten in tiny, airless "punishment cells" below the ground floor by staff and visitors at the home from the early Fifties to 1986, the year it closed.

The horror unfolding at Haut de la Garenne - known locally as Colditz - threatens to become the worst childcare scandal on British soil.

Police are currently examining seven separate "hot-spots" inside and outside the building where the bodies of boys and girls could be buried.

In other developments, police are attempting to compile a list of those who went missing from the home. But detectives are being hampered because the evidence they have is anecdotal and often only includes a child's first name or nickname.

Police also revealed that former children's television host Jimmy Saville had visited the home on several occasions during the Seventies but is not part of their inquiry.

A former volunteer, Christine Bowker, also revealed today that she had she encountered children "frozen with fear" while working at the home in the early Seventies. She claimed that she was met with a "wall of silence" when she tried to raise concerns and eventually left because she was worried about the conduct of some staff.

Ms Bowker said: "[The staff] watched me very carefully with the children and if the children relaxed at all or responded to my affection, they glared at the children then the children just went back into their shells. "When I left... and I left in distress and abuse I received from some of the staff... I couldn't get anybody to listen to the problem," she said.

However, Patricia Thornton, who was responsible for the wellbeing of youngsters in the home from the early Fifties to 1973, insists she took no part in any abuse or cover-up. The 85-year-old, who lives in the village of Cheriton, Hampshire, said: "It's awful if it's true but I saw no evidence of it when I was there. "I just find it difficult to believe that all these horrible things were going on and I knew nothing about it."

Miss Thornton, who received an MBE in 1996 for her services to the community, said she was proud of her work at the home. She added: "When I first arrived in Jersey, there was a home for boys at Haut de la Garenne and a separate home for girls which was not being run very well. "I was very concerned about the welfare of the girls so I closed it down, pensioned off the lady who had been running it and moved the girls into the boys' home. I was very surprised when I read about the scandal. I feel quite shattered."

But police are continuing to treat Morag Jordan, a former matron at the home, as a suspect. Angus Council in Scotland confirmed on Monday that Mrs Jordan had been suspended from her post delivering meals on wheels to the elderly. A spokesman said: "Given the attention currently focused on Mrs Jordan, she has been reassigned to other duties."

Mrs Jordan, who lives in Kirriemuir with her husband Tony, claims she had no involvement with the abuse of children at the home.

And in a clear sign that politicians in Whitehall are taking the scandal seriously, senior justice officials from Jersey States have held talks in London with officials at the Ministry of Justice. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Clearly, Jersey officials, who requested the meeting, will update their ministry of justice counterparts on the continuing police investigations which are clearly potentially very serious.

"It would not be appropriate to speculate about the outcome of those investigations."

Politicians linked to Jersey abuse By David Brown - The Times, AFP - March 04, 2008

POLICE were hunting for more cellars at a Jersey children's home at the centre of allegations of sexual and physical abuse amid claims that prominent island politicians were involved in the alleged crimes.

Search teams hope this week to complete their examination of an underground room they found at the Haut de la Garenne home in which former residents claim to have been brutalised.

A leading member of Jersey's political establishment was confirmed by police yesterday as among those named as an abuser.

Wilfred Krichefski, a senator in Jersey's Government and chairman of several committees on the British Channel island, was said to have regularly visited Haut de la Garenne to abuse boys until his death in 1974. Living members of the island's establishment, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have also been identified as suspects.

One former resident has claimed he was repeatedly raped at the children's home by Krichefski in 1962 and 1963. The man, now in his late 50s and living in the West Midlands of England, said that every month, he and another boy would be taken into a back room at the home and abused by two men. The former resident said he would be woken by a care worker with the words: "There is someone here to see you". The only person he told about the abuse was a psychiatrist who told him that he would be placed in a mental hospital if he repeated the allegations.

The activities of more than 40 suspects are being monitored by police as detectives confirmed they had received complaints of abuse that allegedly took place only months ago. A police spokesman said: "There was an offence committed late last year which is being dealt with. It is not related to offences committed" at Haut de la Garenne.

Investigations into claims of abuse started in 2003, when a former resident of Haut de la Garenne, which closed in 1986, was convicted of blackmailing a care worker by threatening to expose him as a pedophile.

The investigation has been widened to include the Greenfields Secure Unit and the Sea Cadet force that used Haut de la Garenne. More than 200 alleged victims and witnesses have contacted police about abuse from the 1960s to 1986.

The first underground chamber to be uncovered at Haut de la Garenne is a room containing a 1.5m deep communal bath. A pair of shackles were found in the room. Detectives exploring the cellar hope to break through to an adjoining chamber that has a bricked-up doorway.

Former residents have told detectives that the cellar complex, referred to as Baintree, was used to punish misbehaving children. Victims have described being lowered into a "deep, dark pit" where they were left with other children in a large bath of cold water before being abused by care workers and outsiders.

Police believe a similar-sized underground complex could also exist in Haut de la Garenne's north wing, close to where a piece of a child's skull was discovered last month.

Detectives are reviewing the discovery at the spot in 2003 of other bones, which were thought to have come from an animal.

They will also investigate an underground storage area close to the building's swimming pool and two 3m-deep pits in the courtyard.

Detention cells in which former residents claim they were abused in the main building will be examined, as well as the newer Aviemore wing.

The investigation has damaged Jersey's image and threatened its tourist industry, the island's economic manager said.

After a meeting of hotel and travel bosses in the capital, St Helier, Jersey-born Philip Ozouf said: "Nothing has changed, zero - it's a caring, compassionate and secure island".

Jersey attracted nearly 400,000 visitors last year, 80 per cent of whom were British.

The island was "being portrayed in a sensationalistic way ... there is no evidence of anything for now", Mr Ozouf said.

'Horror chamber' unearthed in care home abuse probe, By Gordon Rayner- Independent.ie

The first pictures of what is believed to be the torture chamber underneath the former children's home in Jersey

This is the first picture of the "torture chamber'' below a children's home in Jersey where former residents say they were subjected to horrific sexual and physical abuse.

Some of the 160 alleged victims who have contacted police have described being assaulted in a bath in the cellar, and the picture clearly shows what appears to be a communal stone bath, partly buried in rubble from recent building work.

