For 40 homes on the island of Jersey there will be, over the coming days, weeks and possibly months, no such thing as an ordinary knock on the front door. These are the homes of 40 suspects, some regarded as respected figures in a tight and wealthy island community, who are currently on a list held by the States of Jersey Police. They face arrest, questioning and possible charges in connection with physical and sexual child abuse that detectives are now convinced was systematic, endemic and brutal'' and took place over decades at one of the island's former residential institutions, called Haut de la Garenne.

We are convinced they know who they are, and are waiting for our call,'' says the calm but clearly determined Lenny Harper, the Ulsterman who is Jersey's deputy chief of police and who is heading the inquiry at the home.

But as teams of police officers, detectives, specialist anthropologists and forensic archaeologists turn a remote Victorian building above Mont Orgueil Castle into a scene from CSI, there remains the distinct possibility that Harper will find himself in charge of a larger homicide investigation.

It will be two weeks, perhaps a bit more, before the Jersey crime team are contacted by a laboratory in Cambridge. The analysis Harper is waiting for centres on the fragment of a child's skull that was dug up, buried under a concrete floor, inside Haut de la Garenne just over a week ago. Precise carbon dating of the remains may tell Harper when the child died. But there may not be enough forensic detail to tell him what he, and the rest of Jersey, really want to know - how he or she died.

Dating analysis should, however, place the partial remains at some point in Haut de la Garenne's history. First it was the Jersey Industrial School for "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children", opened in 1867, then in 1900 became the Jersey Home for Boys, where flogging was described as "a routine practice". From 1960, as Haut de la Garenne it held juveniles on remand, orphans and children there through no fault of their own, all supposed to be cared for in an institution holding 60 children and run by around 20 residential staff till it was closed in 1986.

Finding the skull fragment at Haut de la Garenne was not an accident. If Harper's team find more remains as they methodically dig and make their way through specifically identified sites inside the building and in an adjacent field, they will have confirmed what they've been told in some detail by former residents of the home.

For over two years Harper has been conducting an investigation into allegations of what must have initially looked like a paedophile network on the island. What began covertly went public last year. Child abuse was uncovered at the island's Sea Cadets club; there were questions over brutal regimes found in some of the care institutions on Jersey.

Contacted by former residents at Haut de la Garenne who, through a confidential link with the NSPCC, told the police where to look and what to look for, a horrific picture that, Harper admits, has left many seasoned officers feeling very uneasy" has slowly emerged for what went on inside a home that was supposed to care for, not terrorise, innocent children.

From the descriptions of daily life at Haut de la Garenne given to the police and the NSPCC by some 160 victims, many who say they will appear as witnesses in court if charges are brought, there is a disturbing and brutal picture of life inside the home. There are allegations of beatings, sexual abuse, rape, hidden chambers, children drugged and then abused, of a regime of terror where daily survival was no easy task. Harper admits the picture is something society has had to deal with before - it's alarming, but not unique".

The horrors suffered by children for 20 years in care homes throughout North Wales in the 1980s and 1990s (especially at the Bryn Estyn children's home in Wrexham), which were documented in the Waterhouse Report of 2000, which investigated the offences of paedophiles trusted with children's welfare, back up Harper's view.

But Haut de la Garenne, if evidence of homicide is uncovered, may yet take such horrors to a higher level still.

From victims' testimonies there are descriptions of hidden chambers, underneath the main building, to which children were dragged to be abused. The descriptions include being chained up and mention a home-made trapdoor with stairs leading down to what any horror film would brand a dungeon.

Lawyers who have acted for child abuse victims know their clients' testimony can be unreliable, fragmented and time-distorted.

"Recollection is poor because of the emotional trauma the child was having to deal with at the time," says one leading QC with experience of trying to bring convictions in child abuse cases. "If the Jersey team have a detailed picture of what they've been told from many sources, and the excavations at the home corroborate the visual descriptions, then the suspects should be worried, very worried."

