Jersey investigation into child abuse

[Avalon]

Regarding Bellwood, I wasn't familiar with the term "gardening leave." Here's the WikiP def:


Garden leave (or gardening leave[1]) describes the practice of instructing an employee who is leaving an employer (following a resignation, or having been made redundant or otherwise terminated) to stay away from work during their notice period. The practice is often used to prevent employees from working for the employer's competitors for a period of time.

Employees continue to receive their normal pay during garden leave and are covered by any contractual duties, such as confidentiality agreements, until their notice period expires.[2]

The term can also be used when an employee is sent home whilst subject to disciplinary proceedings, when they are between projects, or where, as a result of publicity, their presence at work is considered counter-productive. The Tracey Temple affair is an instance of the latter case.

[Gouda]

During the 5-year Nazi occupation of Jersey, the Haut de la Garenne was used as a Nazi signaling station. But the following CNN article quotes Fred Thompson, a resident of the island during WWII who speaks of abuses happening at the house during this time. I am not sure if I am confused, CNN's reporting is unclear or the history is incomplete. According to what I have read, the house reverted to a home for boys once again after the war, but I've seen no indication it was a signaling station-cum-boy's home during the Nazi occupation.

'Horror' of children's home haunts island

JERSEY, Channel Islands (CNN) -- Jersey has known trauma before. For five years during World War II, the Nazi flag flew over this British isle.

It was a time of jackboots, strict orders and tough punishments. Many here still talk about the occupation. Fred Carpenter lived through it.

And he did it harder than most, as a resident of the children's home that later became known as Haut de la Garenne, which is now at the center of an investigation into claims of child killing and abuse spanning decades.

"It was like a horror camp, what happened during the war," Carpenter told CNN. "After the war, the state's doctor examined all the boys, and I was so undernourished, they only gave me two months to be alive."

The 76-year-old tells stories of terrible beatings in the home, of young boys disappearing without explanation.

Today, he says: "I always knew it would take a dead body for people to go looking for the secrets in that building."

On Saturday, police found the remains of a child at Haut de la Garenne. They suspect that there could be more.

Jersey is now facing its dark side.

More than 150 residents have told police that they were abused in the island's institutions.

Every day, a growing number of journalists passes on to the world new stories of sexual and physical suffering.

(...)

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Gouda, here is a video link of Fred Carpenter talking about the possible deaths under the Occupation:
http://www5.channelonline.tv/news/templ ... 1&zoneid=1
It's very short, and not much detail, though. No mention of the signals station, though I'm sure there must be a longer version of this interview somewhere.

Does anyone know if it's true that Haute de Garenne roughly translates as The Rabbit Warren? How many cellars (or tunnels) are there?

From the official site, which, like the building, might not be around for very much longer: http://www.yha.org.uk/find-accommodatio ... index.aspx

"Jersey’s First Youth Hostel! A £2.25m refurbishment has transformed the building into a 100-bed Youth Hostel, situated on the island’s east coast with views towards France and overlooking Mont Orgueil Castle. The building is famous to millions as the office of TV detective Jim Bergerac! Jersey has superb beaches and countryside along with an extensive network of walking and cycling routes, it really does offer something for everyone."

I wonder when that refurbishment was done, since it's reported that some of the bones were under a recent additional building. That, and the fact that the police have already let slip that they have up to forty suspects from the new (and old) abuse allegations, makes me think that a lot has happened there since the Nazis left.

And it was Bergerac's office as well! Bizarre.

[Lurquacious]

Some say they were drugged with valium before being abused at drunken parties organised by staff, to which people from outside the home were invited.

from the BBC: Home 'forever linked to darkness'

[Lurquacious]

Much foul darkness coming to light in this case:

From The Sunday Times
March 2, 2008

‘Culture of concealment’ divides shame and widens class rift

Brendan Montague, Jersey and Jack Grimston

THE old men of Jersey are racking their consciences as terrible secrets resurface.

Dozens of senior figures in the island’s tight-knit establishment are facing possible police questioning over who knew what about abuse, beatings and, conceivably, murder from the 1940s to 1980s at the Haut de la Garenne children’s home.

The elite may fear the taint of scandal on Jersey’s sunny, wealthy image. But others are seething with anger, particularly the poorer people whose wayward children so often ended up in the home. They sense the scandal might well dislodge the ruling order.