A set of shackles was also found in the room beneath the Haut de la Garenne home. They have been removed for forensic examination. Both the shackles and the bath corroborate descriptions of a "deep, dark place'' given to police by alleged victims who say rape and torture happened on a daily basis.

On a vertical wooden beam rising up from the bath, the words "Iv been bad 4 years & years'' have been written in black marker pen.

Police confirmed yesterday that a former senior politician in Jersey's parliament was among those accused of child abuse at Haut de la Garenne. Allegations that members of the island's establishment may have been involved in the abuse, and then conspired to cover it up, are under investigation.

Detectives fear human remains may lie buried in the cellar after a sniffer dog trained to detect the scent of blood and corpses gave a "strong reaction'' inside it.

Remains of a child's skull were found underneath a concrete floor in another part of the building last week, and police are investigating six other areas where the sniffer dogs and ground-penetrating radar equipment have indicated bodies may lie hidden. Many of the allegations of child abuse at Haut de la Garenne date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and the cramped cellar containing the bath has since been bricked up.

One former resident described having to wash in a "freezing cold" bath in a cellar with up to 20 other children. Others say that they were abused in a cellar containing a bath and a set of shackles.

The cellar was originally the ground floor of the building, but repeated changes to Haut de la Garenne mean it is now partially underground.

Police broke through the floor to access the cellar, and found several feet of builders' rubble covering its floor. The rubble has to be cleared before police can dig up the floor in their search for bodies.

A total of 40 suspects have been named by witnesses since the child abuse investigation began more than a year ago.One is senator Wilfred Krichefski, who was one of Jersey's best-known figures in the 1960s and one of the founders of the island's television station, Channel TV.

A former resident of Haut de la Garenne has told police that Mr Krichefski, who died in 1974, raped him in the early 1960s when he was aged 12.

Police confirmed they are investigating the allegations. (© Daily Telegraph, London)

Picture: the Jersey 'child abuse cellar' uncovered by police - David Brown in Jersey - The Times

The bath in the centre of this cellar room has been described by several abuse victims. On the post of one is written: "I have been bad 4 years & years"

Police investigating a child abuse scandal in Jersey have uncovered the first chamber in a network of alleged “punishment rooms” where some former residents of a children’s home have told police they suffered physical and sexual brutality.

The 12ft-square room at Haut de la Garenne is dominated by a 5ft deep communal bath or animal trough which has been described by many of the victims of abuse from the 1960s to 1986. On a wooden post behind the bath someone has written in black marker: “I’ve been bad 4 years & years”.

Building debris from the conversion of the home into a youth hostel in 2003 litters the floor of the cellar. A pair of shackles found in the room has been removed as evidence. In the ceiling is the remnant of an improvised trapdoor created so that the
cellar complex could be discreetly accessed from the building’s south wing. Much of the ceiling has been removed by the police search team since the cellar was uncovered last week.

Later this week detectives hope to break through to an adjoining chamber which has a suspiciously bricked-up doorway
leading from the first room. The secret torture complex is now believed to contain a total of four chambers. Police believe the cellars were originally have been used to house pigs or other livestock.

Former residents have told detectives that the cellar complex, referred to as “Baintree”, had later been used to punish misbehaving children. Victims have described being lowered into a “deep dark pit” where they were left with other children in a large bath of cold water before being abused at the hands care workers and outsiders. A similar-sized underground complex could also exist in the building’s north wing, close to where a piece of child’s skull was uncovered last month. Detectives are reviewing the discovery of other bones at the same spot in 2003 which were initially dismissed as coming from an animal.

They will also investigate an underground storage area close to the building’s swimming pool and two, three metre-deep pits in the courtyard. Areas used for detention cells in which former residents also recall being abused will be examined in the main building and the more modern Aviemore wing which accommodated babies and infants. Investigations into claims of abuse at the home started in 2003 when a former resident of Haut de La Garenne was convicted of blackmailing a care worker by threatening to expose him as a paedophile.

The investigation has been widened to include organised abuse at the Greenfield’s children’s home and the Sea Cadet force which used Hautde La Garenne. Detectives confirmed today that the investigation has received reports of abuse committed in recent months. A police spokesman said: “There was an offence committed late last year which is being dealt with. It is not related to offences committed at the home [Haut de la Garenne].”

A leading member of Jersey’s post-war political establishment was confirmed by police today as having been named as an abuser. Living members of the island’s establishment have also been identified as suspects but cannot be named for legal reasons.

Wilfred Krichefski, a senator in Jersey’s government and chair of several committees, allegedly regularly visited Haut de La Garenne to abuse boys un until his death in 1974. One ex-resident has claimed he was repeatedly raped at the children’s home aged 12 by Mr Krichefski between 1962 and 1963. The man, now aged in his late 50s and living in the West Midlands, said that every month he and another boy would be taken into a back room at the home and abused by two men.

The former resident said he would be woken by a care worker with the words “There is someone here to see you”. He was presented to his abuser with the words “Here’s a boy for you, sir.” The alleged victim man said: “That man raped me and did despicable acts. I know he is dead but people need to know what he was really like.” “He said: ’I’m going to teach you to be a good boy. You’ve been wicked and no one wants you. Your parents don’t want you - that’s why you’re here.’” The only person he told about the abuse was a psychiatrist on the island who warned that if he repeated the allegation he would be placed in a mental hospital.

Mr Krichefski ran a leading Jersey clothing store and was founding managing director of ITV’s Channel Television. He was awarded an OBE in 1958. Lenny Harper, the deputy chief officer, said: “It is a name that we have been given and our investigation continues.

Children's home in abuse claims - Blanche Pierre closed in 2001 - BBC news 29 February 2008,

Claims of abuse have emerged at another former children's home as investigations continue in Jersey at another home, Haut de la Garenne. A confidential report from 1999 details "gross acts of physical and psychological abuse" at the Blanche Pierre care home in St Clement. The home, which closed in 2001, is now a nursery which has no connection with the allegations.

