Jersey police expand care home inquiry

London: Police extended their search at a former Channel Islands children's home to six more areas yesterday after a body was found there.

A child's body parts, thought to date from the early 1980s, were unearthed at the Haut de la Garenne house in Jersey on Saturday after a sniffer dog detected them through several inches of concrete.

"There are six other sites of interest that we have now got to look at," a Jersey police spokeswoman said. "It doesn't mean there are six other bodies." The search of Haut de la Garenne in St Martin began last Tuesday after police received information from three different sources about the possibility of there being remains. Last November, police launched an investigation into alleged child abuse on the island, including Haut de la Garenne.

Last month, Gordon Wateridge, 76, was charged with three offences of indecent assault on girls under 16 between 1969 and 1979 at Haut de la Garenne. Jersey's Chief Minister Frank Walker told BBC radio no effort would be spared in the search for those responsible.

"We need to focus all our resources on supporting fully the police investigation to ensure that those who apparently may have perpetrated the most horrendous, horrific crimes [are] brought speedily to justice," he said.

Cover-up
Senator Stuart Syvret, sacked as Jersey's health minister last year after making allegations about child abuse, told BBC radio there had been a cover-up. "From my own research, speaking to victims from the ages of 13 to their mid to late 60s, it is clear there has been a culturally appalling attitude to vulnerable children in care in Jersey for decades," Syvret said.

Sources say corporal punishment, flogging and solitary confinement in cells were "routine" as part of a "systemic failure in childcare" and that residents who died in care were reported as runaways. After three former residents told of how friends vanished, police began to suspect bodies had been hidden at the home. Asked if he expected to find more bodies, Jersey's deputy police chief Lenny Harper said: "There could be six or more. In each case the radar has tended to show some sort of disturbance under the ground where the dog has picked up the scent of something.

"We can't say it was homicide, but much of the information we are receiving leads us to this fear." More than 1,000 children are thought to have lived in the 60-bed home, now a youth hostel, from the early Fifties until its closure in the mid-Eighties. Police say they have a list of 40 suspects among former staff members at the home.
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