As the police continued their excavations yesterday, the retired bigwigs of Jersey’s parliament and its children’s services still maintained they had neither seen nor heard of anything untoward.

John Rodhouse, 78, director of education at the time much of the abuse was alleged to have occurred, said he had “searched my conscience to see if there had been warning signs during my tenure. My position is I knew nothing”.

Reg Jeune, 87, the highly respected former president of Jersey’s education committee, also knew nothing. According to a woman at his home, he “was not aware of any allegations of abuse” during his time in office.

A children’s officer who has served on the island since the 1970s called one particularly horrendous abuse claim “complete and utter bunkum”. But with each new find by the police, it is the victims’ side of the story, rather than the denials of the elite, that are gaining credence.

At the former children’s home in the parish of St Martin, northeast Jersey, where part of a child’s skull was found last weekend, Lenny Harper, the officer in charge of the inquiry, said the discovery of a trapdoor “corroborates exactly what people are telling us”.

It leads down into a complex of at least four cellars where a bath was found last week – also consistent with inmates’ claims. Builders said they found shackles there five years ago.

The number of claims of abuse at the home has now passed 160, with allegations of the rape, drugging and flogging of children in the cellars. More than 1,000 children passed through the home during the period under investigation.

Some were abandoned by single mothers, others removed from delinquent parents.

While acknowledging the horror of what is said to have gone on at the home, many of the 90,000 islanders seem equally exercised about the impact of sensationalist coverage. At a service last week, Robert Key, the Dean of Jersey, went even further. “From overinquisitiveness, false sensationalism and prurient curiosity, good Lord, deliver us,” he prayed.

Under the headline “The island need feel no shame”, the Jersey Evening Post accused the British of portraying the island as “some kind of North Korea of the English Channel”.

But the split within island society seems as wide as any differences with the mainland and has revived class rivalries dating deep into the feudal past, far beyond the Nazi occupation of the Channel islands.

On one side is an elite who staff the island’s states, as the parliament is known, under whose watch Jersey has built a tax haven economy. They are personified by Frank Walker, the chief minister.

Walker has spoken of “our absolute horror at the revelations” and promised the authorities will identify and prosecute “anyone who has perpetrated crimes against children, or who has in any way colluded with that abuse”.

But opponents accuse the elite of trying to ignore the lower orders in their obsession to preserve Jersey’s glossy international image of beaches, double cream and a flat-rate income tax of 20p in the pound.

Walker has come off worse in televised encounters with Steve Syvret, the maverick former health minister who last year sparked the police investigation.

Syvret has set himself up as champion of the “outsiders”.

Walker’s cause was not helped when he was caught on television telling Syvret: “You’re trying to shaft Jersey, internationally.” Later last week, Syvret, who trails bundles of documents, plonked himself uninvited beside Walker on the podium at a press conference. The chief minister ploughed on as minders tried unsuccessfully to remove Syvret.

Walker is a former chairman of the Evening Post’s publishers. It was under his chairmanship eight years ago that the paper declined to publish a report into abuse in homes.

Syvret said there had been “decades of the most atrocious and appalling abuse of children of all kinds and the most widespread culture of concealment of it”. He added: “The island is run by an oligarchy. It is anything for a quiet life.”

One senior community figure was prepared to admit to disturbing memories from more than 20 years ago.

Lawrence Turner, the 64-year-old Anglican vicar of St Martin Le Vieux, near the home, said after the child’s remains were found last weekend: “I sat for a long time trying to think if I should or could have done something.” He recalled being told of “untoward” goings-on at the home just after he arrived in the parish in the mid1980s.

The priest described the whispers as “little rumours from one or two people expressing distress”. But one of the abuse stories, although vague, was worse than the other. Turner pondered whether he should tell the police himself but decided against. “I only heard it secondhand and I thought the person would go to authority,” he said.

Jackie Penfold, 63, a former worker at the home who now runs a guesthouse in Fishbourne, West Sussex, also found old memories resurfacing. “There was one occasion when two young girls had cuts and scratches. One of the houseparents said, ‘Take no notice’. The houseparent came to us later and said they were from an abusive home and had self-harmed themselves. I just believed them, but now I am questioning it.”