A child's skull was found at Haut de la Garenne on 23 February. If you spoke out of turn you would get a bar of soap rammed down your throat. A social services report into Blanche Pierre, obtained by the BBC, looked at alleged abuse in the home between 1986 and 1990 when the home was run by Jane and Alan Maguire.

The report said: "Mrs Maguire committed and condoned gross acts of physical and psychological abuse towards the children in her care." It also said she "understood that a policy existed which forbade the use of corporal punishment".

The social services report found Mrs Maguire guilty of gross misconduct and recommended her dismissal. The BBC has spoken to five former residents of Blanche Pierre and all spoke of sustained physical abuse. One alleged victim, Jean-Michel Jarman, now 27, said: "There is firm and there is too firm. You should not get a whack with a wooden spoon or slipper for doing something wrong. If you spoke out of turn you would get a bar of soap rammed down your throat.

Part of a child's body was found at Haut de la Garenne - "It happened to me, my sister, brother and other children."

In 1990, two part-time members of staff alerted the authorities about the Maguire's' behaviour. An investigation was carried out, but Mrs Maguire, an employee of the Jersey government, was moved onto another job within social services, and still allowed to work with vulnerable people.

Nearly 10 years later one of the Maguires' alleged victims complained to the police. Court proceedings began, but were later dropped because at the time the witnesses were considered unreliable. But one alleged victim of the abuse said: "They said they did not have enough evidence, but it was swept under the table.

Former health minister, Senator Stuart Syvret, said the Maguires should have been sacked when the two staff members complained in 1990. He said: "They should have been sacked immediately. "The notion of just moving them and letting them carry on in an environment where there are vulnerable people is just utterly extraordinary."

Jane Maguire's solicitor says that court proceedings against her were abandoned after an independent Crown Advocate had looked at the case.

Jersey States said in a statement: "A police enquiry into allegations against Alan and Jane Maguire was completed in 1998, but the indictment was withdrawn after committal proceedings because it was considered the case did not pass the evidential test."

Further abuse claims in Jersey care home - By Aislinn Simpson and Gordon Rayner in St Martins, Jersey - 01/03/2008

Two more people have come forward to claim they were subjected to serious sexual abuse at the Jersey child home which is now the subject of an intense police investigation. One hundred and sixty people have now alleged they were subjected to rape and torture at Haut de la Garenne in the east of the tiny island.

Two more people have claimed they were subjected to sexual abuse at the Jersey home
"Two people have reported extremely serious allegations of crimes which happened here, serious sexual crimes," Deputy Police Chief Lenny Harper said. One alleged victim who has spoken to police told of how he received a sinister warning from a former childcare worker urging him not to "dredge up" the past.

The 38-year-old, called Steve, spent his entire childhood in Haut de la Garenne, was contacted through a friend by a former childcare worker. This person had suggested I have a good life, a very good job, a family, I've left the island, it's all in the past and that dredging it up won't help matters – it will cause more problems," he said.

Mr Harper condemned the care worker's alleged comments, saying: "If that is the truth and it's taken place then we are in realms of a very serious criminal offence."

Steve, who now works in IT, said he was abused not only by staff but by other children.

"When I was eight I was cornered one day. I thought I was in with the gang but I was grabbed and stripped of my clothes and told to have sex with this girl who was about 15 years old," he said. "Of course I couldn't because I was too young but I had to pretend. If I didn't they'd whip me with stinging nettles and chuck stones at me." He said that on another occasion, staff took the children into a field in their pyjamas where they were chased around and whipped with a bamboo cane. At the end of it all my pyjamas were ripped, I had cut back legs and could barely breathe and I remember one of the staff said 'this isn't right'," he said. He claimed he told a teacher and a probation officer about the abuse he suffered both nothing was done.

Another former resident told that he two of his friends had hanged themselves after being raped at the home, and another died while in the sick bay.

Carl Denning, 49, from Caernarvon, North Wales, said the sexual abuse he suffered was widespread. "The suicides were never spoken of. No one saw the police turn up to investigate them," he said. "If you asked, the staff would just say, 'It's been dealt with'. It was as if they had just been swept under the carpet."

Another alleged victim claimed was ignored when he reported he was abused to Jersey police 10 years ago. The man, who cannot be identified and now lives on the mainland, claimed he was molested for three years from aged six by an officer in the Jersey Sea Cadets – where an unrelated case of abuse sparked the Haut de la Garenne inquiry.

He said he kept quiet as a child because he feared no one would believe him, but decided to fly home to speak to police after hearing another victim of his abuser had come forward. When he contacted them afterwards to find out what progress they had made, he said he was told the statements had been lost and police would not be pursuing the matter. "Clearly something is not right," he said. "I believe people were working to make sure it all stayed under wraps."

Child's body found at care home BBC news - 23/02/2008

Police briefing
Parts of a child's body have been found by police in a former children's home in Jersey. Police believe more bodies may be found at Haut de la Garenne in St Martin, which is at the centre of an inquiry into alleged child abuse. The remains are thought to date from the early 1980s. Police have not said whether they are male or female.

The investigation involves the abuse of boys and girls aged between 11 and 15, since the 1960s. We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there

Jersey police began investigating allegations of abuse in November last year. The excavation of Haut de la Garenne, involving a sniffer dog and ground radar, started on Tuesday when information emerged from the police inquiry.

The investigation involves several government institutions and organisations in Jersey, with the Haute de la Garenne home and Jersey Sea Cadets the main focus of the inquiry. A police spokeswoman said more than 140 potential victims or witnesses had contacted a helpline since the investigations began.

Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer, Lenny Harper, who is in charge of the investigation, said detectives "think there is the possibility they may find more remains". There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse

Mr Harper told a news conference Jersey police were in close touch with more specialist assistance from the UK. He said he was now dealing with a "potential major crime inquiry concerning a possible homicide". "We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there," he said. He said the search would continue in the coming days, and possibly weeks.

Senator Frank Walker, Chief Minister of Jersey, said he was horrified and saddened by the discovery. "It's deeply distressing and a most serious issue for Jersey," he said. I am frankly very apprehensive about what else they will find However, he added: "I understand the remains [that] have been found go back quite some time. "There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse."

