Quote:“The first pit, away from the house, was about 1.5 metres (5ft) deep, with a large quantity of lime at the bottom. A police spokeswoman said: "The inquiry team can think of no reason why this pit would have been created, nor why it was filled with lime. We would emphasise that we have no evidence of any motive." (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7267632.stm).

Quote:Beast of Jersey paedophile Edward Paisnel was known to visit children’s home

Simon de Bruxelles and David Brown

Police are to review the case of a notorious paedophile known as the Beast of Jersey who regularly visited a care home on the island where the bones of a child were found at the weekend.

For 11 years Edward Paisnel, a building contractor, stalked the island wearing a rubber mask and nail-studded wristlets, attacking women and children with apparent impunity.

His visits in the 1960s to Haut de la Garenne, when he was often dressed in a Santa Claus outfit, were first revealed in a book written by his wife, Joan, in 1972, after he had been sentenced to 30 years in prison. Paisnel, who asked children to call him Uncle Ted, died in 1994.

Last month Gordon Wateridge, the 76-year-old former warder of Haut de la Garenne, became the first person to be charged in connection with the investigation into abuse on the island. Mr Wateridge was warder at the home between 1969 and 1979.

It also emerged yesterday that a skull found at the home may have been moved as recently as five years ago.

As police moved in specialist equipment to search a rubble-filled cellar at the Haut de la Garenne care home where they fear more bodies may be buried, more details emerged of the alleged “systemic” physical and sexual abuse at the home.

One man who was in the home for several years in the 1960s told how his 14-year-old best friend, Michael Collins, ran away from the home and was found hanged from a tree.

The man, who is now in his sixties, said that violence was dished out by both staff and older boys. He recalled two occasions when boys went missing and were said to have “gone back home”.

“You have to wonder, now,” he said.

Police confirmed yesterday that they were investigating six further “hot spots” pinpointed by a specialist sniffer dog trained to detect buried human remains. The sites are both inside and outside the building and several are above a cellar where children were confined if they were badly behaved, according to former residents.

Lenny Harper, Jersey’s deputy chief of police, said that it was not known when the cellar was filled, and that clearing it could take a considerable time.

Stuart Syvret, the former Jersey health minister, who was sacked in November for alleging that there had been an official cover-up over the child abuse scandal, said yesterday that he believed that the skull found on Saturday under seven inches of concrete had been reburied in 2003 when the building was refurbished before becoming the island’s youth hostel.

He said: “The abuse at the home may date back decades but the cover-up that followed is much more recent.”

He said that it appeared that as recently as five years ago a child’s body was disinterred and reburied in a place where someone hoped that it would never be found.

Since the discovery of the human bones more than ten further victims of child abuse at the home have contacted police, taking the total number to more than 150.

It has also emerged that remains discovered five years ago were dismissed as animal bones and disposed of, despite being found in close proximity to children’s shoes.

Mr Syvret, 42, who has been involved in fierce clashes with Frank Walker, the island’s Chief Minister, over allegations of a cover-up, said that the abuse extended to several more children’s homes in addition to Haut de la Garenne and Greenfields, which is the subject of a separate investigation.

Although many people on the island professed astonishment at the discoveries, some older residents were less surprised. A farmer who used to deliver milk to the home in the 1940s and 1950s recalls being instructed to pass it through the window to avoid any possible interaction with the inmates.

Another nearby resident said: “These were children no one wanted. Everyone knew the regime was harsh but that was expected in those days.

“It doesn’t surprise me that some disappeared, they were half way to being disappeared by being put there in the first place.”

Most of the 60 children livng in the home were orphans or had been abandoned by parents unable to look after them. Latterly it was used for children with special needs and behavioural problems.

Mr Syvret claims that the abuse continued after the home was closed in 1986 and its residents transferred.

Quote:Dark truth on island of secrets and shame
The island of Jersey is renowned for keeping people's business private. Gordon Rayner asks if this culture contributed to a decades-long child abuse scandal

Sunday March 02 2008

By the time the former children's home of Haut de la Garenne has given up all of its terrible secrets, the darkest chapter yet will have been added to an appalling history of organised child abuse.

Over the course of the past seven days, the horror of what allegedly went on within the austere Victorian edifice has slowly unfolded, beginning with the discovery of a child's skull buried under a concrete floor.