Victims' accounts describe how children at the home went missing, how staff would describe those who disappeared as simply "runaways". Harper's team have contacted some of the runaways, children who escaped the home, left the island and made new lives for themselves in places as far away as Australia and Thailand. But what records there are can't account for all the claimed runaways. Jersey's shocked population hope all the answers lie away from the island, but many seem worried that more nightmares are still to come. Rumours of buried bodies, says Harper, "can't be ignored".

At the Moorings Hotel in Gorey harbour, just a few minutes' walk down the hill from Haut de la Garenne, the scene looks like postcard perfection. With the mediaeval fortification of Mont Orgueil behind, small boats and yachts bobbing in the harbour and the Royal Jersey Golf Club just down the road, conversation in the hotel bar should be about the simple, relaxed life of the Bailiwick of Jersey, a sort of offshore Bournemouth.

Instead, John says the island doesn't like this much attention. "They the newspapers say we knew but said nothing, kept quiet." He points towards the coast and the golf club. "They took pictures of the German bunker on the first hole. Said we say nothing about how we were occupied by the Nazis. Said we notice nothing." He puts down his beer. "They can say what they like."

Vicky Coupland is the senior scene-of-crime officer at Haut de la Garenne. Working alongside a forensic anthropologist with specialist knowledge of bone fragments and a forensic archaeologist with knowledge of how rubble and debris can hold hidden meaning, Coupland is in charge of discovering what secrets may be buried at Haut de la Garenne. A sniffer dog trained to react to human remains helped the Jersey team locate the skull fragment inside the home. The dog also helped locate an underground chamber described in witness statements.

Over the coming week the focus will be on what lies beneath the home, what may lie under the tarmac courtyard, and what may be buried beneath the thin soil layer of an adjacent ploughed-up field.

Coupland says these are "difficult" crimes scenes. "We have been working in confined, cramped, dusty spaces. Lights make it hot inside a dark room where you can't stand up and where only one person can work at any one time."

Harper, from victims' descriptions, was looking for a hidden room. What has been found has staggered some of the investigating team. Worried about destroying load-bearing walls and causing damage to the main building, and fearing that evidence would be lost if they worked too fast, the Jersey team used the reaction of the sniffer dog and ground-penetrating radar equipment to discover what they thought was one underground chamber.

When they dug down and through a brick wall, they found not one chamber but two hidden rooms filled with debris. The way the room had been bricked up was not professional, indicating perhaps it had been bricked up quickly.

Victims had described being taken down to the chamber and physically abused. Harper had descriptions of a "bath" in more than one account from victims. The word "shackles" and "chains" also appeared in victims' accounts. Within days of the skull fragment being unearthed from the concrete, both a bath and shackles were said to be among the rubble from the first chamber, although Harper would not confirm either find.

What next? Within the past few days Harper's team were handed old plans that indicate the hidden chamber, though not on the routine architectural drawings for Haut de la Garenne, may in fact be part of a complex of rooms that belongs to an earlier building, with the Victorian sandstone structure built over it. Months of slow excavation may lie ahead. But there is no choice other than to go slow.

When Haut de la Garenne was converted to a youth hostel in 2004, with the old Victorian building given a £2.5 million facelift, bones were reported to have been uncovered by the workmen on the job. They were dismissed at the time as animal fragments and thrown away.

Nothing will be dismissed this time, with the investigations team hoping that some mitochondrial DNA fingerprints, which can be used to identify individuals, will be found on objects or walls in the subterranean rooms.

Records, routinely used by police on the UK mainland, seem to be absent in Jersey. In the 1960s and 1970s the States of Jersey Police had yet to be formed. The home kept what is called an "occurrence book", but according to Harper it isn't much use. Haut de la Garenne did not have its own doctor. The hospital in Jersey also holds no records of treating possibly abused children in its wards.

Harper clearly expects no help from anything written down in Jersey or at Haut de la Garenne. "The indication is that children were obstruc-ted when they tried to complain or tell someone," he says. But he is clear on one objective: what secrets the building will give up.

"We will still come away from here with evidence that children who were at Haut de la Garenne were savagely abused, abuse that involved physical and sexual assaults," he says defiantly.