Former Jersey Health Minister Senator Stuart Syvret urged anyone who had been at Haut de la Garenne to come forward. His concerns last year about alleged child abuse in Jersey institutions led to an independent review of child care services by Jersey's parliament, the States of Jersey. Mr Syvret told BBC News: "It's essential those with concerns call it, or get in touch with the police. "Having spoken to people who were at Haut de la Garenne, this discovery is not surprising.

Haut de la Garenne started life in 1867 as the Industrial School, for "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children". It is now Jersey's Youth Hostel and featured as a police station in the TV series Bergerac.

Residents at the children's home in the 1940s. One told the BBC the superintendent always carried a cane, and used it frequently

Digging deep at Haut de la Garenne - BBC News

Police in Jersey are focusing on a few key locations as they search Haut de la Garenne former children's home, which is at the centre of a child-abuse investigation.

Two years after the start of a covert investigation into abuse following allegations by former residents, Jersey Police started an exploratory search of the home and made their first significant discovery on 23 February: a child's skull. It was under several inches of concrete in a stairwell in the north west corner at the back of the building. The remains are thought to date from the early 1980s. Police have not said whether they are male or female. The children's home closed in 1986 and was later converted into a youth hostel.

A forensic anthropologist and archaeologist were among those put on standby to join police in searching part of the cellar, which had been blocked up with bricks. After it was established that it was safe to break in, a room about 12ft (3.6m) square was uncovered beneath two concrete floors.

On Wednesday 27 February a forensic examiner became the first person to enter. It had been identified by police as a focal point of the investigation following interviews with a number of former residents of the home. A highly trained dog was sent in and showed an "extremely strong reaction".

Police uncovered some "significant" items in the chamber, including a set of shackles and a bath-like structure, which they said corroborated some of the evidence from former residents of the home.

On Friday 29 February they discovered a "trap door" - a space in the floor above the cellar. They also began examining floor plans, said to be about 100 years old, handed to them by a member of the public. These seemed to show the basement area was at one time at ground floor level.

Police plan to investigate another bricked-up room of about the same size which adjoins it, and possibly a third, following a call from a member of the public. As the search goes on archaeologists are checking to see if rubble and debris were brought in from elsewhere for use as in-fill by builders.

Search dogs also showed interest in the central courtyard of the complex. Police have not begun a detailed search, but are expected to do so soon.

Police began excavating earth in the grounds of the house on 28 February, in an area that had also attracted the attention of search dogs. They also used revolutionary ground-penetrating radar to identify areas of interest. It pinpoints solid areas and voids, which may indicate that the ground has been disturbed. Detectives said the aim was to find out whether there was "anything of interest" below the surface.

Mini diggers, like those used to dig trenches during roadworks, were brought in to shift large volumes of earth. The work covered a wide area, with some hedgerows ripped up. Police have found bones, the majority identified by an anthropologist as being from animals with some waiting to be identified. None have been confirmed as human so far

Police find trap door in Jersey care home - By Gordon Rayner and Aislinn Simpson 01/03/2008

Police searching a former children’s home in Jersey where more than 160 victims claim to have been abused have found a trap door leading to an underground chamber.

Several former residents of Haut de la Garenne have described being lowered through a trap door in the floor by members of staff and allegedly being raped and tortured in cellars.

Jersey’s Deputy Police Chief Lenny Harper said the “home made” entrance through floorboards, which was uncovered yesterday, appeared to provide further corroboration of victims’ claims.

Mr Harper said: “We have uncovered what we have been referring to as a trap door. It’s a space in the floorboards, the size and location corroborates what (witnesses) have been telling us. It’s a home-made entrance in the floor above the cellar.
“This is something we are talking about regarding alleged offences committed at the home.”

Mr Harper would not specify whether the trapdoor led directly to one of the cellars. His officers have already found a bricked-up cellar which contained shackles and a concrete bath which had also been described by former residents. Two more cellars are still to be opened.

A child’s skull was found buried under a concrete floor at the former home last weekend, and Mr Harper fears up to six more bodies could eventually be unearthed. Digging work at Haut de la Garenne is now so extensive – with at least seven sites being excavated in the search for human remains – that Mr Harper has asked for 12 extra officers to be drafted in to his team.

Today he revealed his officers were digging up part of a field next to the building where witnesses, thought to be agricultural workers, had said they had unearthed bones in the past. He stressed they could turn out to be animal bones, however.
“There is information that there could be remains there,” Mr Harper said. “But we do not know what they are. They are still in the ground.”

At least six different institutions on Jersey have now been named by alleged victims of abuse, including the island’s Sea Cadets and five schools and care homes, with allegations dating from the 1950s through to the 1990s.

It also emerged that some of those who were allegedly abused at homes on Jersey went on to become paedophiles themselves in a tragic cycle of abuse. Mr Harper said his team had spoken to prisoners in the island’s La Moye prison who had been convicted of child sex offences having been victims of abuse in institutions.

One of them is thought to be Christopher Curtin, 47, who was jailed for five years at Jersey’s Royal Court last November on indecent assault and child pornography charges. His lawyer had told the court he had himself been a victim of sustained abuse at a Jersey children’s home.

Today a couple who were employed as house parents at Haut de la Garenne from 1971 to 1984 said they had “nothing to hide” and would help police with their inquiries.

Tony and Morag Jordan, of Kirriemuir, in Angus, Scotland, said in a statement released through their solicitor: “During their time, Mr and Mrs Jordan found their stay to be a rewarding experience in helping disadvantaged children to overcome their problems. “They noticed nothing untoward in relation to the care of the children in their charge.”

Secrets and terror of Jersey care home, By Gordon Rayner - 02/03/2008 - The Telegraph

By the time the former children's home of Haut de la Garenne has given up all of its terrible secrets, the British Isles will surely have added the darkest chapter yet to its appalling history of organised child abuse.

Over the course of the past seven days, the horror of what allegedly went on within the austere Victorian edifice has slowly unfolded, beginning with the discovery of a child's skull buried under a concrete floor.

More sinister revelations have followed each day - the discovery of a bricked-up cellar and, inside it, a concrete bath and a set of shackles in which it is claimed naked boys and girls were held prisoner while they waited to be sexually and physically assaulted. Yesterday, another dungeon-like chamber was found beneath a trapdoor.