More sinister revelations have followed each day -- the discovery of a bricked-up cellar and, inside it, a concrete bath and a set of shackles, in which it is claimed naked boys and girls were held prisoner while they waited to be sexually and physically assaulted. On Friday, another dungeon-like chamber was found beneath a trapdoor.

The "deep, dark place" described by many of the 160-plus alleged victims who have now contacted police was exactly as they had last seen it more than 20 years ago and, as police prepare to break into two more cellars, the belief is that they will soon discover the remains of more children who "went missing" from the home. Outside, in the swirling fog that shrouded parts of the island last week, officers have been digging up nearby fields where it is feared yet more remains may have been buried.

We now know Jersey's most shameful secret: that for the last 50 years, child abuse has thrived in Haut de la Garenne and, after its closure in 1986, in a succession of other schools and institutions. Many of the accused still live on this tiny island, which measures nine miles by five, and Jersey must ultimately answer two questions: How many of its 90,000 population knew what was going on, and why did none of them do anything about it?

Critics of the island's oligarchic establishment believe they already know the answer: that Jersey, with its long-standing culture of secrecy, put self-preservation before justice.

And it is this allegation of an establishment cover-up, with its echoes of Belgium's notorious Marc Dutroux case, which is likely to leave the most indelible stain on Jersey's cherished reputation.

When Dutroux was convicted in 2004 of raping and murdering a string of young girls -- two of whom had starved to death in his cellar -- he said he was part of a widespread paedophile ring which included policemen and elite members of Belgian society. Although his claims were never proved, a large percentage of Belgians still believe them.

On Jersey, Gary Matthews, a former member of the island's parliament, the States of Jersey, says he was not greatly surprised to discover that institutionalised child abuse had been able to go unchallenged for so long.

"The first instinct of the Jersey establishment whenever there is trouble is to keep it quiet," he explained, pointing out that the political classes are terrified of scandals that bring questions and interference from the outside world. "The culture of secrecy started during the German occupation in the Second World War, when there was a certain amount of collaboration. Then, in the 1960s, when Jersey built up its all-important financial sector, secrecy became the rule.

"As we now know, paedophilia was also taking place in the island's institutions, but the instinct for sweeping everything under the carpet seems to have extended to that, too." He believes that many of the island's politicians are concerned only with their image, and with protecting the tourist industry and the stability of the finance sector.

To add to the problem, Jersey's attitude towards paedophilia appears firmly stuck in the 19th Century, a time when child abuse was sometimes treated as a petty offence.

Take the case of Roger Holland, a 43-year-old St John Ambulance volunteer who openly declared the fact that he was a convicted paedophile when he applied to become a part-time policeman in 1992. Six years earlier, he had indecently assaulted a mentally impaired 14-year-old girl, whose trust he had gained through his ambulance work, and had admitted molesting a second child whose parents felt she was too traumatised to press charges. He confessed that he had "a problem for younger girls".

Such an admission, it might be assumed, would have led to him being automatically barred from joining the island's honorary police, who have considerably more powers than the equivalent special constables in Britain. But, no. Jersey's authorities decided that his conviction was in the past, and so allowed him to stand for election as a constable's officer. He was elected unopposed.

After re-election in 1995, he was promoted in 1997 to the rank of vingtenier, the second most senior in the island's volunteer force, which supplements the work of the full-time police.

Although concerns about his criminal convictions were raised with Jersey's attorney-general, Holland was allowed to carry on, even after a young girl alleged in 1999 that he had "committed a sexual act with her" in the back of a police van. He finally resigned from the force in November 1999, and in 2001 was jailed for two years for two counts of indecent assault.

It was against such a background of complacency about child abuse that Haut de la Garenne became a paedophiles' paradise.

One of the alleged victims who has contacted the police, a woman identified as "Pamela", and now aged 49, claims: "Rape was rife for boys and girls of all ages. Some weekends, staff held parties, and other people would come and drink at the home. They knew how to pick out the weak ones. All of us would try to lie very still in our beds and try not to attract attention."

Peter Hannaford, 59, an orphan who spent the first 12 years of his life at the home, alleges that rape and torture "happened every night and happened to everyone".