Harper and the Jersey police, to be certain they are carrying out their work correctly, they have voluntarily called in a review team from the UK mainland. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) Working Group will review the investigation so far. With Jersey not being part of the United Kingdom and therefore not under Home Office jurisdiction, Harper is nevertheless keen to ensure his investigation is working by the book, even if it is someone else's.

Others believe Jersey should be looking after its own affairs, and dismiss the criticism levelled by the island's former health minister, Senator Stuart Syvret, that the "over-riding concern of the establishment is the image of Jersey and that to prosecute people would be apocalyptically bad for Jersey".

Syvret has alleged that the island's authorities have ignored past evidence of abuse of children in its care, and that, rather than charge the people at the centre of abuse allegations, they have preferred to offer them the chance to resign and leave the island. According to Syvret, who was dismissed from the Jersey cabinet in August last year, "this whole episode raises questions about the island's ability to govern itself".

Jersey's chief minister, Frank Walker, despite saying this was the time for the island to "focus its attention on the protection of vulnerable children," nevertheless found time for a press conference last week to state why Syvret had been dismissed.

"Not for whistleblowing," he said, but because Syvret had become "so abusive to other ministers that they could no longer work with him."

The egos of the two politicians are on open display when Jersey least needs this kind of contest.

In 2002 and again in 2007, Jersey held inquiries into how its childcare regime was operating. Kathy Bull, a former Ofsted official, said in her 2002 report that she had concerns about some children's services and that certain homes should be closed down. Little action was taken on Bull's recommendations, and last year another report, from Andrew Williamson, was commissioned.

His findings are to be published shortly. With international attention now on Haut de la Garenne, what Williamson says about another of the island's care homes, Greenfields, will hold particular relevance.

Williamson's focus on Greenfields will describe a harsh regime at the home, involving solitary confinement for 24 hours as punishment for boys as young as 11 years of age. The home's head, Simon Bellwood, was dismissed when he criticised what was called the "Grand Prix" system, with "the pits" a nasty euphemism for the confinement punishment.

Since then Bellwood and Syvret have said Greenfields was using "torture" on those in its care. The Howard League for Penal Reform said that had Greenfields been in England, it would have been branded as an institution "breaking the law".

If all this renewed attention on how Jersey looks after the children in its care makes the 40 suspects on the police's list think it's time to leave, Harper has a simple message for them. "There are individuals I would prefer not to leave the island" he says. "But if they leave, we will find them.

10:37pm Saturday 1st March 2008

With gratitude to www.RumorMillNews.com
for bringing the previous articles to my attention
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=119831
Holger, GLF.

The following letter was posted as a comment
attached to the "Sunday Herald" article:

Posted by: A Victim, Newcastle on 11:46pm Sat 1 Mar 08

Emailed to Members of British Parliament

I was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Neville Husband at the Medomsley Detention centre in Co Durham in the North-east of England.

I was promoted again to write you all Members of Parliament Not feeling sanguine about the chances that some Members of Parliament will even take the time to read this as a number of emails and documents have been sent to every MP in this country and only one person had the decency to write back to say how sorry he was that these things happened to you and I wish you well with your campaign.

This MP is and has always been a consistent liberal.

The overall majority of returned emails were auto responders or emails not from the MP but their secretaries which for one thing breaches the data protection act as the addressee does not necessarily read the email and the mail is private and of a highly confidential nature and should indeed be read by the intended recipient only! Nevertheless that is the position. At this point I wish to say that the parliamentary restriction is nothing more then a way to cover things up.

My Parliament, in my country should be available to anyone in the country and all should be responsible for stamping out institutional child abuse. It is the direct responsibility of those elected into the highest positions of respect in this country to make sure that when a victim is writing to them that they do not treat it like the ramblings of a lunatic or dismiss it as “He’s not my constituent so he’s not my problem.” What happens if it is a MP who is the abuser?

Who do his/her victims go to tell when almost every MP in this country turns their back on the victims whom are trying to tell them of the abuses that they have had to endure and further injustice of those in power at the home office dragging these victims through year and sometimes decades of litigation while knowing the full incontrovertible facts and truth of these cases.