Others have lived with their suspicions for years. Roley McMichael, a Jersey resident, said: “I was a schoolboy during the times the alleged abuse and murder took place and the threat from my father if I received a bad school report was that he would send me to Haut de la Garenne. . . Everybody knew it was a nasty place and rumours were rife. . .”

Yet Tony and Morag Jordan of Kirriemuir, Angus, who were on the staff of Haut de la Garenne from 1971-84, said they had found their time there “a rewarding experience in helping disadvantaged children” and “noticed nothing untoward”.

As well as excavating the cellars of the elegant, two-storey Victorian home, police are now searching an area the size of a football pitch behind Haut de la Garenne, which became a youth hostel after its closure in 1986. They are also looking at half a dozen potential burial sites identified as suspicious by locals and former residents. Eddie, a forensic spaniel from South Yorkshire used in the search for Madeleine McCann, has been flown in.

Police are likely to be digging at the home for several more weeks, and forensic tests to date the skull and determine its sex will take another three weeks.

One man, Gordon Wateridge, a 76-year-old former warder at the home, has recently been charged with indecent assault on three young girls between 1969-79. Over the years a number of child abusers have been broken through the surface of Jersey life. In 1935, there was a police search for a man known as the Night Prowler, who was never caught.

In 1971, the island’s most notorious paedophile, Edward Paisnel, a serial rapist nicknamed Uncle Ted or the Beast, was convicted. He used a disguise of a rubber mask and an old coat with a lapel studded with nails.

Then the community turned on the eccentric Alphonse Le Gasteloise, who was driven into 14-year exile on a reef in the Channel. He was innocent.

The alleged victims of Haut de la Garenne who have come forward include Pamela, a 49-year-old mother of two from St Helier, Jersey’s capital, who says she was abused from the age of 13. She said yesterday she had told a social worker, whom she named, eight years after the abuse took place – about 1980. No action was taken.

Pamela said: “I used to go up to [the supervisor’s] apartment four times a day because she was giving me Valium. I did tell her about the abuse but she said I was making it all up . . . I was taken to the punishment room and locked up, they pulled clumps of hair out of my head and stripped me naked.”

Pamela recalled the punishment cell for misbehaving children as a small alcove in a wall, which staff were able to shut with a sliding cover.

She characterised what happened as “the most cruel, sadis-tic and evil acts you could think of”.
There were reports from others of children being taken from the beds in the night and never being seen again.

Steve, a computer worker from Telford, Shropshire, claimed the cellar was used as a punishment room for children who misbehaved and that it was known as “Baintree”. He has described canes and a device like a pillory kept in the cellar.

Harper said yesterday that police were investigating claims that Steve had been intimidated by a former care worker over the past two days since making his first allegations. He said: “We will not tolerate this and will investigate it and we will treat it as a criminal offence.”

It emerged yesterday that allegations of abuse at Haut de la Garenne were made in a blackmail case at the Royal Court of Jersey in 2004. The abuse was said to have happened when the blackmailer, who was found guilty, was at the home in the 1960s. The abuse claim, said the judge, was “being investigated and is clearly not incredible”. Police investigations slowly spread into other cases until, last year, they decided there was a pattern of allegations that needed to be looked at more widely.

Secret rooms have been a recurring theme of child abuse scandals on Jersey. The practice of locking children away in solitary did not end with the closure of Haut de la Garenne. As recently as December 2006, a secure room nicknamed “the pits” at an institution named Greenfields is alleged to have been used as an isolation cell for new arrivals.

Staff were instructed to keep children in there for 24 hours, but this could be extended: “Should any unwanted behaviour be shown, the 24 hours may be started from the start of compliant behaviour.”

Last year, a solicitor at the Howard League for Penal Reform, based in London, drew up a legal opinion that found the Greenfields regime “appears predicated on a complex system of using isolation and deprivation as a means of control” and suggested it could breach international human rights law.

The Jersey government, which said it was not in a position to comment on the specifics of the Greenfields allegations, has invited the league’s inspectors to visit at the end of this month.

Other homes have also been investigated in the current inquiries, including one called La Preference, once run by Paisnel’s parents-in-law. Victoria College, whose head of maths was jailed in 1999 for sexual offences, is also thought to have been looked at.