The "deep, dark place" described by many of the 160-plus alleged victims who have now contacted police was exactly as they had last seen it more than 20 years ago and, as police prepare to break into two more cellars, the belief is that they will soon discover the remains of more children who "went missing" from the home. Outside, in the swirling fog that has shrouded parts of the island this week, officers are digging up nearby fields where it is feared yet more remains may have been buried.

We now know Jersey's most shameful secret: that for the last 50 years, child abuse thrived in Haut de la Garenne and, after its closure in 1986, in a succession of other schools and institutions. Many of the accused and the guilty still live on this tiny island, which measures nine miles by five, and Jersey must ultimately answer two questions: how many of its 90,000 population knew what was going on, and why did none of them do anything about it?

Critics of the island's oligarchic establishment believe they already know the answer: that Jersey, with its long-standing culture of secrecy, put self-preservation before justice.

And it is this allegation of an establishment cover-up, with its echoes of Belgium's notorious Marc Dutroux case, which is likely to leave the most indelible stain on Jersey's cherished reputation.

When Dutroux was convicted in 2004 of raping and murdering a string of young girls - two of whom had starved to death in his cellar - he said he was part of a widespread paedophile ring that included policemen and elite members of Belgian society. Although his claims were never proved, a large percentage of Belgians still believe them.

Gary Matthews, a former member of the island's parliament, the States of Jersey, says he was not greatly surprised to discover that institutionalised child abuse had been able to go unchallenged for so long.

"The first instinct of the Jersey establishment whenever there is trouble is to keep it quiet," he explained, pointing out that the political classes are terrified of scandals that bring questions and interference from the outside world. "The culture of secrecy started during the German occupation in the Second World War, when there was a certain amount of collaboration. Then, in the 1960s, when Jersey built up its all-important financial sector, secrecy became the rule. "As we now know, paedophilia was also taking place in the island's institutions, but the instinct for sweeping everything under the carpet seems to have extended to that, too." He believes that many of the island's politicians are concerned only with their image, and with protecting the tourist industry and the stability of the finance sector.

To add to the problem, Jersey's attitude towards paedophilia appears firmly stuck in the 19th century, a time when child abuse was sometimes treated as a petty offence.

Take the case of Roger Holland, a 43-year-old St John Ambulance volunteer who openly declared the fact that he was a convicted paedophile when he applied to become a part-time policeman in 1992. Six years earlier, he had indecently assaulted a mentally impaired 14-year-old girl whose trust he had gained through his ambulance work, and had admitted molesting a second child whose parents felt she was too traumatised to press charges. He confessed that he had "a problem for younger girls".

Such an admission, it might be assumed, would have led to him being automatically barred from joining the island's honorary police, who have considerably more powers than the equivalent special constables in the UK. But no. Jersey's authorities decided that his conviction was in the past, and so allowed him to stand for election as a constable's officer. He was elected unopposed.

After re-election in 1995, he was promoted in 1997 to the rank of vingtenier, the second most senior in the island's volunteer force, which supplements the work of the full-time police.

Although concerns about his criminal convictions were raised with Jersey's attorney-general, Holland was allowed to carry on, even after a young girl alleged in 1999 that he had "committed a sexual act with her" in the back of a police van. He finally resigned from the force in November 1999, and in 2001 was jailed for two years for two counts of indecent assault.

It was against such a background of complacency about child abuse that Haut de la Garenne became a paedophiles' paradise.

One of the alleged victims who has contacted the police, a woman identified as "Pamela", and now aged 49, claims: "Rape was rife for boys and girls of all ages. Some weekends, staff held parties, and other people would come and drink at the home. They knew how to pick out the weak ones. All of us would try to lie very still in our beds and try not to attract attention."

Peter Hannaford, 59, an orphan who spent the first 12 years of his life at the home, alleges that rape and torture "happened every night and happened to everyone".

We now know that one of those who visited the home was Edward Paisnel, the "Beast of Jersey", who for 11 years terrorised the island by abducting children from their beds, dressed in a hideous rubber mask and nail-studded wristbands, and sexually assaulting them. Paisnel, who was jailed for 30 years in 1971 for 13 sex attacks on children and women, would hand out sweets to the children at Haut de la Garenne and ask them to call him Uncle Ted. At Christmas, he would dress up as Santa Claus. Police are investigating whether he was one of the "guests" at the horrific parties held in the home.

Jersey is just one of many communities that have been shamed by the discovery of widespread paedophilia in institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable children in society. The Pin Down affair in Staffordshire and the child abuse ring in north Wales have both scarred our national consciousness. But it is the extraordinary length of time over which the alleged crimes took place that makes this case so shocking.

Esther Rantzen, the founder of the children's charity ChildLine, says Jersey's isolation was a large part of the reason the scandal remained hidden for so long. "Small communities, such as islands, churches or children's homes, make it very difficult for children who are suffering abuse to safely disclose it to someone," she says. "The children tend to feel that all the adults are part of the conspiracy and therefore they dare not ask for help in case it gets back to their abuser."

In recent years, thanks to the work of charities such as ChildLine and the NSPCC, children have been far more likely to report abuse, knowing that their allegations will be taken seriously. But on Jersey, widespread fear of the establishment still exists.

During my time on the island this week, I have been approached or telephoned by a number of people who want to talk about what they believe to be one of the factors in the alleged culture of cover-up - the island's allegedly nepotistic political and legal system, which some liken to a banana republic.

In almost every case, these individuals say that they can not risk being quoted by name, because they are genuinely afraid of being persecuted for speaking out. "The people who run this island are very powerful, and they are not answerable to any higher authority, so they can very easily make life difficult for you," says one. "Anyone who speaks out is regarded as an enemy of Jersey."

The ease with which secrets can apparently remain hidden is a result of the intimacy which exists between the island's political classes, business leaders and those in authority.

