JERSEY:Children were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen
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. 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.
IT IS ALLEGED – He is very well known for his perverted abuse of young boys. A source spoke to one of his victims and he said about others who were present, and more important, who was supplying the children to him. The person bringing children for him to abuse is Sir Jimmy Saville. He was seen by the witness, victim, taking young boys onboard Heaths yacht the morning cloud when they were at party conference. Saville is known for supplying a number of high profile MP’s with children for them to sexually abuse.
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. 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.
IT IS ALLEGED – He is very well known for his perverted abuse of young boys. A source spoke to one of his victims and he said about others who were present, and more important, who was supplying the children to him. The person bringing children for him to abuse is Sir Jimmy Saville. He was seen by the witness, victim, taking young boys onboard Heaths yacht the morning cloud when they were at party conference. Saville is known for supplying a number of high profile MP’s with children for them to sexually abuse.
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The alleged victims of the Jersey child abuse inquiry cannot expect justice, reveals the detective at the centre of the case
By Eileen FairweatherLast updated at 10:00 PM on 18th April 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1171744/The-alleged-victims-Jersey-child-abuse-inquiry-expect-justice-reveals-detective-centre-case.html
A grandchild's plea halts the former detective's jaw-dropping tale of depravity and corruption midflow. 'I've left my daughter's boy hosing moss off the patio,' Lenny Harper explains after he puts down his mobile phone. 'The lad's having such a good time, he wants me to go home and join in.'
'I don't care what a few establishment cover-up merchants and their pet poodles say,' says Lenny Harper
Harper, 57, who initiated the controversial Jersey child abuse inquiry, could be forgiven for putting the investigation behind him and, after 35 years of police work, embracing retirement.
He and his wife Christina help look after two grandchildren, aged five and eight. The couple's youngest daughter was widowed six years ago when her husband, the commanding officer of the Royal Military Police in Iraq, was killed in Basra.
But despite family demands - or perhaps because of them - Harper is now speaking for the first time about his experiences on Jersey. He is determined, as he sees it, to set the record straight and show that the 'establishment' attacking him is not only wrong, but rotten to the core.
Harper, a no-nonsense Ulsterman, spent his last year of service at the centre of world media attention, as journalists descended on the tiny tax haven to report on the police excavation of the former children's home at Haut de la Garenne. Inmates had described horrific abuse taking place there and of children disappearing, never to be seen again. It was thought that bodies might be found.
After Harper retired last August, a new team of detectives denounced their predecessors' concerns, skills and findings. Even the 65 children's teeth unearthed from the home's cellars were, the new men suggested, left for the tooth fairy.
Controversy still rages over the provenance and date of materials discovered at the site and police now say there were no murders. None of the three men - two of them former care workers - charged with abuse has yet been tried, and the Jersey authorities have portrayed the alleged victims as compensation-hungry criminals.
Graham Power, the head of States of Jersey Police, has been suspended, accused of illegal spending on the inquiry. Harper, his former deputy, has been ordered to return to the island for questioning about the alleged theft of documents. Two weeks ago, Stuart Syvret, Jersey's former health minister who raised the issue of abuse, was arrested under data protection laws, accused of leaking material to the media.
Harper, dressed in a crinkled cream suit, seems genuinely unfazed. 'I've served in Brixton, Peckham, Glasgow - I'm used to flak,' he says. 'I don't care what a few establishment cover-up merchants and their pet poodles say about me. But I do care about the victims on Jersey. I'll keep speaking up for their sake.'
Last month, he supported an application at London's High Court by Syvret to ensure that the trials of any alleged Jersey abusers are heard in Britain by British judges. However, the court rejected the bid.
Still a Mystery: Harper says the investigation of Haut de la Garenne has ground to a halt
'The vast majority of cops on Jersey are honest and we owed it to them to bring to book the guys bringing them into disrepute,' Harper says. 'But the response of the authorities was to suppress everything.'
Harper was recruited to Jersey by Graham Power in May 2002 and learned quickly that the island had its own unique way of dealing with things.
'I joined the States of Jersey Police as the Head of Operations in the rank of chief superintendent,' he says. 'Within weeks I realised that local politicians expected a degree of control over day-to-day operations that no UK police force would tolerate.'