We now know that one of those who visited the home was Edward Paisnel, the "Beast of Jersey", who for 11 years terrorised the island by abducting children from their beds, dressed in a hideous rubber mask and nail-studded wristbands, and sexually assaulting them.

Paisnel, who was jailed for 30 years in 1971 for 13 sex attacks on children and women, would hand out sweets to the children at Haut de la Garenne and ask them to call him Uncle Ted. At Christmas, he would dress up as Santa Claus. Police are investigating whether he was one of the "guests" at the horrific parties held in the home.

Jersey is just one of many communities that have been shamed by the discovery of widespread paedophilia in institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable children in society. But it is the extraordinary length of time over which the alleged crimes took place that makes this case so shocking.

Esther Rantzen, the founder of the children's charity ChildLine, says Jersey's isolation was a large part of the reason the scandal remained hidden for so long.

"Small communities, such as islands, churches or children's homes, make it very difficult for children who are suffering abuse to safely disclose it to someone," she says.

In recent years, thanks to the work of charities such as ChildLine and the NSPCC, children have been far more likely to report abuse, knowing that their allegations will be taken seriously. But on Jersey, widespread fear of the establishment still exists.

During my time on the island this week, I have been approached or telephoned by a number of people who wanted to talk about what they believed to be one of the factors in the alleged culture of cover-up -- the island's allegedly nepotistic political and legal system, which some likened to a banana republic.

In almost every case, these individuals say that they can not risk being quoted by name, because they are genuinely afraid of being persecuted for speaking out. "The people who run this island are very powerful, and they are not answerable to any higher authority, so they can very easily make life difficult

for you,'' says one. "Anyone who speaks out is regarded as an enemy of Jersey."

The ease with which secrets can apparently remain hidden is a result of the intimacy which exists between the island's political classes, business leaders and those in authority.

Ever since the Channel Islands were granted autonomy by King John in 1204 (having become part of England's kingdom as a result of the Norman Conquest), Jersey has had an entirely independent political and legal system, based around its 53-member parliament. It has no political parties, and so there is no opposition, aside from the odd maverick such as Stuart Syvret, the former health minister, who claims he was sacked when he tried to draw attention to the child abuse scandal last year.

There are no checks and balances from outside, and some of the most important work, such as choosing the chief minister, is carried out in secret. The island's politicians, judges, policemen and business leaders are also drawn from a small pool, with many being relatives or friends.

For example, Frank Walker, the island's chief minister, was until recently chairman of the company that owns Jersey's only newspaper, the Evening Post. The bailiff, the equivalent of the Speaker in the House of Commons, is also the head of the judiciary. The attorney general, whose job is to give the bailiff impartial legal advice on prosecutions, is his brother. The list goes on.

"It is an excessively intimate system which doesn't have any checks and balances," claims Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Grimsby, who has for years tried to encourage more openness in Jersey's political system. "When a problem comes up, it is often concealed. Things don't tend to get investigated and exposed in that climate."

One more disturbing question presents itself in the light of the child abuse scandal: just why, on a such a small and supposedly idyllic island, did so many hundreds of children end up in care homes?

The answer lies in another little-publicised fact about Jersey -- its high level of poverty, which brings with it the sort of social problems that lead to children being taken into care.

Although Jersey, with its €327 billion financial industry, has the second-highest gross domestic product per capita in Europe, the island's wealth is largely held by the privileged few. Some 13,000 people -- more than one in seven -- live in social rental properties, Jersey's equivalent of council houses, and half of all households fall within one or more of the recognised measures for relative poverty.

The crumbling 1960s council estates of St Helier are testament to the years of neglect. Rusting cars rot on rubbish-strewn drives, windows have bedsheets for curtains and the paint is peeling off walls and doorframes.

"This place is run by the finance industry for the finance industry," says one resident. "Anyone else just doesn't count."

Although they dare not say it publicly, many on the island hope that the scandal will finally force Jersey's ruling class to get its house in order, and address the problems which, they say, it has always preferred not to discuss.

Quote:Jersey care homes 'covered up abuses'

* Haroon Siddique and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday February 26 2008

A former government minister, who last year raised concerns about the treatment of children in Jersey's care homes, today claimed there was a "disgraceful and disgusting failure" to deal with abuse on the island.