Ever since the Channel Islands were granted autonomy by King John in 1204 (having become part of Britain as a result of the Norman Conquest), Jersey has had an entirely independent political and legal system, based around its 53-member parliament, the States of Jersey. It has no political parties, and so there is no opposition, aside from the odd maverick such as Stuart Syvret, the former health minister who claims he was sacked when he tried to draw attention to the child abuse scandal last year.

There are no checks and balances from outside, and some of the most important work, such as choosing the chief minister, is carried out in secret. The island's politicians, judges, policemen and business leaders are also drawn from a small pool, with many being relatives or lifelong friends.

For example, Frank Walker, the island's chief minister, was until recently chairman of the company that owns Jersey's only newspaper, the Evening Post. The bailiff, the equivalent of the Speaker in the House of Commons, is also the head of the judiciary. The attorney general, whose job is to give the bailiff impartial legal advice on prosecutions, is his brother. And so the list goes on.

"It is an excessively intimate system which doesn't have any checks and balances," claims Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Grimsby, who has for years tried to encourage more openness in Jersey's political system. "When a problem comes up, it is often concealed. Things don't tend to get investigated and exposed in that climate."

One more disturbing question presents itself in the light of the child abuse scandal: just why, on a such a small and supposedly idyllic island, did so many hundreds of children end up in care homes? The answer lies in another little-publicised fact about Jersey - its unexpectedly high level of poverty, which brings with it the sort of social problems that lead to children being taken into care.

Although Jersey, with its £250?billion financial industry, has the second-highest gross domestic product per capita in Europe, the island's wealth is largely held by the privileged few. Some 13,000 people - more than one in seven - live in social rental properties, Jersey's equivalent of council houses, and half of all households suffer from one or more of the internationally recognised measures for relative poverty.

The crumbling 1960s council estates of St Helier are testament to the years of neglect. Rusting cars rot on rubbish-strewn drives, windows have bedsheets for curtains and the paint is peeling off walls and doorframes. "This place is run by the finance industry for the finance industry," says one resident. "Anyone else just doesn't count."

Although they dare not say it publicly, many on the island hope that the child abuse scandal will finally force Jersey's ruling class to get its house in order, and address the problems which, they say, it has always preferred not to discuss.

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Jersey care home 'full of fear'

A woman who worked at the former Jersey children's home at the centre of an abuse investigation has said she found children there "frozen with fear". Christine Bowker volunteered for two months at Haut de la Garenne in 1972. She said the staff were "ice cold" and the children starved of affection. She told the BBC she left over concerns about the "evil" goings-on in the home. Excavation work has been ongoing since a child's skull was unearthed under a floor in a stairwell last Saturday.

Around 160 people claim they were abused at the home, in St Martin. The allegations date back to the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

Mrs Bowker said there had not appeared to be any managers at the home when she was there, just six to eight staff who did not say a "civil word" to her and were very "rigid and controlled". I recognised the children were absolutely ice cold and frozen with fear

"They totally ignored me and didn't speak much to each other," she said. "They really looked like sick people - staring eyes and very tense. It was utterly grim. "If the children relaxed at all or responded to my affection, they glared at the children and they glared at me, and the children then went back into their shells." When asked if she witnessed any abuse, she said: "No, I didn't see anything like that but I recognised the children were absolutely ice cold and frozen with fear." When Mrs Bowker, who now lives in Tasmania, tried to tell people about her suspicions, she said she was met with a "wall of silence".

The police investigation into abuse allegations began covertly in 2006. Since the child's remains were found last week, dozens of people have come forward claiming they were abused while at Haut de la Garenne.

The search has been extended to the building's cellar and grounds, and police suspect there may be four bricked-up chambers in the cellar. The first pictures of the cellar, released on Sunday, show a bath-like structure, which police say corroborates reports from alleged victims. Excavations were halted on Sunday to give the forensic team a break but they are due to resume on Monday. The work is expected to take months.

Twelve detectives from forces across England and Wales have been called in to help with the investigation.

Jersey horror care home.By Philip Whiteside and Lucy Panton, 03/03/2008

An ex-resident claims he was repeatedly raped by Wilfred Krichefski in the early 1960s. And we can reveal that police are now probing his account of appalling abuse at the Haut de la Garenne home. The victim claimed he would be woken by a worker and told: "There is someone here to see you." Then he would be presented to his abuser in a small room with the chilling words: "Here's a boy for you, sir."

Senator Krichefski was a leading figure on the Channel Island for more than 30 years before his death in 1974. Deputy police chief Lenny Harper last night confirmed: "It is a name that we have been given and our investigations continue."

Terrified

The development puts the top level of the island's establishment into the sights of the police probe. It comes after the News of the World uncovered evidence of brutal sex abuse at the home in St Martin, where a piece of a child's skull and hidden "abuse chamber" have been found. Cops last night said they believe it is one of FOUR underground rooms where 160 people claim they were abused.

The ex-resident, who we have agreed not to identify but are calling Simon, had been too terrified to tell anyone, including
his mum, what happened. He claims the only person he told was a psychiatrist who warned that if he said anything of the sort again he would be put in a mental hospital.

Simon, in his late 50s and now living in the West Midlands, said: "I have been so angry and afraid but I feel that it is now time to speak out." He claimed: "That man raped me and forced me to do despicable acts. I know he is now dead, but people need to know what he was really like. I have had to live with what he put me through. It has ruined my life. "I hope now this is all coming out people like me will get some justice."

Simon's ordeal spanned up to 18 months between 1962 and 63 when he was just 12. He said he and another boy were regularly taken into a room at the back of the orphanage where they would be used for the vile pleasure of two men who came to visit—who he nicknamed The Fat Man and The Old Posh Gent.

Tears in his eyes, Simon recalled the first time he was raped. "There was enough moonlight coming in through the window to see what was in the room, a bed against the wall and a big man with curly hair wearing a shirt and tie, sitting in a chair. "I recognised him from a gent's outfitters in St Helier. My mum had taken me in to buy some socks before I'd been sent to the home. He served us. "He told me to lie on the bed, sat next to me and put his hand down my pyjamas. He said, ‘I'm going
to teach you to be a good boy. You've been wicked and no one wants you. Your parents don't want you—that's why you're here.'