The island operates an ancient, parallel system of Honorary Police - elected lay-people such as farmers or businessmen who can countermand the States of Jersey force. Extraordinary as it seems, only Honorary Police have the right to charge suspects.
The Connetable - the head Honorary Constable in each of the island's 12 parishes --automatically has a seat in the States Assembly. The Honorary Police therefore appear, claims Harper, 'hopelessly politicised'.
Custody sergeants have to consult these volunteers and advise them of all their evidence against suspects. Harper says: 'Several times early in my posting I had to protest to the Attorney General's legal advisers about a refusal to charge in cases where the evidence was overwhelming.'
The first serious challenge to Harper's authority came when he tried to tackle arsenals of firearms on the island. The population of about 90,000 people held 10,000 licensed guns - and numerous unlicensed weapons including semi-automatic rifles. Yet Harper's attempts to take action were repeatedly blocked by politicians.
'Strenuous attempts were made to intimidate us into not taking action with allegations that we were Brits who did not understand the Jersey way of life,' he says. 'I was accused of trying to turn Jersey into Basingstoke.'
Some arms licences had been granted in the knowledge that the applicant had criminal convictions, and Harper launched covert surveillance of some colleagues. Following a tip-off, he raided the home of a police civilian employee.
'I recovered a huge number of firearms lying unsecured in a bedroom, including an RPG7 rocket launcher,' recalls Harper. 'Among the weapons were some that had been handed into the police previously for destruction. On the floor were 7.62mm rifles, machine guns, Magnum revolvers and a large quantity of ammunition.' A Sea Cat missile launcher - usually carried on warships - was kept outside the home.
'The employee was eventually convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition,' says Harper. The man was also convicted at a police disciplinary hearing of other offences, including falsifying records. But to Harper's astonishment, he was not dismissed and the force had to take him back. Harper eventually forced him to resign.
Young boys sit in the dining room, then known as the Jersey Home for Boys
'Politicians met and assisted corrupt police officers and their dishonest associates to mount high-profile media campaigns locally, alleging that they had been wrongly treated.' Undaunted, Harper pressed on.
'One guy asked for a gun to shoot pests and got one powerful enough to kill an elk, with a range of over two miles. Another had built up a horrifying arsenal of weapons and had been granted a firearms certificate by a Connetable despite being convicted in 1992 of possessing a prohibited weapon and supplying controlled drugs.' When police raided his house, they recovered 18 weapons and 183,000 rounds of ammunition - enough to shoot Jersey's population. Twice.
Harper has no idea why islanders amassed such arsenals and is reluctant to speculate on the reasons.
On another occasion, Harper says he discovered three employees were using police money to buy computers for private use. Some stored pornography. The Attorney General's department refused to take legal action and politicians defended the employees. Harper ensured two were dismissed and the third eventually resigned.
In a separate case, three detectives were discovered selling intelligence to women linked to drug dealers in return for sex, says Harper. Despite film and audio evidence, no prosecution was authorised.
Secret filming of one detective's office showed him kissing and being massaged by a lover. She then examined confidential police files relating to international terrorism. This same detective also sent texts to another lover, a convicted criminal and drugs gang associate, when three terrorist suspects were held in custody. He was also recorded divulging almost the whole of a Confidential Criminal Intelligence Report on a local criminal to his wife so it could be passed to the offender.
The same officer also kept at home personal details of someone offering intelligence on Northern Ireland. 'The IRA have long been connected to Jersey,' says Harper.
'The island is a gateway to the UK and politicians' indifference to security was astonishing.'
A criminal file was submitted to the Attorney General. The officer later pleaded guilty to 11 disciplinary charges and was ordered to resign.
The powers that be also seemed set on protecting the many officers accepting favours, such as foreign holidays, from a local businessman.
'Some 16 to 20 officers admitted to me that they were being paid, in kind or otherwise,' says Harper. Given that Jersey has only 240 paid police, this amounted to almost ten per cent of the force.
'A file was submitted to the Attorney General seeking the prosecution of the businessman and a key officer for bribery and corruption. No case was brought. I then decided to prosecute the officer for a number of less serious offences for which the Attorney General's authority was not needed. He was charged with offences of misuse of computers and was convicted of five such charges in the magistrates court.
'The Attorney General also agreed to charge the businessman, but he was granted a number of adjournments at court. A few days after I left the island, all charges were dropped and he was awarded costs.'