Stuart Syvret, health and social services minister until last September, described the continuing search for six more bodies at the Haut de la Garenne care home, where a child's remains were found on Saturday, as the latest example of "a culture of cover-up and concealment".

His comments came as it emerged that Edward Paisnel, a notorious paedophile dubbed the Beast of Jersey, used to visit Haut de la Garenne dressed as Father Christmas.

Paisnel was jailed for 30 years in 1971 after being convicted of 13 counts of assault, rape and sodomy.

Syvret claimed he was "sacked for whistleblowing" when he was dismissed as health and social services minister shortly after highlighting the "torture" of 11 to 16-year-olds in the island's care homes.

Brandishing an independent report into abuse at a boys' school on the island, Syvret claimed it detailed a "disgraceful and disgusting failure" to deal with abuse which was "carried for years".

He said one paedophile had been convicted in relation to abuse at the school but that there was a deliberate attempt by certain members of staff and governors to "humiliate and intimidate and force those boys [who had made allegations] into withdrawing their complaints – fortunately they didn't".

Earlier, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "People mustn't necessarily - as bad as it is - be distracted by the Haut de la Garenne story because the real issue here is we are looking at multiple examples of abuse at multiple institutions over a period of decades and decades.

"It's a continuum that we see. It's a culture of cover-up and concealment and tragically the recent evidence is just the latest manifestation of that."

Jersey's chief minister, Frank Walker, who has denied allegations of a cover-up, is to make a statement to the island's parliament today and will face questions about the investigation.

The education minister, Mike Vibert, said he had reviewed the case at the school identified by Syvret and the abuse "was taken seriously".

"The man responsible was successfully prosecuted and subsequently imprisoned," he said.

Vibert said an independent report was commissioned after the court case that "made a number of recommendations and all have since been implemented".

He said the report had not been published because it could lead to the identification of the children involved.

A sniffer dog has identified six possible burial sites in and around the Haut de la Garenne building, which closed as a care home in 1986.

Deputy police chief Lenny Harper said yesterday the cellar was a "point of interest", but it had been blocked up and officers have been trying to smash their way in.

They suspended the search this afternoon to seek advice from a structural engineer on "gaining access to a section of the home".

Paisnel lived in St Martin, close to Haut de la Garenne. After his trial, his wife, Joan, wrote a book claiming Paisnel used to visit the care home to take gifts to the children, who he asked to call him "Uncle Ted".

Quote:Birmingham council illegally sent children into care in Jersey, MP
report reveals
By EILEEN FAIRWEATHER
4th August 2008
MP John Hemming

At least five children were illegally placed in care on Jersey by
Birmingham social services, which then lost track of them.

Four of the youngsters - who are now adults - are still on the island
and have been traced by local police. But the whereabouts of the
fifth, a male born in the Fifties, remains unknown.

The revelation comes amid continuing police investigations into 100
charred bone fragments and 65 milk teeth found at Jersey's now
notorious Haut de la Garenne former children's home.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who discovered that his local city
council had sent children to Jersey, believes other children from the
UK 'were also placed in care there'.

The MP for Birmingham Yardley added: 'The Government has refused to
order councils to check properly because it does not want to open a
can of worms, on the links between abusers in England and Jersey.'

The Mail on Sunday has also learned that children from UK local
authorities, which have also been the subject of abuse allegations,
were taken on holiday to Haut de la Garenne, where the bone fragments
are said to belong to five children whom detectives believe were
killed.

The inquiry suffered a setback last week when forensic experts
revealed that the age of the remains cannot be dated, meaning a
murder inquiry is unlikely. But nearly 100 former care residents have
alleged gross physical and sexual abuse.

Birmingham council only discovered it had placed five children in
foster care on Jersey because, at Mr Hemming's request, it checked
old accounts. It found it made payments to Jersey for child care between
1960 and 1990. Yet a social work file survived on only one child.

Mr Hemming praised the council for 'doing what every council should
do now'. He added: 'It is not responsible for what happened under
earlier administrations, and I can't believe it was the only British
authority which used Jersey. The system nationally is not properly accountable.
Children are taken into care never to be seen again.'

Schools Minister Kevin Brennan has told the Commons that checks are
unnecessary because children from the UK cannot be placed in care in
Jersey without a court order. Yet the five Birmingham children were
sent to Jersey without such orders.

