Jersey care home abuse victim: I was locked up..

A victim of the Jersey care home of horror told today how she was drugged, beaten and sexually assaulted by staff as officials turned a blind eye when she begged for help.

The mother-of-two - known as Pamela - was given heavy doses of valium at Haut de la Garenne and sexually assaulted dozens of times between 1973 and 1975. She described how children would cower in their beds while staff held drunken parties where they would stumble into the dormitories to select "weak" children to rape.

Depraved workers would offer cigarettes and alcohol to teenagers in return for sex acts - and rape was "rife" among both boys and girls, the woman claims. Now aged 49, the victim described being locked naked in tiny 10 sq ft "punishment" cells for the smallest misdemeanour - often for days at a time.

Her revelations came as excavation work at the Haut de la Garenne was suspended for a structural survey to be carried out.

Officers at the former children's home are focusing on a bricked-up cellar after the discovery on Saturday of a child's skull but it is understood that work cannot start on the cellar until the survey is completed.

A spokesman for Jersey Police said: "There has been a respite in the operation at Haut de la Garenne while the investigating officers seek the advice of a structural engineer in respect of gaining access to a section of the home.

"The States of Jersey Police would like to emphasise that all that has been recovered so far from the site are the partial remains of what is believed to have been a child."
The remains discovered at the weekend were pinpointed by a sniffer dog at the weekend. The dog has also identified several other areas of interest.

Pamela, who still lives in Jersey, is one of several victims who have now come forward to reveal the true horror of how children staying at the home were treated.
She claims officials ignored pleas for help when children reported abuse - and offered little explanation if a child disappeared.

Most chillingly, she recalls "constant" building work in the cellar - where police continued to smashed their way into a bricked-up dungeon in the hunt for more remains.

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

"What makes it worse is that these acts were practiced 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.

"I often woke up with a massive headache and bruises over my body after being drugged. I was abused and assaulted.

"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, basically 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.

"If the sun was shining through the window there was no ventilation and it became suffocating."

Pamela described one occasion when she ran away but was caught and thrown into the "punishment room" by two male members of staff.

She said: "They ripped the clothes from my body, threw me to the floor and pulled my hair.
"When I fought back a female staff member came in and gave me a huge dose of valium, that knocked me out, and sexually assaulted me. I was always being drugged.

"It was the most serious forms of sexual abuse. The staff knew how to pick out the weak ones - I think they went through their records - and rape was rife in all ages, both boys and girls.
"We would tell each other what happened and we all knew what was going on. There was nothing we could do for each other.

"Some weekends they held staff parties and other people who weren't staff would come and drink at the home.

"I don't know who came but all of us would try and lie very still in our beds and not attract attention. They came and got kids and took them away for a while."

Pamela was sent to Haut de la Garenne - then a home for boys and girls - aged 13 by a court order after officials learned her mother had a history of violence towards her.

She said she was marked as a "troublesome" youngster and prescribed the drug Valium after making several attempts to escape from the institution.

Pamela took to self-harming in the belief she could threaten the staff into stopping the abusive treatment and stills bears white scars across her face and inner arms.

She said some male and female staff were like "predators" and seemed to "get off" on creating situations for sadistic pleasures.

"They would exchange cigarettes and alcohol in return for doing things to them, and walk into the showers whenever they felt like it to look at us," she said.

"Sometimes they would walk past and just pretend to accidentally grab you on the breast or down below."

Pamela also described how she and friends would explore amongst the foundations of the Victorian orphanage - a site now of "significant interest" to forensic officers.

She said: "There were some bricks missing from the wall at the side and if you were skinny you could wriggle under and crawl into the area beneath the floor.

"There wasn't anything there then and it was like a secret place, but I understand it was redeveloped as a cellar and bricked up so you couldn't get down there."

In 1974 Pamela claims she went to authorities - including the head of Haut de la Garenne - and asked for help but her pleas were ignored.

After two years in the home her self-harming reached a higher level and, when one of her abusers advanced on her, she cut both sides of her face with a razor.
She was moved from the children's home to a local psychiatric unit in 1975, which she left one year later at the age of 16.

Amongst her painful memories Pamela recalls the staff's "nonchalant" attitude to child runaways and said they were often given little explanation when residents left.

She said: "There were foster homes and adoption agencies so they just said that was where they'd gone, and we believed them.

"Lots of people disappeared and ran away - it was part of life there because nobody really wanted to be there.

"I wasn't surprised when they found a child's body, I almost felt like it was inevitable considering what went on there."

In December 2007 police officers investigating the alleged child sex ring contacted Pamela and she has been helping them with the inquiry ever since.

She spoke out as a 74-year-old former resident released photos of the care home where he lived for ten years in the 1940s after his mother died when he was just six.

He decided to take photographs of the dormitories and courtyard in 2003 after he read of plans to renovate the property into a 100-bedroomed youth hostel.

The former resident said: "When I was there it was just bullying. I didn't see any sexual abuse. It all changed apparently in the 1960s when new staff arrived.

"It was an important building in my life and when I heard it was turning into a Youth Hostel and I went back with my camera. I wanted to remember it how it was."

A sniffer dog found the remains of the child, hidden in several inches of concrete at the weekend.
The grim find was made in a corridor leading off a central courtyard and among the remains was a girl's hair clasp.

The trained dogs also identified another six areas of interest, fuelling fears there may be several more bodies buried in the cellar.

More than 1,000 children are thought to have lived in the 60-bed home from the early 1950s until its closure in the mid-1980s.

The investigation involves several government institutions and organisations in Jersey, the home and Jersey Sea Cadets.

It is centred on the abuse of boys and girls aged between 11 and 15, since the 1960s but remains are thought to date from the early 1980s.
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