The impression of a reasonably well-run care home system – comparable with that in Britain – that is presented by those responsible for running it, is proving increasingly hard to maintain.

Harper has been no comfort to the establishment as he pursues the police investigation. He has said there is “no evidence of a government cover-up”, but added that the 40 people he wants to talk to are from “all areas of island life”.

Today Turner will conduct a special mother’s day church service. He now hopes that an exorcism – of human souls as much as a building – can begin to bring the memories out into the open.

He said: “We could get victims there, people who suffered indirectly, and do an elaborate ritual which, whether you believe it or not, looks effective. Bell, book and candle, the lot, could settlea lot of minds. This little lot is so soiled it’s got to be washed in public for everybody’s sake, people not involved, like myself, who just feel guilty about it.”

[antiaristo]

.

For those of you who are confused, Jersey is NOT a part of the United Kingdom.

The SOLE connection is that they share a common ruler.

Duke of Normandy is a title held or claimed by various Norman, English, French and British rulers from the 10th century until the present. The title refers to the region of Normandy in France and several associated islands in the English Channel.

Channel Islanders refer to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom as Duke of Normandy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Normandy


You probably remember that the original Conqueror was William of Normandy, in 1066.

[Lurquacious]

More worms crawling out of the newly opened can (from the BBC):

Children's Home in Abuse Claims

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.

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.

"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.

Proceedings abandoned

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.

"Nothing was ever done."

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."

[Lurquacious]

Antiaristo, this may sound like nit-picking, but there seems to be some confusion as to the status of the Channel Islands.

The Independent, in "Secrets and Lies: The Dark Side of Jersey," says:

The Bailiwick of Jersey has been linked to England constitutionally longer than Wales or Scotland have. It came with the Norman Conquest in 1066, as part of the William the Conqueror's personal estate. While England progressively lost its possessions on mainland France, finally giving up Calais in 1558, the Channel Islands stayed with the English crown.

The implication, it seems to me, being that the Normandy possessions were incorporated into the broader Crown possessions once the duke of Normandy became King of England (just as Calais, part of the Normandy possessions, was considered to be a Crown possession before its loss to the French).

The Wikipedia article you quote from also says:

The Channel Islands (except for Chausey) remain Crown dependencies of the British Crown in the present era.

(I wonder what goes on in Chausey!)

[Penguin]

BBC also has a timeline for the foster home:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/jersey/7266643.stm

"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.

22 June 1867: Jersey Industrial School opens it doors for "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children".

1900: Name changes to Jersey Home for Boys. The boys faced floggings and a former resident, the late Frank Lewis, remembered a boy's fingers being severed with a sharp cane.

1960: Name changes to Haut de la Garenne. Garenne means rabbit warren.

Haut de la Garenne
A dormitory at Haut de la Garenne in the 1940s
When it first opened its doors, no child who had appeared before a magistrate was allowed a place at Haut de la Garenne. That changed with the popular belief that prison was the wrong place for troublesome youngsters.

1974: Children's officer Charles Smith said: "The remand wing at Haut de la Garenne is the only place, other than prison, for juveniles on remand. At the home there are only two detention rooms and you cannot just lock up children for long periods."

1981: A UK report says the home was "uneconomical" and should either be closed or modified, not because of any criticism of the way the home was run, but because the number of children was declining.

Haut de la Garenne
A body was found at Haut de la Garenne on 23 February
The building, which housed up to 60 children, only had about 30-40 living there with about 15 residential staff and two part-time workers.

1986: Haut de la Garenne closes. The Education Department said it would find work for staff at a new home or elsewhere in the education system.

2004: A £2.25m refurbishment transforms the two-storey Victorian building into Jersey's first youth hostel, with 100 beds.

2006: Jersey Police begin a covert investigation into abuse of children at Haute de la Garenne following allegations by former residents.

Police at Haut de la Garenne
Police resumed digging at the site on 27 February
July 2007: Health Minister Stuart Syvret accuses the States of failing to protect children in another island home.

22 August 2007: The States agrees to an independent review of child protection arrangements in Jersey.

11 September 2007: Stuart Syvret is sacked after losing a vote of no confidence in his behaviour.

February 2008: Jersey Police, acting on information from their investigation, begin an exploratory search of the former care home at Haut De La Garenne.