Although he has no information suggesting any crime took place, Mr
Hemming is concerned that the fifth man's history and whereabouts
remain unknown. 'How many other councils dumped kids there and forgot
about them?' he said.

Birmingham City Council said: 'We will co-operate fully if needed by
the Jersey authorities to investigate the whereabouts of adults from
any placements made historically by Birmingham City Council.'

Mr Hemming has asked English councils to check their records under
the Freedom of Information Act. He said: 'Most seem only to have done
cursory checks, just checking recent electronic files, or asking
around the office.'

Responses obtained by The Mail on Sunday confirm this. A handful of
councils refused to check at all.

They included Islington in North London, whose 12 children's homes
were infamously infiltrated between the Seventies and Nineties by a
child sex and pornography network, while Margaret Hodge was council
leader.

Key staff, The Mail on Sunday recently revealed, were from Jersey or
had strong Channel Islands connections. The council told Mr Hemming
that checking its records would cost too much.

Liz Davies, the former Islington senior social worker who bravely
blew the whistle on the scandal, said last night: 'It is becoming clear
that children at Haut de la Garenne were sent on holiday to
children's homes in England which were also notorious for abuse, while the
children in the English homes they went to were sent to Haut de la
Garenne. They literally swapped beds.'

She did not feel able yet to reveal which authorities were involved.

'But I am perturbed that police in Britain have not written to all
local authorities on the mainland to demand they check which children
they sent to Jersey,' she added.

'During the North Wales abuse scandal in the Nineties, when I was a
child protection manager in London, police asked all councils to
check had we sent any of our children to its care homes. Many had, then
just forgotten about them.

'Children in care are often shipped about, and paedophiles love
placing them far from home.'

Mr Hemming is furious the Government has refused to respond to the
call for councils to check records until after the summer break.

He said: 'They are stalling because they are embarrassed by the size
of the problem, and because it involves English authorities, too.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/01/jerseyisland.ukcrime

Jersey abuse inquiry: Remains of five children found, police reveal -
but murder charges unlikely· Officers told of some victims dragged
from beds

· Investigation hampered by inability to date bones
Ian Cobain The Guardian, Friday August 1 2008
Article history

A forensics services manager at a second world war bunker near Haut de
la Garenne on Jersey. Photograph: Matthew Hotton/PA

The Jersey care home investigation into child abuse reached a pivotal
moment yesterday when police disclosed they had found the remains of
up to five children after a painstaking dig at the Haut de la Garenne
institution.

As officers revealed that 65 teeth and bone fragments came from
victims aged between four and 11, it emerged that police had first
begun to fear children had been murdered when people who had been
abused at the home told of other residents being dragged away at night
and never seen again.

"Among the victims were a few who said that children had been dragged
from their beds at night screaming and had then disappeared,"
according to a police summary of the investigation. "Two others said
they had knowledge of human remains at the location but were not
specific. A local advocate also came to police and said he had a
client who knew there were human remains buried at the home."

The summary says that burnt clothing, toys and bed sheets have also
been recovered. According to pathologists, most of the 65 teeth found
in the cellars beneath Haut de la Garenne were not milk teeth, but had
come from corpses of up to five children. Police searchers also found
bone from a child's ear and a child's tibia.

Both pieces had been cut and burned before being concealed; they had
then been moved, at a date no later than the early 1970s.

Lenny Harper, Jersey's deputy police chief, concedes it is unlikely
that a formal murder investigation will be opened in parallel with the
child sex abuse inquiry running for the past 28 months.

Not only have police been unable to identify any named child from the
remains, but extensive carbon dating has failed to pinpoint their age.
First tests gave a bracket for some of the bone fragments as broad as
1650 to 1950.

However, the pathologists' opinion that the teeth were not from living
children, combined with cuts and scorch marks on the bones, the
attempt to conceal them, and the subsequent move, all lead detectives
to conclude that several children may have been murdered at Haut de la
Garenne.

Harper will not completely rule out a murder investigation, however.
"If the dating remains as inconclusive as what we have had so far, a
homicide inquiry is unlikely," he said yesterday. "If the dating is
more specific, a homicide inquiry is a possibility.

"We cannot get away from the fact that we have found the remains of at
least five children there."

