Child's remains found at Jersey youth hostel

Police will continue their excavation of a bricked-up cellar today at a Jersey youth hostel where they found a child’s skull.

Forensic teams are focusing their investigation on the cellar at Haut de la Garenne, a former children’s home, after a sniffer dog specially trained to find human remains indicated a number of hotspots there.

The dog has indicated seven hotspots in total across the site and detectives have not ruled out finding more bodies.

They were alerted to the site following a child abuse investigation involving allegations mainly from the 1970s and 1980s when the centre was a home for children with behaviour problems.

Jersey’s deputy chief police officer, Lenny Harper, said they planned to continue the search for two weeks.

The remains were sent to the UK for dating and officers believe they have been there for more than five years but fear it may not be possible to identify the child from the skull.

Mr Harper said the child abuse investigation started after a number of former members of staff were arrested on suspicion of paedophile crimes.

He said the force would investigate all care agencies in Jersey because victims made complaints of abuse but “they were not dealt with”.

The inquiry brought police into contact with 150 people claiming to be victims of abuse or witnesses to it and the NSPCC said they received 63 calls from people claiming they were abused in Jersey care homes.

“Part of the inquiry will be the fact that a lot of the victims tried to report their assaults but for some reason or another they were not dealt with as they should be,” Mr Harper said.

“We are looking at allegations that a number of agencies didn’t deal with things as perhaps they should, we are looking at all the agencies.”

Jersey’s Chief Minister, Senator Frank Walker, said they would help the police investigate any allegations the complaints were ignored or covered up.

“We are concentrating all our resources on helping the police and that includes looking at any allegations of a cover-up,” he said.

“If anyone is found guilty they would be arrested and prosecuted in exactly the same way as the people who perpetrated these evil crimes.”

A special free helpline was set up by the NSPCC at the request of the police and they received 63 calls from adults reporting allegations of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.

So far 27 cases have been referred to detectives.

Police said that records of children at Haut de la Garenne are “patchy” and it is understood that those who died in care may have been formally reported as runaways.

Mr Harper did say that they have names of missing children but would not comment on how many or who.

Haut de la Garenne closed as a children’s home in 1986.