Many are in fact so close the current unfolding case at Les Chenes, (now known as Greenfields) the secure children’s home and school based on the island of Jersey, we are now hearing for the second time about the institutional child abuse that has been going on there. In 2002, British childcare expert Dr Kathy Bull produced a report which was given confidential access by the BBC. It was in the wake of her findings that Les Chenes was re-named.

More to the point we are hearing about a cover-up within their Parliament where the health minister has been fired by those who would rather protect the interests of Jersey in the international world of finance then look after the Island’s children or help them in times of great stress and pressure to and past the point of criminality,

I would also like to bet that their parliamentary protocols are exactly the same as the UK. It is time for the doors of parliament to swing in both directions as one way traffic will always tell the story one way and either fail to see another way out or blinker themselves away from the truth in the hope that these abhorrent crimes will not tarnish their reputations or stop the flow of cash coming to them.

Two professionals in positions of service to society were sacked for speaking out, although this is of course denied by their employers. One was Jersey's former minister for Health and Social Security, Senator Stuart Syvret, and the other a social worker. Simon Bellwood, this British social worker confessed, "What concerned me most was that it was quite clear that the system was able to go on without a single senior manager or inspector picking up that the system was abusive to children."

How many more times do we have to hear this?

If your job is to care for youngsters, and you are sacked because you notice that children are being abused on your watch, the choice is very clear. You keep quiet and keep your job. You speak out, and are sacked.

It was exactly the same at Medomsley, in Consett Co Durham. Almost every member of staff knew exactly what was going on but did nothing to help the young boys in their care. Kevin Young has just come from the House of Lords after winning the right to sue the Home Office for the abuses he and others at the centre suffered. This is because those who ran the centre at the time didn't care to stop it even though they knew exactly what was going on. They had found copious amounts of substantiating evidence to back up their testimony, but proceeded to destroy it.

It is terrifying when you are not able to tell someone about the abuse you endure, and imagine what it’s like when even the ones you tell either do nothing out of fear for losing their jobs, or victimise you even more for speaking out. You are ensnared by the very authorities that are meant to guide and protect you.

Those who were in the highest positions of power back then may have been replaced, nevertheless that does not make them less culpable or negate their responsibilities to the many victims that this country has produced. Most of these victims derived from the care system, and many went on into various penal institutions or were homeless and or drug addicts with deep psychological wounds that could and should not be bourn alone.

In the news this week, the remains of a child were discovered under the floor at a former care home in Haut de la Garenne in Jersey, and are believed to date from the early 1980s. It’s unlikely the police would have gone looking for bodies without having identified and listened to the 140 victims and 40 suspects that have either come forward or given interviews.

Perhaps we can put to bed the idea that child abuse was not really heard about in the 60’s and 70’s. If that was so, the powers that be were hardly going to be listening to victims coming forward from the 40’s and 50’s. By its very nature, when evidence and testimonies of child abuse occur, they are denied and customarily destroyed.

Those who knew what was going on were deeply entrenched in their behaviour of denial, and we flatter ourselves in thinking things have changed in modern times. The sackings listed above occurred after the millennium, and the abuse deniers still left in employment are still receiving wages from those institutions. In the Medomsley case in particular, there were Masons from the local Masonic lodge involved. There was a sub-structure of social interaction, expectation and control that has never been rigourously addressed. As well as those in high office being members, it is said that the Masons contain many police officers, judges, clergymen and doctors.

Society has already awakened to the fact that it is common for child abusers to hold positions of high office. The reality is that child sexual abuse is as old as the human race itself, and those who claim that they have never heard of it in any decade you care to mention are either lying, or standing upon the foundation of an education that erased any common sense they ever had.

We won’t be fooled any more. In Jersey, there is now an opportunity for the lies of the past to be exposed so that the slate can be wiped clean. It’s either that, or the world will be subject to dribs and drabs of ‘new revelations of child abuse’ for every decade of our children’s lifetimes until there is sufficient collective determination to face up to child suffering, and stop it for good.

The Young v the Diocese of Leeds Catholic church and one other, the one other is the Home Office and the abuse was in a Detention Centre for Boys near Consett County Durham, the abusers were many! The abuse was physical, mental and sexual all at the same time everyday for 17 years.