During the Haut de la Garenne inquiry, Harper received dozens of abusive letters. He still has them, signed and written on headed notepaper. One says: 'You are CRAP at your job. Would you PLEASE PLEASE give the JEP [Jersey Evening Post] a different photo. I had 7 of those and have used them all on the dartboard. I can understand why you don't want to go back home, at least here you are quite safe. You never hear of people's houses being Fire Bombed or Having Cars Torched. I'm sure you know what I mean.'
Harper says: 'The author and four corrupt ex-officers made formal complaints against me. Four out of five so far have been found to be vexatious or unsubstantiated. But it was astonishing to find politicians supporting them.'
The former police chief also discussedthe island's culture of 'perks'. 'We prosecuted abusers at one school. A senior teacher told us, in all seriousness, that the children were abused only as some sort of reward for all the hard work he had put into them, like it was a teacher's perk.'
The Haut de la Garenne inquiry developed when, as part of the worldwide Operation Ore, the commanding officer of the Jersey sea cadets was arrested in 2006 for downloading pornographic images of children. Paul Every was subsequently convicted of child pornography offences.
Harper discovered that allegations against sea cadet volunteers went back years. 'Some of the victims were children from Haut de la Garenne, taken sailing for a treat. The victims described being taken into international waters, where guests were invited to abuse them.
'The allegations hadn't been investigated properly. Two senior police officers had put pressure on junior detectives not to interview the perpetrators, and were implicated in the disappearance of evidence and putting pressure on victims to retract. These officers were also members of the yachting fraternity.'
So why did police make the dramatic decision to excavate Haut de la Garenne? According to Harper's High Court statement, the £7.5million operation began only after extensive consultation with UK experts and police.
After Harper's departure last summer, the course of the investigation was radically altered. The inquiry has now, Harper claims, effectively ground to a halt. Before leaving the island he succeeded in charging three suspects with serious sexual offences. But nearly a year later, none has been tried.
Soon after taking over, Harper's successors called a Press conference to attack his inquiry. He was depicted as an over-excitable and inexperienced officer.
Yet during his career Harper had run 'several dozen' murder inquiries, 'more rape and abuse cases than I can count' and won two of his five commendations for tackling terrorism in Northern Ireland. He also has a Masters degree in criminal justice.
Harper shows me professional assessments made on him only when I ask for them. In one, Sir William Rae, the former Strathclyde Chief Constable, praised him as 'intelligent, articulate and dedicated'.
'We worked very hard to win the victims' confidence,' Harper says of the Haut de la Garenne inquiry. 'I think now they will feel that there is nothing that they can do.
'Jersey is claiming that I left with loads of documents, unused material that could be needed in court. I think they're saying that so that cases can be thrown out. I have offered to go to any court in the UK and answer questions about alleged unused material.'
Harper ended his affidavit to the High Court by saying: 'With such an absence of controls, such an absence of accountability, the ordinary, decent citizens of Jersey are helpless. Intentionally or not, the system has allowed corruption to flourish to such an extent that those seeking to combat it are the ones open to scorn.'
While he is grateful for the ' tremendous support' he received from many fellow officers and islanders during the Haut de la Garenne inquiry, Harper concedes there were times when personal attacks left him depressed. Some of those police officers he had prosecuted or forced to resign became active in a smear campaign, alleging that Harper himself was corrupt.
'How come all these bent cops were able to complain about us, and their complaints were investigated at huge cost, but our investigations were closed down?' Harper asks. 'I've often wondered what it was that we were really threatening.'
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Haut de la Garenne: Why abuse on this level could happen again
By DEMETRIOUS PANTONLast updated at 23:29 25 February 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-518672/Haut-la-Garenne-Why-abuse-level-happen-again.html
My mouth went dry and my fists clenched when I heard about the remains found in Jersey.
I felt sorrow and rage that police are once again belatedly investigating a huge paedophile ring based on care home kids, and expect to dig up more bodies.
A ring of evil men exploited the most vulnerable children imaginable for up to 40 years, and no one stopped them.
Haut de la Garenne: Despite numerous cries for help, children continued to be abused in the Jersey home for decadesI have a pretty good idea why not, given how viciously the politically-correct establishment silenced me about the similar paedophile ring which raped me.
I was sexually abused by two male workers in children's homes in Islington, North London, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was unusual, a kid who did not seek escape through drugs or suicide.