"It made me cry, he must have seen how frightened I was but he carried on and then he stood up and started unbuttoning his flies. He was a big fat man and was breathing heavily." Simon added: "I cried to myself for the rest of that night. The awful thing was how dirty and guilty I felt. Even now that feeling has never left me, I've never been able to feel clean. "Whenever I hear the phrase "be a good boy" it makes me want to break down in tears." Simon said he was subjected to the same horrific abuse every month. He confirmed The Fat Man's identity after leaving the home—from reading newspapers and going back to the outfitters to check the name above it.

Senator Krichefski had his own clothing store, W Krichefski and Sons. He was the head of several Jersey government committees and in 1958 was made an OBE. The identity of the The Old Posh Gent is unknown.

When told that Krichefski had been accused of abuse, his daughter-in-law, who is separated from his son Bernard, said:
"It sounds extraordinary." Judith Krichefski had at first said: "He is involved in the police investigation? I didn't know that. Well, it's probably because he was on the police committee over there at the time."

Yesterday police continued to dig for bodies in and around the home and sift through debris extracted from a cellar. It was also reported that TV and radio star Sir Jimmy Savile, 81, visited the home to open fetes during the early 1970s—but had no knowledge of the horrors taking place.

VICTIMS can call a freephone police/NSPCC hotline on: 0800 169 1173. If calling from outside the UK dial: +44 (0)20 7825 7489.

Haut de la Garenne home's history - BBC News 28/02/2008

Former Jersey children's home Haut de la Garenne is at the centre of a major child abuse investigation. BBC News charts the home's history.

Their connection to Britain dates back to 1066, when the Duke of Normandy (which included the islands) became William I of England. King John lost Normandy in 1204, but the islands decided to remain loyal to him because he agreed to allow them their independence, which they have kept ever since.

The Bailiwick of Guernsey, which comprises the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm and several smaller islands, has no freedom of information provision either. Last year Stuart Falla, the Deputy Chief Minister, said there was "not enough of a problem" to warrant a freedom of information act.

A pair of shackles has been found in a cellar at the children's care home in Jersey which is at the centre of one of Britain's biggest abuse scandals. Search teams uncovered the restraining device in the 12ft square underground room at Haut de la Garenne where victims told police they were sent as punishment. The set was found alongside a bathtub secured to the ground and a large pile of rubble and debris. The shackles are thought to be separate to those discovered in the grounds four years ago by builders working on the £2.25 million project to convert the home into a youth hostel.

Deputy chief officer Lenny Harper, who is leading the investigation, said: "We have made a couple of finds of some significance which tend to provide corroboration for some of the allegations we have been told. "They are items which witnesses have said were in there when offences were committed against them."

Police broke through into the bricked up cellar on Wednesday after being forced to suspend work for 24 hours over fears the walls might collapse. It is one of two rooms underneath the former care home which police focused on after a sniffer dog trained in detecting human remains reacted furiously to the site.

Police are now investigating claims of a third secret chamber after being contacted by a former Haut de la Garenne employee.
A police spokesman said: "An ex-member of staff contacted the police to say that there may be a third underground room, not connected to the two cellars they have found already. "It is not connected directly to the building and it might have even disappeared as it was a long time ago. But as he has come forward and we need to establish what is there." Police also started digging the external grounds of the property in one of the seven areas indicated by the sniffer dog last week.

Last Saturday, a child's skull was found under several inches of concrete on the ground floor of the former home.

Mr Harper said: "It was the right time for other members of the investigation team to turn their attention to outside as the work in the cellar is very specific. He described the cellar as a bleak place: "The walls are not rendered and it is very dusty with a lot of rubble lying on the floor."

The discovery of shackles came as details emerged for the first time about two three metre deep pits located in the courtyard of the home. They were originally designed to store excess rainwater and could hold up to 30,000 litres. Each one is accessed by a trap door, known as an inspection hatch. The pits appear on three separate 2000/1 architect drawings for the conversion of the home into a youth hostel, which are stored at the States of Jersey planning department.

The 38-year-old, called Steve, spent his entire childhood in the Haut de la Garenne children’s home where more than 160 former residents now claim to have been raped and tortured. Although it is more than 20 years since he left the home – where he was sexually assaulted from the age of eight onwards – and no longer lives on the island, Steve was disturbed at the ease with which the former childcare worker was able to get a message to him via one of his friends. "This person had suggested I have a good life, a very good job, a family, I've left the island, it's all in the past and that dredging it up won't help matters - it will cause more problems," he said. "I said I'd already spoken to the police about it and she said 'well I know that' but if they speak to me again, certainly about the remains it would be in my best interests to say: 'I’ve told you all I know and keep a low profile'."

Detectives investigating decades of child abuse at Haut de la Garenne and at several other Jersey institutions said they would take "very seriously" any allegations of attempts to silence victims. Steve spoke out as another former resident revealed that two of his friends had hanged themselves after being raped at the home, and another had died while in the sick bay.

Yesterday, police continued to clear debris from one of three cellars underneath the building, in the belief that they may find more bodies following the discovery of a child's skull last weekend. A bath and a set of shackles have been found in the cellar, corroborating victims' accounts of being held prisoner there while they waited to be abused.

Steve, who now works in IT, said he was abused not only by staff but by other children. "When I was eight I was cornered one day. I thought I was in with the gang but I was grabbed and stripped of my clothes and told to have sex with this girl who was about 15 years old," he said. "Of course I couldn't because I was too young but I had to pretend. If I didn't they'd whip me with stinging nettles and chuck stones at me."

On another occasion, he said, the staff took the children into a field in their pyjamas and "we were chased around the field by a staff member with a bamboo cane and when he caught up with you he'd whip you. "At the end of it all my pyjamas were ripped, I had cut back legs and could barely breathe and I remember one of the staff said 'this isn't right'."

He said Haut de la Garenne was split into four different sections: 'Aviemore' for the babies and younger children; 'Dunluce' for the older children; 'Claymore' for 'normal' youngsters who behaved and 'Baintree', the cellar area where the children who misbehaved lived.

"As a child I'd hear the other kids talk about it," he said. "They'd say if you're naughty be careful you'll end up down there in 'Baintree'." He claimed that he told a teacher about the abuse he suffered and, once the home closed, a probation officer, both nothing was done about his allegations.