The Home Office are considering their position, after the landmark ruling in the House of Lords where Lord Hoffmann, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Creswell and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood unanimously shared the same opinion in favour of the victims of what after all were in the words of Judge Cockroft, Who was the Judge at Leeds who originally read the case files and used his discretion in the correct manner saying “This is a serious matter concerning Crown Officers.” I feel it would be unjust not to allow this case to go to trial?

At this point the Home Office immediately appealed judge Cockroft’s decision and forced the case to go to the high courts at the strand.

We then at this point were very weary men who were already suffering catastrophic psychological problems manifesting in panic attacks nightmares deep depression hopelessness and a deeper mistrust of the very authority who put us in Medomsley

These were the same authority now dragging the victims through years of litigation and trauma when all this time they were fully aware that what we were telling them and what we wanted to tell the court was nothing but the truth.

Collectively our group have had two of what we would say from bitter experience, the most predatory and consistently prolific pederasts who have ever been heard of as this country and that statement is being very generous. The abuse was relentless for 17 years whilst the abuser was the chief at the now “technically” closed centre. As we all no it’s none other than the privately run Hassockfield secure unit where Adam Rickwood was found hanging in his cell.

We can only wait to see whether justice is finally done and seen do be done. The noble lords are listened to at long last. The statute laws originally brought about to deal with Medical Malfeasance for 30 years has been stopping many legitimate claims by using this dysfunctional law to manipulate and control the leakage of so called historic cases of sexual abuse on 30 years of mainly already vulnerable youngsters
In the same way we believe they have done in the care systems institutions throughout the 50’s 60’s 70’s and 80’s.

Every time it is mentioned or rears its ugly head so called professional dive for cover and I mean that in the literal sense. And in almost every high profile case where the high profile doesn’t get its name from the number of victims involved it is in fact because the pederasts and paedophiles and high profile (Or should be except that the highest put great distance between them selves and those below them who invariably get the blame for the abuses.

Some of the crimes committed by these lads pale into insignificance when held up against the mind blowing barrage of crimes perpetrated by those who were meant to guide and teach us the errors of our ways. Many of the victims had fully accepted that they were being punished for the wrongs that they had done.

We now await the Home Office and what they have to say on the matter. All five Labour Home Secretaries since Labour came to power know about this case and have been given the opportunity to stop this charade form continuing knowing full well that the law commission had already made specific recommendation in 2002 to effect the current statute of limitations in much the same way as the noble lords advocated on Wednesday 30 January 2008.

Where they changed 400 years of legal statute law that governed the guiding principles of Parliament in the way that they considered, Parliament had originally intended those principles to be interpreted.

Letter to Gnostic Liberation Front received on July 1, 2008:

Thank you for placing my article on your website The original is on my blog here

We all would take this chance to say those who post on sites and bloggs are the backbone of the resistance and getting the message out to the wider population in vital.

Your site is a marker in history please try to maintain it and should you need a hand with any website stuff please drop me a line at info@justice4survivors.org
Article...


Thank you for your time and understanding.

Admin: http://justice4survivors.org

petition: link to our petition

-------------------------------------------------

Kids loaned out for rape cruises
Paedophile yachtsmen were given children
to abuse at sea

By Lucy Panton & Philip Whiteside

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1603_jersey.shtml

CHILDREN from the Jersey House of Horrors were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen as galley SEX SLAVES, a News of the World investigation reveals.

The youngsters were told by care staff the boat rides were treats—only to be assaulted and RAPED at sea by pervert toffs.

Details of the sick attacks emerged as we discovered even more blood has been found in a bath in the dungeon underneath the Haut de la Garenne home—and in the drains.

UNDER THREAT: Ministers voted to have investigator Harper taken off case

And our reporters have been told how builders on renovations at the home were urged by staff to BURN any bones they dug up.

We also uncover the full extent of the dark forces of corruption hampering the police investigation.

We can reveal worried cops feel under so much pressure over the abuse allegations they are preparing to BYPASS Jersey's own legal system and hand their evidence to our government.