But I did run away and never again attended school. I spent my days at my local library, educated myself and went on to university, desperately hoping I could make someone listen. No-one did.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, I wrote reports on my abusers, demanding an inquiry.
In 1992, I even lobbied Margaret Hodge's office - she was then council leader - and met her stand-in, Stephen Twigg, now also a Labour MP. He did nothing.
The truth only emerged thanks to a three-year newspaper campaign which revealed that all of Islington's 12 children's homes were run by, or included, staff who were paedophiles, child pornographers or pimps.
How did this come about? Child care was - and remains - underpaid and undervalued. Sadists easily acquire jobs when no one else wants them.
But there was another insidious factor in Islington - one which I fear leaves other children at equal risk today.
Sex attacker Edward Paisnel abused many children before convicted and was a regular visitor at the children's home
The far-Left council had actively recruited men who claimed to be gay to run its homes, and declared that "gays" did not even need references or professional training or experience.But the men who flocked forward were not gay - they were paedophiles.
A 1995 Government-ordered inquiry confirmed that no action was taken against these evil men because "the equal opportunities environment, driven from the personnel perspective, became a positive disincentive for bad practice".
In plain English, anyone who raised abuse concerns about the men running its children's homes was "anti gay".
And I was written off as "insane".
In 2003, when Tony Blair shocked many by appointing Margaret Hodge as Children's Minister, she tried to halt a media investigation into her Islington history by claiming I was "extremely disturbed".
She eventually had to apologise to me in the High Court. I was by then a Government adviser, producing reports for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
In Jersey, the victims now coming forward are said to be furious that their earlier pleas for help were ignored. Murder was committed, but no one lifted a finger.
I have always believed only the surface of the corruption in Islington was scraped. An immensely brave social worker who blew the whistle on the scandal told me early on that other victims talked of children being killed. But they were too afraid to give details. None of those allegations was ever investigated.
Let us not kid ourselves that such horrors could never happen again. People may be more vigorously vetted, and complaints taken more seriously, but paedophiles can offend against hundreds before they acquire a criminal record because children are easy to intimidate and ensnare.
The Islington scandal should have shamed social workers out of naive political correctness, but it has not.
Children today in need of care are most likely to be placed with foster parents, rather than in homes.
That does not mean there is no risk, just that victims are more isolated. Consider how many councils now boast of their active commitment to recruiting gay foster carers.
Are they bright and brave enough to distinguish between genuine gay men - who would not dream of hurting children - and paedophiles who cynically hide behind the gay rights banner?
I am not convinced - I know of one foster care manager jailed in 2005 for the sexual abuse of boys in care.
Scandalously, the council responsible - one of Britain's most gay-friendly - has still held no inquiry into whether he was recruiting other paedophile friends as "carers".
So how can anyone be sure the children he placed are safe?
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Jersey abuse case: 'Old boy network' is obstructing police investigation
An "old boy network" of officials is deliberately obstructing police investigating decades of alleged abuse at care homes in Jersey, according to the police officer who spearheaded the inquiry.
Lenny Harper standing outside Haut de la Garenne Photo: Jane Mingay
In his most outspoken criticism of the Jersey authorities, Mr Harper told the Telegraph: "I can quite clearly say that the investigation is being held up. There are people on the island who just don't want us going down the route of this inquiry."
Mr Harper, who handed over the reins of the investigation to his successor on Thursday and officially leaves the Jersey force at the end of the month, also revealed fresh details of why he is so convinced that someone deliberately concealed the bones and teeth of five children, perhaps after murdering them.
But he has effectively conceded defeat in the quest to discover exactly how the children died, and who might have killed them, as forensic tests have failed to establish how old the bones are.
"If the test results on the final samples are no more accurate, then the answer is that something very nasty happened in there, we don't know exactly what, and because we can't prove who or what it was there is no possibility of a successful homicide investigation," he said.
Mr Harper has repeatedly said that because some of the 100 bone fragments had been cut, and because the 65 milk teeth found at the home had roots on them, meaning they did not come out naturally, children were either murdered or their bodies were illegally concealed.
But he has faced ridicule from some of the island's politicians, one of whom nicknamed him Lenny Henry, and who will, no doubt, be pleased to see the back of a policeman who has dared to break what he claims is Jersey's code of silence by digging up dark secrets from the past.