# The remains of a child are discovered inside the building by a team of specialist officers. Jersey police issue a statement: "At 09.30 hrs today what appears to be potential remains of a child have been recovered."

# Police focus their attention on a bricked-up cellar. Six more sites of interest are identified there by the police using a sniffer dog.

To come:

March 2008: Report of independent review of child care in Jersey, authored by Andrew Williamson. "

[Lurquacious]

What's interesting about a lot of these timelines is how they simply gloss over the Nazi occupation:

1900: Name changes to Jersey Home for Boys. The boys faced floggings and a former resident, the late Frank Lewis, remembered a boy's fingers being severed with a sharp cane.

1960: Name changes to Haut de la Garenne. Garenne means rabbit warren.

Early sources mention that the building was used during the Nazi occupation as a signaling station (e.g., The Independent on 24 February) and reverted to a children's home after the war, but at least one victim says he was abused there during the war years (can't find the source just now; I'll post it if I find it), and recent reports have dropped all mention of its use during the Nazi years.

[Penguin]

Yes, it was mentioned on this page, in Goudas post.

"It was like a horror camp, what happened during the war," Carpenter told CNN. "After the war, the state's doctor examined all the boys, and I was so undernourished, they only gave me two months to be alive."

The 76-year-old tells stories of terrible beatings in the home, of young boys disappearing without explanation."
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europ ... index.html

Hmm.

[Lurquacious]

Ah yes, of course, Gouda already covered this. Odd that not only has the apparent inconsistency of the building's dual use not been explained since the early reports; it seems simply to have been written out of the narrative.

But I suspect there will be much more revealed in the coming days and weeks.

[blanc]

much more revealed in coming weeks or much more covered up

[Seamus OBlimey]

Jersey suspects 'may try to flee'

Police monitor ports and airport as detectives find another underground chamber at children's home in abuse case

Police are watching Jersey's ports and airport in an attempt to monitor alleged suspects who may try to flee as the investigation into the island's child abuse scandal widens.

A list of names, which have been corroborated in the testimonies of scores of victims, has been circulated by detectives on Jersey and throughout the UK. Most of the suspects are alive and connected in some way to former children's home Haut de la Garenne, where more than 160 youngsters are alleged to have been raped and beaten - and at least one possibly murdered - in a campaign of 'systematic and endemic' abuse that may have lasted seven decades.

'These people know who they are. If you have sexually abused children you are not going to forget that. Some will be waiting for the inevitable knock on the door,' said deputy police chief Lenny Harper, who is leading the investigation.

Last night Harper gave a 'stark' warning to anyone looking to intimidate victims after allegations emerged that a former resident at Haut de la Garenne had been targeted by a care worker who had been employed at the home in the Sixties. Harper warned anyone considering approaching witnesses or victims that police would deal with it as a 'serious criminal offence'.

'It is a warning to anyone with intentions to approach victims in this case to prevent them from talking to the police, we will investigate it as a serious criminal offence,' Harper said.

Some of Britain's most senior detectives arrived yesterday to oversee the direction of an investigation that is expected to evolve into a formal murder inquiry after a girl's skull - alongside what police said yesterday was a plastic flower and parts of a hair clasp - was found in the home last Saturday. Members of the Association of Chief Police Officers' homicide working group will soon submit a report on where the inquiry should be focused.

In a separate development, police have discovered further rooms in the underground complex at Haut de la Garenne. 'Latest examinations show that there may be two other rooms beyond the first two we have identified, and the courtyard is of interest,' Harper said. One of the two newly discovered rooms leads off a large chamber next to the cellar, which is being searched extensively. The fourth room, which was located using ground-penetrating radar, is thought to lead off the third room. Testimonies from victims have also suggested there is a fifth room in the grounds.

Forensic specialists were still examining the cellar last night in the hope of unearthing clues and DNA samples. Although police have yet to confirm whether instruments of torture such as shackles have been discovered in the rooms, Harper said the findings so far have made him 'very uneasy'.

