BRITAIN:THE JERSEY care home investigation into child abuse reached a pivotal moment yesterday when police disclosed they had found the remains of up to five children after a painstaking dig at the Haut de la Garenne institution.
As officers revealed that 65 teeth and bone fragments came from victims aged between four and 11, it emerged that police had first begun to fear children had been murdered when people who had been abused at the home told of other residents being dragged away at night and never seen again.
"Among the victims were a few who said that children had been dragged from their beds at night screaming and had then disappeared," according to a police summary of the investigation. "Two others said they had knowledge of human remains at the location but were not specific. A local advocate also came to police and said he had a client who knew there were human remains buried at the home."
The summary says that burnt clothing, toys and bed sheets have also been recovered. According to pathologists, most of the 65 teeth found in the cellars beneath Haut de la Garenne were not milk teeth, but had come from corpses of up to five children. Police searchers also found bone from a child's ear and a child's tibia.
Both pieces had been cut and burned before being concealed; they had then been moved, at a date no later than the early 1970s.
Lenny Harper, Jersey's deputy police chief, concedes it is unlikely that a formal murder investigation will be opened in parallel with the child sex abuse inquiry running for the past 28 months.
Not only have police been unable to identify any named child from the remains, but extensive carbon dating has failed to pinpoint their age.
However, the pathologists' opinion that the teeth were not from living children, combined with cuts and scorch marks on the bones, the attempt to conceal them, and the subsequent move, all lead detectives to conclude that several children may have been murdered at Haut de la Garenne.