He said: "We have had problems dating the bones, but instead of people saying how unfortunate it is that the science can't be of more help to us, the politicians are saying 'this is a waste of time'. The fact that we're trying to bring people to justice for awful abuse is ignored and it's just a constant day by day attack on the inquiry and on the victims."
Police currently have 80 names of people suspected of physical and sexual abuse at Haut de la Garenne, three of whom have been charged and are awaiting trial.
More suspects would have been charged by now, said Mr Harper, if it hadn't been for delays in the island's legal system.
"We are walking through treacle at the moment," he said. "One file has been with the Attorney General's office since April 29 and it's still showing no signs of moving at the moment. It's been very frustrating.
"I don't think they are involved in child abuse, it's more like an old-boy network.
"The ordinary people of Jersey are overwhelmingly in favour of the inquiry, but how many expressions of support and sympathy for the victims have we heard from the politicians? None. They don't do sympathy for the victims."
Mr Harper, who expects the investigation to continue for another year, rubbished reports that the bones and teeth found at Haut de la Garenne could have been brought in among rubble infill during building work.
He said: "They had been taken from one part of the building to another and put on top of the hard, compact, undisturbed original floor of the cellars. They had been spread about and covered with a thin layer of topsoil. Why would someone do that unless there was a deliberate attempt to conceal them?"
Mr Harper said tests on soot found with the bones showed they had been burned in a furnace in another part of the building, while archaeological evidence suggested they had been concealed in the 1960s or 70s.
"People might say these killings must have happened in the 60s, but there may have been someone who had been working there for 30 or 40 years, who knew that something had happened, but even then it might not have been a homicide, it could have been that children died of natural causes, accidents or suicide. We just don't know."
A spokesman for the States of Jersey said ministers had made public statements of sympathy for the victims and given "unlimited resources" to the police investigation. The Attorney General's office denied there had been any deliberate delays.
William Bailhache, Jersey’s Attorney General, said: “It is absolutely incorrect to say that we have obstructed the administration of justice and quite improper to make such a comment.”
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'Abuse was anything from rape to torture. It happened every night'
Victims call for house to be demolished as they reveal full scale of horror at Haut de la Garenne
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abuse-was-anything-from-rape-to-torture-it-happened-every-night-787918.htmlFormer residents at a Jersey care home where police are searching for the remains of up to six children described yesterday how they were repeatedly drugged, raped and abused while supposedly under the protection of the institution's staff.
Testimonies, including one from a leading local trade unionist, painted a horrifying picture of life inside Haut de la Garenne, where more than 1,000 children were housed in the decades before it was closed down.
Peter Hannaford, 59, who lived at the home until he was 12, called for the building to be demolished. Speaking for the first time in public about his ordeal, he described his childhood there as "hell". "The abuse was anything from rape to torture. It was men and women who abused us. It happened every night and it happened to everyone. I was scared to go to bed. You were threatened with punishment if you said anything, which could have been a whip or anything," the union official said.
A mother-of-two, identified only as Pamela, 49, said she spent two years inside the home in the early 1970s. She alleged that the weakest children were selected by members of staff during drunken parties and plied with cigarettes and alcohol.
"The things that happened there are indescribable – the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of," she said.
Children who fell foul of the authorities were stripped naked and locked in a 10ft "punishment room", she claimed.
"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," she said.
"When I fought back a female staff member came in and gave me huge dose of valium that knocked me out, and sexually assaulted me. I was always being drugged."
Some 150 people have contacted police since the discovery of human bones at the care home on Saturday. It also emerged that the notorious paedophile Edward Paisnell, known as the Beast of Jersey, visited Haut de la Garenne during the 1960s.
The political fallout on the island from the affair continued yesterday. The Chief Minister, Frank Walker, issued a statement conceding that "a cloud hangs over Jersey". However, he sought to calm fears of an island-wide cover up by insisting there was "no hiding place in Jersey for anyone who abused children or, who in any way may have colluded with that abuse and no stone will be left unturned to bring them to justice".
But the former health minister who was sacked after blowing the whistle on the children's care home scandal claimed senior figures on the island had concealed evidence of an earlier sex abuse scandal at a school. Senator Stuart Syvret handed out copies of a confidential report from 2000 on the activities of Jervis Dykes, a teacher at the local Victoria College, who was jailed for abusing six pupils between 1979 and 1996.
