Sunday, July 13, 2008

Haut de la Garenne – Worse Than Imagined




~Lenny Harper

I saw a very disturbing article yesterday, but hesitated to write anything as you can see by my correspondence with Senator Syvret:

Stuart,

Saw this article yesterday, but found no other media sources carrying it. I was afraid to publish anything as I didn't feel there was any corroboration.

Do you know if the article is true? Are you aware of the "secret" report? Why nothing from the BBC or other outlets?

If it is true, it's highly disturbing and, if true, are they holding it back til Lenny Harper is gone?

----

Donchais

Yes – it’s true.

Judging from what the article says – I guess it’s extremely well-sourced.

What it describes certainly fits – sadly – with my knowledge of the whole episode.

The reason no other media will have run it yet as that the information was clearly only supplied to the News of the World. Which is why they’ve made a major, exclusive story on it.

Expect the other media to follow it up in the coming days.

Is the Jersey oligarchy trying to hold back until after Lenny’s gone?

Yes.

Stuart.

Normally, I wouldn’t publish an entire article, but this is so god-awful I am posting it in its entirety.

From News of the World – UK

HELLFIRE
Jersey home dossier to reveal children were murdered...then burnt

Exclusive by Lucy Panton

A SHOCK secret police report into the Jersey House of Hell children's home reveals youngsters there WERE murdered then BURNED in a furnace to COVER UP the atrocities.

It's feared island authorities may try to hush up the dossier on Haut de la Garenne orphanage but a source told us: "Officers on this case are in NO DOUBT what went on."

Innocent children WERE raped, murdered and their bodies then BURNT in a FURNACE at the Jersey House of Horrors, says a top-secret police report into the scandal.

A News of the World investigation reveals cops have shocking new evidence of how the killings were COVERED UP at the Haut de la Garenne care home.

Our chilling revelations come as officers prepare to hand over their damning dossier from Britain's biggest ever child abuse probe to the island's States of Jersey authorities.

A total of 65 teeth and around 100 charred fragments of bones are all that remain of victims detectives believe were abused and killed before their tortured corpses were thrown into a fiery grave inside the house of hell.

But records of children who stayed at the home over past decades have been destroyed so police have an impossible task of putting names to their grim finds.

A source close to the four-month investigation told us: "There's NO doubt in the minds of the detectives on this case that children WERE murdered in the home.

"Officers believe they have compelling evidence that youngsters' bodies were burnt in the home's furnace then the remains swept into the soil floor in the cellars—the area that became dubbed ‘the torture rooms'.
Ripped

"The problem has been identifying the children that went missing over the years. No records were kept of who came and left that place.

"Kids were shipped to the home from all over the UK and were never heard of again.

"All the inquiry team have to go on is this grim collection of teeth and bone fragments and no names to match up to the remains.

"Because this investigation has seen so many twists and turns people seem to find it hard to accept that children WERE slaughtered and their deaths WERE covered up."

Most of the dental remains discovered have been identified as children's milk teeth. And we can reveal that among more than 100 bone fragments is a TIBIA from a child's leg and what police believe is an "intact" ADENOID bone from the ear of an infant.

These were all retrieved from a fingertip search of the four cellars in the Home's EAST WING.

Forensic teams also found STRANDS OF NYLON which they have concluded came from the head of a broom.

And, because those type of nylon brooms were only used in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the discovery helped officers to put a date on when the bones were swept into the soil floor.

Cops are now convinced that those charred bones and teeth were emptied from the bottom of the home's industrial furnace—located away in the West Wing—when it was ripped out around that time to insall oil-fired central heating.

Officers have spoken to builders who worked on renovations at the home but have been unable to discover what happened to the furnace after that. But they have taken samples from the chimney breast which was left behind.

Around that same time wooden floorboards were laid OVER the old soil floor in the east wing.

And it is there, within the hidden torture chambers just inches below, that the bones, a pair of shackles and children's clothing were found.

Also in the underground rooms police discovered a large concrete bath with traces of blood. A builder has also given evidence that he was asked to dig two lime pits in the ground nearby around that period. Lime pits have often been used to destroy corpses.

So far 97 people have come forward to complain they were abused as children at Haut de la Garenne. Many have described being drugged, shackled, raped, flogged and held in a dark cellar for long periods.

Much of the clothing found at the scene is thought to date back to the 1960s and 1970s when youngsters had to make their own clothes and shoes in the care home work shop.

Cops now believe that whoever was responsible for removing the furnace KNEW that there were children's remains inside. And they think it was moved while disgraced headmaster Colin Tilbrook was in charge of the place.

Tilbrook, now dead, has been described by former charges as being behind "some of the most horrific abuse" at the home.

We can reveal that cops now plan to quiz one of his closest aides who is still alive and living in the UK.

Tilbrook, who ran the home in the 1960s, died aged 62 in 1988 after suffering a heart attack in a public swimming pool. His foster daughter Tina Blee, 38, recently made an emotional visit to Haut de la Garenne to meet abuse victims and bravely told how SHE was raped by the monster every week as a child, after he took her in following his departure from Jersey.

She said: "I needed to come here to say sorry for what he's done. If children were killed here I'm convinced he played a big part in it.