Another victim, Carl Denning, 49, said he was sexually abused at the home from the age of five until the age of eight, during which time two of his friends hanged themselves. "What happened to him behind the locked door of the cell was so bad he couldn't live with it. "The suicides were never spoken of. No one saw the police turn up to investigate them. "If you asked, the staff would just say, 'It's been dealt with'. It was as if they had just been swept under the carpet."

Mr Denning, who is now a married father of four and lives in Caernarvon, North Wales, claimed the abuse was widespread.
"We used to hear the screaming and banging going on," he said. "The memory of the sounds has haunted me ever since. We all suffered at the hands of these people, so we knew what the noises meant, but couldn't do anything to help. "Nights were a fearsome time. I was often too terrified to sleep. You would feel one of the carers climb into your bed and knew what would happen next."

A trapdoor leading down to a windowless room holding a single chair, and shackles were discovered during the refurbishment of the care home at the centre of the Jersey child abuse scandal, it has been claimed - The sinister findings were allegedly uncovered four years ago when the property Haut de la Garenne in the east of the island was converted into a youth hostel after lying empty for 18 years.

Robert Boutillier, one of the builders working at the home said: "We found some things that would send a chill down your spine.
"We found some shackles lying around the grounds.
"I picked them up. They were heavy shackles mounted on a wooden block. It was gruesome.
"We also found a pile of about five large canes. They had been removed from inside the building."

Another builder from Houze Construction, who did not want to be named, said: "It was spooky, I felt like the place was haunted.
"There were shackles lying around. God knows what else was in there, I shudder to think.
"In one room there was a trapdoor leading down to this room which was pitch black. Inside was just this chair. I felt sick."

Senator Stuart Syvret, who is highly critical of the Jersey government's record on child protection, accused officials of sweeping the issue under the carpet and demanded to know why the report had been kept secret.
"The reaction of the political establishment was to sweep this under the carpet and keep the veneer of respectability.
"This is just another example of concealment and cover up. They did the bare minimum, prosecuted one perpetrator."

Mr Syvret said he would write to Justice Minister Jack Straw later this week to ask for independent judges to oversee any possible prosecution in relation to Haut de la Garenne.
"I am going to ask him - in relation to the current child protection controversy – to appoint independent judges and prosecution," he said.

Pamela said boys and girls would be offered cigarettes and drink in return for carrying out sex acts. She recalled "constant" building work in the cellar - the focus of the police investigation - and how she would wake up with bruises on her body. "The things that happened there are indescribable - the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of," she said.

"What makes it worse is that these acts were practised on very vulnerable and often troubled children who had nowhere to go and nobody to turn to for help. "I remember one of the men who abused me being a big man who smelled sweaty and was often drunk. He touched me and I tried to fight him off.

"My most vivid memory is the 'punishment room'. I was sent there if I slipped up in any way - not eating all of my dinner, looking at one of the staff in a funny way, any excuse they could find. "The room was about three metres wide and four metres long and had a foam mattress and single window with no curtain in it."

A trouble-maker who refused to go to school, he was sent to the home alongside 20 boys and about a dozen girls "There were a lot of kids and there were always rumours that someone had run away. People tried to all the time. "We were told a lot of them had run off and emigrated, which looking back was a bit odd."

Mr Turner said the regime at the home was tough. "There were two staff there in particular that I was terrified of. "There were a couple of people there who seemed as if they wanted to help us but others who definitely didn't. "We were quite often given dead arms and dead legs by the staff. I remember beingD frog marched around the place. If you were bad, you would get locked in a dark room with just bread and water."

"Boys and girls were abused while I was there," he said. "The abuse was anything from rape and torture. It was men and women who abused us. "It happened every night and it happened to everyone. I was scared to go to bed. You were threatened with punishment if you said anything, which could have been a whip or anything. "The building has got to be erased from the ground and from people's memories."

Mr Hannaford, who was orphaned and spent 12 years in and out of the home, said he could not remember the names of his tormentors, having blocked out the pain of what happened. "I can remember the name of every teacher that ever taught me, but my mind seems to have blocked the abusers' names out of my memory."

The biggest police investigation into child abuse within Jersey's care system started nearly two years ago - Officers looking into alleged instances of paedophilia realised that several people in the frame were "persons of responsibility". Some had worked at the children's home, Haut de la Garenne, in the east of Jersey.

For the first 12 months, detectives ran a covert operation, gathering information about potential victims and employees at the home. Police also looked at links to the Jersey Sea Cadets, based in the capital, St Helier. But when they made their investigation public last November, they were overwhelmed with the response, which focused inquiries on Haut de la Garenne.

More than 140 victims and witnesses contacted either the NSPCC or Jersey Police to tell how they had allegedly been beaten, sexually assaulted and raped. Some of the testimonies came from as far away as Australia. Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper, who is leading the investigation, said police began to build up a picture of events at the home. Officers came to the conclusion that it was possible former workers might be involved.

The senior investigating officer said a list of 40 suspects had been drawn up, most of whom were employed at the home at some stage. One former worker, Gordon Waterfield, 76, has been charged with indecently assaulting three girls, but police said he was not linked to the discovery of a body at the home at the weekend.

After such a volume of responses, Mr Harper said they realised there may have been more sinister activity at the home."We got information from three different sources that there may well be human remains here," he said. "We realised we were going to have to come up and do an exploratory search of the home."

More than 10 per cent of the Jersey police force was drafted in, as well as specialists from England and Scotland. Radar equipment and a sniffer dog were used in the search which began last Tuesday. On Saturday the 30-strong team uncovered the remains of the skeleton. They are expected to spend at least another two weeks searching the property.

Although the inquiry is now the centre of national attention, a senior former minister said the Jersey government had done its best to cover it up. Senator Stuart Syvret, 42, said he had been sacked as minister for health and social services last September after trying to speak about the "systematic and long term failure" of child protection. He said he was alerted to the issue a year ago by members of the public.

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Jersey stink zandvoort - sources in English

A number of high-profile names in Jersey society have been caught up in the child-abuse scandal.