Mr Syvret also accused the island's newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post, of failing to publish the critical findings, which he had leaked to journalists. The newspaper said the document contained no new information and it had decided not to publish "in deference to the feelings of victims and their families".
Excavation work at the Haut de la Garenne was due to resume today after it was suspended for a structural survey.
Kenny Le Quesne, 57: 'The principal beat me with a birch cane. I used to cry myself to sleep'
Mr Le Quesne stayed at the home for six weeks during the mid 1960s when he was a young teenager.
"My mother sent me there after she caught me stealing some money from her purse," he said. "I should have been there for only a couple of days, but within hours of arriving I ran away. When I returned the principal beat me with a birch cane.
"There were a lot of older boys who had done far worse than steal a shilling. They were all part of gangs and they were terrifying. I used to cry myself to sleep every night.
"On one occasion, one of the boys chucked a lump of fat into the stew I was eating in the lunch hall. One of the guards saw me take it out and hit me. He told me to eat it. When I refused he hit me again. It made me retch, but I had to get it down because everyone was watching me."
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Secrets and lies: the dark side of Jersey
The child-abuse scandal is the latest episode in the history of an island that rarely conforms with the mainland. By Andy McSmith and Jerome Taylor
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/secrets-and-lies-the-dark-side-of-jersey-787943.htmlThe first sign to greet visitors to Gorey, on the east coast of Jersey, is a bright red plaque with white lettering that says, "Caution: Ducks crossing". Tripping over a duck is about the most dangerous thing you would expect to happen in this picture-postcard village, where the hotel tourist literature boasts of how safe the streets are.
Visitors are encouraged to explore the warren of backstreets which are pitch-black at night and consist, at this time of year at least, of empty tea rooms and restaurants serving the fresh "catch of the day" to the occasional tourist. High above, on top of the cliffs above the town's medieval harbour, Mont Orgueil casts its shadow, the 13th-century bastion built to protect the island from the threat of invasion from the French.
But now a much darker shadow looms over this village. Further up the hill, to the east of the castle, stands another historic building, a 19th-century grey stone structure built to house "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children", which has become the setting of one of the worst cases of child abuse in the recent history of the British Isles.
The team mounting a painstaking forensic excavation of the Haut de la Garenne former children's home have pinpointed six more places where they think corpses are buried, in addition to the one set of child's remains they have already found. The police suspect that hundreds of minors were abused at Haut de la Garenne in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most disturbing features of the grim tale emerging is the silence and the secrecy that has hung over the building for so long. The guilty had good reason to be quiet, but there are victims who have grown into late middle age on the island without telling what they knew, and political leaders who seemed to be lacking in any curiosity about what went on in that home on the hill.
But then, Jersey is an island of secrets, an anomalous place that is neither a country, nor part of another country, a tight-knit community of 91,000 now suffering the glare of unwelcome publicity.
The Bailiwick of Jersey has been linked to England constitutionally longer than Wales or Scotland have. It came with the Norman Conquest in 1066, as part of the William the Conqueror's personal estate. While England progressively lost its possessions on mainland France, finally giving up Calais in 1558, the Channel Islands stayed with the English crown. Victor Hugo took refuge on Jersey in the 1850s, when things were too hot for him in France.
The island – 100 miles south of Weymouth but only 12 miles from the French coast – has never been a colony nor is it classed an Overseas Territory, such as Gibraltar. Its archaic status is that of a Crown Dependency. The islanders have no representatives in the UK Parliament, pay no British taxes except for a "voluntary" contribution towards defence and diplomatic costs, and are not subject to English law.
Long after birching had been abolished on the mainland, it was still practised on Jersey. The death penalty was formally abolished only in 2006, though it had been in disuse since the 1960s. The island is governed by a 53-member legislature called the States of Jersey, headed by a Bailiff, and made up of senators, who are elected every six years, constables, and deputies. There are no political parties. Many islanders say that, except for the odd maverick politician such as the former health minister, Stuart Syvret, the island is a de facto one-party state.
This strange constitutional status has made Jersey one of the most pleasant places in the world for those who do not like to be heavily taxed, giving its wealthier residents a strong motive not to invite outsiders to look too hard at the island's affairs.