"He was more than capable of murder."

This week police began a forensic examination inside a nearby World War II German bunker which victims say was used as a base for abusing children.

Six witnesses say they were sexually assaulted by staff at the squat brick building which houses a network of underground rooms and passages.

As that work starts, police have closed the doors on their detailed forensic hunt inside the hell home.

Lack of records still hampers police. But we can reveal that one mainland authority, Birmingham City Council, has presented the Jersey force with a list of children who were sent to the home but went missing.

Although four have now been tracked down, after a mammoth search one still remains unaccounted for.

Earlier this year we also uncovered allegations that pictures of BABIES being raped were taken in the care home and circulated by an international child porn ring.

Experts suspect the home was responsible for many of the seedy network's 9,000 sick pictures, discovered in an infamous haul in Holland in the Nineties.

It was dubbed the Zandvoort stash, after the town where it was found—but the source studio was never uncovered.

Police said their latest intensive probe at Haut de la Garenne has produced more than 40 suspects.

Three men have already been charged with sex abuse offences as part of the inquiry. But now, despite the wealth of shocking detail uncovered by officers, there are fears the full truth about the House of Hell could be covered up yet again after the investigation boss, Jersey's tough No2 top cop Lenny Harper, retires next month.

Haut de la Garenne's abused former residents have repeatedly claimed that what happened was deliberately hushed up to avoid tarnishing Jersey's reputation as a family-friendly tourist haven and to give politicians in London no excuse to try to exercise more control over the island.

Although Jersey is part of the British Isles and under the Queen's rule, it has a separate government system and makes its own laws.

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

In a separate case recently investigators were frustrated by the island's legal authorities who refused to charge a couple accused of beating their foster children with cricket bats. Despite being told by lawyers and an honorary police officer who reviewed the case that there was sufficient evidence to go ahead, the charges were blocked at the 11th hour.

A police source said: "The argument for not charging this couple was that their natural children have said they're of good character.

"The detailed statements of all the people who claim they were physically assaulted seem to count for nothing."

The Haut de la Garenne file, along with several others, is now complete but is "being held up" by lawyers.

Our inside source added: "There's a strong suspicion that the files are being held on to until Lenny Harper goes and a new team is in place.

"No one will be surprised if the truth about what happened in the care home never surfaces and once more the evidence gets swept under the carpet."

God help all of us!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The problem with the "News of the World" story might be the sensational tabloid reporting style itself, which may not seem as credible as if it had been reported by other news outlets. Much of what was in their story does appear to be consistent with details and allegations already in the public domain, however.

I think if Stuart is right about other outlets running with this story in coming days, it could cause a groundswell of support for investigative follow-up in the more mainstream media.

At least that is my hope, as I believe truth will out in such especially important cases. There are so many accused and so many victims in Jersey, with whispered abuse allegations about HDLG obviously going back for generations, now.

Absolutely clear to anyone following the news in Jersey is that there is a verifiable history of clear cut police corruption and governmental cover-up, relating to completely separate child abuse and criminal cases.

HUGE, compelling, horrific story + mysterious isolated location + long history of shady, secretive financial, police, and political dealings + some heroic good guys (like Stuart, Lenny and Simon) who are constantly vilified by corrupt, powerful local former policemen and industrialists/press/ministers + unspeakably evil and depraved criminals connected to the elite + CHILDREN MURDERED AND TORTURED + OBVIOUS COVER-UP = world-wide interest in discovering the truth!

How could there not be global interest? I predict that multiple best-selling books will be writen about this case.

Having once worked for a small independent newspaper, which boasted a couple of dogged investigative journalists, I would be surprised if there were not a number of such writers already watching this case carefully. No matter how much corporate media consolidation takes place world wide, or how much pressure is brought to bear against such politically inconvenient investigations, we all know how successful a good scoop can be in establishing a journalist's or book author's career.

Not all interested journalists will have a corporate boss determined to hush up this story. Some independent news outlets still place a bigger value upon being first to expose a huge story than upon pleasing politicians. Other journalists may be freelancers.

The BBC will appear to have been part of the deliberate cover-up if they fail to "try" to expose the larger truth in the Jersey case. I, for one, would be surprised if the BBC does not at least go along and publish what is going to end up being exposed by other outlets, anyway, even if only to cover their own complicity. They can't appear to be a JEP type outlet voicing the party line because it would be too obvious, especially to other writers and even historians.

In fact, I suspect the more attempts there are to cover up or even to minimise the investigation, the bigger this story will be. After all, even the Watergate scandal was primarily about what occurred after the original crime was committed.

Your continued efforts on behalf of Stuart and of Jersey's abuse victims may help focus the attention of the very individuals needed now to expose the real story. This story has to be kept alive.

-C.

whimsical brainpan said...

There are no words...

Anonymous said...

It is so unfortunate and horrible, but this is most likely true.
By the way, the BBC website printed articles & survivor accounts on Jersey & Haut de la Garenne orphanage back in February 2008. I guess the rest of the world looked away from this crime on these children of long ago. These adult child abuse survivors have little voice, because most people don't want to know what went on to children for so long in places around the world....places sometimes far away & sometimes right next door.