It seems clear, however, that whoever committed the alleged horrors at Haut de la Garenne intended the world never to find out. The forensic specialists believe the cellar may have been booby trapped to prevent it being disturbed. Those privy to its hot, dusty interior refer to it as a 'death trap'. Teetering piles of rocks and debris threaten to topple and crush officers sifting through the debris. Two stone lintels have been loaded with piled debris and could fall at any point. The floor, police suspect, may have been deliberately smothered with debris. 'Some of the backfill has been put in there for a reason we are not fully au fait with at the moment,' said Harper.

At the rear of the Victorian building, officers were continuing to strip away the topsoil of a large field last night. Police have received a number of calls from local people who claim human remains are buried there.

Police had also amassed testimonies that revealed that victims were dissuaded from coming forward, Harper said, in what appears to be a sustained cover-up by former employees at the home. The inquiry is examining suggestions of a 'concerted pattern of perverting the course of justice', he said, adding: 'Some people didn't do their job.' It was confirmed yesterday that police are questioning a former care worker at the home for allegedly trying to intimidate a victim who had told police of sexual abuse allegations.

Officers have launched a reinvestigation into why bones found in the former children's home five years ago, which have since been destroyed, were categorised as animal remains, despite at least one being 'unidentified'. 'We intend to speak to the builders [who found the bones], and the pathologist involved,' Harper said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/ ... ion.jersey

[winston smith]

scrawled by victim inside 'Colditz' abuse cellar
Last updated at 11:22am on 03.03.08
Add your view


This is the first picture of the chamber of horrors under a care home where children were subjected to horrific abuse.

At the centre is the giant stone bath tub where up to 25 children at a time would be forced to bathe in freezing water as their attackers watched.

According to detectives, victims were also abused in the bath, which looks like an agricultural trough.

On a nearby wooden post is a haunting message scrawled by a youngster: "Iv been bad 4 years and years."

The chamber where children were abused beneath the 'Colditz' children's home.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/03_01/TortureChamDM_800x339.jpg

Some 160 former residents say they were the victims of cruel predators on the staff of the Haut de la Garenne home in Jersey, known as Colditz by local people.

They were dragged screaming down to the "deep, dark place" and forced to strip.

A child's skeleton was found in a corridor above the cellar a week ago. Forensic experts have spent days sifting through the debris in the torture chamber - where shackles were also found - for more remains or any clues to what happened there.

Police broke into the cramped, 5ft high cellar through the floors of rooms above. But they later found an entrance hidden in an under-ground storeroom. By the doorway, the words Janine, Trev and Sea had been painted on brickwork.



Four separate dungeons have been uncovered so far under Haut de la Garenne, but detectives fear there could be another four punishment cells.

Forensic teams are examining gaps in the old floorboards for hairs of potential victims or suspects.

A further 12 specialist officers from forces across the UK have arrived on the island to help with the inquiry.

Detectives began a secret inquiry into abuse at the home, which closed in 1986 and is now a youth hostel, as they expanded a similar investigation into Jersey's Sea Cadets.

But they admit is is almost impossible to trace all the children who went missing during the decades the abuse was being carried out.

A former chief children's officer at Haut de la Garenne told last night of her horror at the allegations.

Patricia Thornton, who was responsible for the well-being of youngsters in the home from the early 1950s 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.



Patricia Thornton: 'It's awful if it's true but I saw no evidence of it when I was there'

"I was very surprised when I read about the scandal. I feel quite shattered." But a former resident, who still keeps in touch with Miss Thornton, described the climate of fear that stopped children speaking out.

Winnie Lockhart, 64, a grandmother from Southampton, said: "Looking back I think I should have told her what was going on, but I was too frightened and didn't trust anyone.

"The boys told me about the abuse they suffered but in those days there was no one you could turn to. It was all swept under the carpet and anyone who complained was beaten.

"I remember being kept awake at night by boys screaming as they were taken to the room of one of the masters. One was crying 'no, please, not tonight.'

"When I complained to the master the next day I was slapped across the face and warned: 'Don't you dare go around saying things like that".

"Some of the boys told me about the punishment room. It sounded horrible. No one knew exactly where it was, even the boys taken there."

A Jersey police source revealed that a former leading politician, now dead, was one of those named as an abuser.

A former resident says he was raped in the early 1960s by Senator Wilfred Krichefski, known as the Fat Man, who died in 1974.