Since it is not in the EU, there is no VAT, although this year a 3 per cent tax on most goods and services will come into force for the first time. Income tax is capped at 20p in the pound. There is no capital gains tax, or estate tax. This, unsurprisingly, makes it one of the world's favourite locations for offshore banking, supported by a highly sophisticated infrastructure of trust companies, banking services, accountants, lawyers etc.
Until recently, you could put your money in a Jersey bank and be sure no one outside would know. Only in 2002, reluctantly and under threat of sanctions, the island agreed to join a scheme run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to share information on tax evasion.
Add to that the 730,000 tourists who arrive every year, and its buoyant farming industry, with thousand of tons of Jersey potatoes exported annually, and the island has, on paper, a higher per capita income than any other self-governing territory apart from Bermuda and Luxembourg. The 40mph speed limit that applies across most of the island has not stopped it from having the world's highest concentration of Porsche owners per head.
So the banks and their clients have their secrets. And then there is the past, with its memories of jackboots and occupation. The greatest trauma in the island's history, until now at any rate, was the Nazi occupation. Jersey and other Channel islands surrendered without a fight after Winston Churchill decided they could not be defended, and they became the only parts of the British Isles held by the Nazis. The absence of armed resistance has prompted suggestions that the islanders collaborated.
They certainly did as their occupiers told, offering only passive resistance that included listening secretly to the BBC, but there was a particularly heavy armed German presence, and unlike other occupied states, Jersey had no pro-Nazi movement. Its small Jewish population was singled out for revolting persecution, but no islander was ever accused of helping the Nazis to track them down.
And there are stories of heroism, notably the case of the physiotherapist, Albert Bedane, to whose house Erica Richardson, a Dutch Jew, fled after she had given her German guard the slip in June 1943. The Germans combed St Helier for her, and Mr Bedane risked execution by hiding her until the island was liberated almost two years later. He also sheltered an escaped French prisoner of war and Russian slave labourers, on the principle that he "might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb".
But one secret that was buried for years was the fate of the "Jerseybags" – the women who had sexual relations with German soldiers – and the children born from these relationships. Documents released in 1996 suggested that there may have been 900 such babies. One of the documents referred to a building called the Westaway Creche, in St Helier, which was said to be "full up with those little bastards". What became of them has been kept secret. Some are thought to be still living on the island. "The effect of German occupation on the Jersey psyche cannot be underestimated," says the Very Rev Bob Key, the island's dean. "Barely a week goes by that there isn't an occupation story in the Jersey Evening Post. The memories are very much alive, and each year when I hold a Remembrance Day survey I realise just how vivid those memories are."
Few people are willing to give their names when speaking to the myriad reporters who have descended on Jersey since human remains were first found at Haut de la Garenne over the weekend.
Many inhabitants are prepared to offer reasons why they believe the politicians are corrupt, or whether there has indeed been a cover-up over the child abuse allegations but few speak openly about it. Stuart Syvret, a lone voice among Jersey politicians, has claimed there is a culture of cover-up and concealment.
"There's a great feeling of solidarity on this island so it's not really surprising that people are not happy to talk openly," admitted Brian Lawrence, who came to the island in 1962 and has lived in St Helier ever since. "It's never really been a transparent island and we're fiercely proud of the way we rule ourselves. But it does make me uncomfortable to think that some of the people who might have carried out the abuses at the hostel are probably still living on the island today."
The Rev Lawrence Turner, whose parish church at St Martin's is one of those nearest to Haut de la Garenne, believes the child abuse scandal will force the islanders to do some painful soul-searching. "If you are a certain way inclined, the island can easily feel very claustrophobic," he said. "Say you were a social worker at Haut de la Garenne and you saw someone kicking a child, who do you tell? Whistleblowing is not exactly the most popular activity round here.
"I'm not necessarily saying Jersey is worse than anywhere else but it's not like whistleblowers can just up sticks and leave the local community as you can on the mainland.
"I've always joked that if you sneeze on your arrival at the airport by the time you get home there'll be a coffin waiting for you. Word and rumour travels fast. But the darker side to that is that there is a real feeling we shouldn't wash our dirty laundry in public."
He added: "There was shock when the abuse allegations came to light and a stunned silence when the bodies started to be uncovered. But that shouldn't be interpreted as islanders not caring; they are just utterly shocked by the scale of all this. There's going to be a lot of healing and I think we're only at the beginning."
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