JERSEY:MORE BODIES may be buried at a former children's home in Jersey, where a youngster's remains were found by detectives investigating allegations of widespread child abuse on the island, police said yesterday.
The remains were found under a thick concrete floor inside the Victorian mansion, beside scraps of fabric, a button and what appeared to be a hair clip. It is believed the child's skull was among the remains found.
Yesterday Lenny Harper, the senior investigating officer, said a sniffer dog that found the first remains had identified six other potential burial sites in and around the home.
Radar equipment had confirmed areas of interest and he said he could not rule out the possibility that "half a dozen" bodies might be found. "There could be six, but it could be higher than that," Mr Harper said.
The officer in charge of the case said bones were found on the premises about five years ago. At the time, it was assumed they were animal bones, but in light of the new findings, the police hoped to examine them - if they can find them. "They have gone missing," said Mr Harper.
The search at the former home, Haut de la Garenne, is expected to take several weeks, and it will be at least a fortnight before the age and sex of the child whose remains have been found, and when he or she died, can be established.
Mr Harper said identifying the child could be difficult, as the records relating to the home were not complete. Police are sifting through missing people's reports going back almost 50 years.
The discovery of the remains on Saturday came after Jersey police last Tuesday began a forensic search of the building, now a youth hostel. "We got information from three different sources that there may well be human remains here," said Mr Harper, speaking outside the home in St Martin.
The abuse investigation, one of the biggest in the history of the Channel island, began more than a year ago after an earlier inquiry into allegations of abuse connected to the Sea Cadet Corps on Jersey. Police spotted links between suspects in the Sea Cadet case and a number of institutions on Jersey, including Haut de la Garenne. For 12 months, officers worked covertly on the case before going public last November and appealing for any alleged victims of abuse to contact them.
Since then, police have taken statements from about 140 alleged victims who claim to have been abused while at Haut de la Garenne, as well as 40 suspects. Most of these suspects were "respected figures of the establishment" who worked at the home in "positions of responsibility", Mr Harper said.
The allegations date back to the 1940s and up to 1986, when the home was closed, but the bulk of complainants claim they were abused in the 1960s, said Mr Harper.
"Allegations range from physical assaults right through to rape. It is difficult to envisage more horrific crimes than some of those that are alleged to have been carried out here," he said.
So far, one man has been charged with three indecent assaults on girls under the age of 16, allegedly committed while he worked at Haut de la Garenne.
But police yesterday said he was not suspected of any other crimes, and was not linked to the remains discovered at the weekend.
Jersey senator Stuart Syvret claimed there was a "culture of cover-up and concealment" within the island's government, the States of Jersey. "There has been a long-running systematic failure of child protection on the island."
He said he had heard of abuse dating from the end of the second World War up to the 1990s at Haut de la Garenne and other homes.
- (Guardian service)