Man charged in Jersey sex abuse case
Police today charged a 45-year-old man over allegations of sexual abuse relating to the Haut de la Garenne former children’s home on Jersey.
Michael Aubin, who was born in Jersey and lives in Southampton, Hampshire, was arrested in the UK by Jersey officers on Thursday.
He will appear before the Magistrate in Jersey on Monday charged with one count of sodomy against a boy and two counts of indecent assault against two other boys.
The charges relate to three separate children and are alleged to have been committed between 1977 and 1980.
A Jersey Police spokesperson said it was possible that further charges may follow.
He is the third man to be charged in connection with the ongoing historical abuse inquiry.
Gordon Claude Wateridge, 76, originally from Croydon, south London, has been charged with three offences of indecent assault on girls under 16 between 1969 and 1979.
Claude Donnelly, 68, of St Brelade, has been charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl on Jersey between 1971 and 1974.
Neither man has entered a plea.
Another man has also been arrested as part of the wider abuse inquiry.
The latest arrest came as detectives said new tests had proved “beyond doubt” that the remains of more than one child have been found at Haut de la Garenne.
Expert examination of five teeth unearthed in a cellar at the former children’s home over the last week revealed that most had come out after death and from at least two sources.
Police have now recovered a total of 10 teeth and at least 30 charred human bone fragments, indicating that homicide had taken place, with the victims’ bodies possibly cremated in a fireplace.
The context of the finds suggests that the teeth were put in the cellar after the 1940s but detectives have yet to conclude how or why they came to be there.
Tests to age the suspected victims have so far been inconclusive, with estimates ranging from pre-Second World War to as recent as the 1970s and 1980s.
Haut de la Garenne became the centre of the historic abuse inquiry in February after the discovery of what was initially believed to be part of a child’s skull but was later thought to be wood or part of a coconut.
Following the find, scores of people came forward claiming they were abused at the home.
Some talked of underground punishment rooms where they said they were drugged, raped and beaten.
Forensic teams subsequently uncovered a network of four secret underground chambers at the site where they found the teeth and bone fragments.
In other chambers, officers also found shackles, a blood-stained bath and the haunting message “I’ve been bad for years and years” scrawled on a wooden post.