This could include files on up to seven social workers and carers who worked at the sinister home—including one nicknamed the ‘pinball wizard' who HURLED kids against the walls to see how far they would BOUNCE.

At least two previous senior employees of children's services on the island are also under investigation despite the attempts of corrupt former policemen, politicians and businessmen to scupper the inquiry.

We understand that two weeks ago Jersey ministers SECRETLY VOTED to have senior police investigator Lenny Harper removed from the case because they believed he was too open with the media. But the Chief of Police Graham Power refused.

Explosive

A source told us: "Such important figures have been implicated in the cover-up of abuse on the island that the cops feel the evidence should now be passed to the British government

"The latest revelations are explosive. It is going to cause massive waves within the political and legal world and could bring the whole of Jersey's infrastructure crashing down."

One of the most serious lines of inquiry in the investigation is that children were regularly loaned to wealthy yachtsmen to "do with them what they chose for the day," according to our source close to the investigation.

Haut de la Garenne staff described the trips as a treat for children who spent long hours cooped up at the home. But in reality the kids were subjected to the vilest sexual abuse on board the luxury boats.

Our source said: "The allegations about the yachting community have come in from a number of different people. It is a very strong line of inquiry and when the evidence is made public people will be horrified."

Meanwhile about a dozen bones found at the home have been sent to a DNA lab to find out how old they are —yet some bone fragments were too burnt to be tested.

Police have taken statements from local builders who were told: "If you find bones, get rid of them or burn them." New blood spots have been discovered in cracks in a concrete bath in the underground chamber and have also been sent for tests and sniffer dogs trained to find blood have found scents in the drains underneath.

Forensic officers are now focusing on the wooden trapdoor leading to a second torture cellar in a bid to extract DNA or fingerprints.

Our source said: "Detectives are doing everything they can to ensure every scrap of evidence is properly investigated. They are very aware that the home dates back to 1856 and some of these bones could be very old.

"This is going to be a long process but the officers have been presented with so many accounts of abuse and cover-ups it is crucial we get answers. People disclosing the abuse have been easy to ignore but finally they are getting a chance to be taken seriously."

The horrors being uncovered at Haut de la Garenne have revealed a Jersey tourists have never seen.

Former abused care home residents claim what happened to them has been covered up by those in high office, desperate not to tarnish Jersey's good name or risk politicians in London reducing their power over the tiny, but extremely wealthy, island.

Although Jersey is part of the British Isles and under the Queen's rule, it has a separate government system dating back to King John's reign, and makes its own rules and laws.

Jersey's 53-member parliament has no political parties. Its politicians, judges, policemen and business leaders come from a small elite—often linked by friendship or family.

The island's equivalent of our Commons Speaker is also its top judge—so the system of checks and balances between politics and the law we have in the UK is almost non-existent.

This is a place where the authorities allowed 43-year-old convicted paedophile Roger Holland to stand for election as an honorary constable officer— similar to a special cop in the UK, but with more powers. They knew that six years earlier he had indecently assaulted a mentally impaired 14-year-old girl and admitted molesting another girl. But he got the job and in 1997 rose to become vingtenier—the second most senior cop on the island's volunteer force.

In 2001 he was jailed for indecently assaulting a young girl in the back of a police van.

"Jersey has for too long been a law unto itself—it is time the truth came out," says our source.

Among those fighting for that is ex-health minister Senator Stuart Syvret, who resigned over the cover-up and has given statements to police claiming two senior legal figures were involved in the abuse.

Mr Syvret said: "I have given formal statements to the police concerning a number of establishment individuals. Officers I have spoken to are from a force external to Jersey police at the request of Jersey police." Solicitor Nick le Cornu is also demanding change. "Jersey's political class have for 60 years been ignoring and covering up poverty and injustice," he claimed.

Police investigator Lenny Harper, an outsider from Northern Ireland, was the target of a hate campaign— including threats to torch his house —after a string of cops were sacked for corruption. Colleagues say Harper, 56, laughed it off, saying: "I had the IRA on my tail for years—so a few disgruntled people are not going to deter me from doing my job."

Now he's facing the biggest test of his career—on the island of fear.