Yesterday's announcement is thought to intend to silence critics,
among the island's political elite and among some London-based
journalists, who have questioned the failure of the police to produce
any bodies. Harper indicated several months ago that he was convinced
children's remains had been concealed at the home.

It is thought the announcement was also intended to ease any local
political pressure on the man who takes over the investigation next
month. Harper retires at the end of this month and is to be replaced
by David Warcup, currently deputy chief constable of Northumbria.

Haut de la Garenne ceased to house a children's home in 1986 and was a
youth hostel when the historic child sex abuse investigation began in
April 2006, initially as an inquiry into the island's sea cadets.

According to the case summary: "The attitude of the Sea Cadet
authorities of that time caused great concern. Accordingly, police
began to examine a number of previous cases, and during this review
were continually referred to abuse which had allegedly taken place at
Haut de La Garenne."

Police at first concealed the inquiry, for fear suspects might
intimidate witnesses or destroy evidence, and went public last
November. Scores of people came forward claiming to have been raped
and beaten at the home, leading police to excavate four cellars,
referred to as "punishment rooms" by some victims, where they found a
large bloodstained bath as well as the teeth and bones.

While nobody may be charged in connection with the deaths, police are
looking into 97 allegations of abuse in Jersey dating back to the
early 1960s. They have more than 100 suspects, and have indicated that
some could be described as members of the island's political and
social elite.

Six people have been arrested; three, including a former warden at
Haut de la Garenne, have been charged with child abuse offences and
have appeared in court. Three others have been released on bail
pending further inquiries.

Harper said yesterday that a new victim had come forward in recent
days to make allegations against one of the 18 priority suspects.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/26/ukcrime.childprotection1

Jersey care homes 'covered up abuses'Haroon Siddique and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday February 26 2008
Article history

Former Jersey health minister Stuart Syvret. Photograph: Christian
Keenan/Getty Images

A former government minister, who last year raised concerns about the
treatment of children in Jersey's care homes, today claimed there was
a "disgraceful and disgusting failure" to deal with abuse on the
island.

Stuart Syvret, health and social services minister until last
September, described the continuing search for six more bodies at the
Haut de la Garenne care home, where a child's remains were found on
Saturday, as the latest example of "a culture of cover-up and
concealment".

His comments came as it emerged that Edward Paisnel, a notorious
paedophile dubbed the Beast of Jersey, used to visit Haut de la
Garenne dressed as Father Christmas.

Paisnel was jailed for 30 years in 1971 after being convicted of 13
counts of assault, rape and sodomy.

Syvret claimed he was "sacked for whistleblowing" when he was
dismissed as health and social services minister shortly after
highlighting the "torture" of 11 to 16-year-olds in the island's care
homes.

Brandishing an independent report into abuse at a boys' school on the
island, Syvret claimed it detailed a "disgraceful and disgusting
failure" to deal with abuse which was "carried for years".

He said one paedophile had been convicted in relation to abuse at the
school but that there was a deliberate attempt by certain members of
staff and governors to "humiliate and intimidate and force those boys
[who had made allegations] into withdrawing their complaints -
fortunately they didn't".

Earlier, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "People mustn't
necessarily - as bad as it is - be distracted by the Haut de la
Garenne story because the real issue here is we are looking at
multiple examples of abuse at multiple institutions over a period of
decades and decades.

"It's a continuum that we see. It's a culture of cover-up and
concealment and tragically the recent evidence is just the latest
manifestation of that."

Jersey's chief minister, Frank Walker, who has denied allegations of a
cover-up, is to make a statement to the island's parliament today and
will face questions about the investigation.

The education minister, Mike Vibert, said he had reviewed the case at
the school identified by Syvret and the abuse "was taken seriously".

"The man responsible was successfully prosecuted and subsequently
imprisoned," he said.

Vibert said an independent report was commissioned after the court
case that "made a number of recommendations and all have since been
implemented".

He said the report had not been published because it could lead to the
identification of the children involved.

A sniffer dog has identified six possible burial sites in and around
the Haut de la Garenne building, which closed as a care home in 1986.

Deputy police chief Lenny Harper said yesterday the cellar was a
"point of interest", but it had been blocked up and officers have been
trying to smash their way in.

They suspended the search this afternoon to seek advice from a
structural engineer on "gaining access to a section of the home".

Paisnel lived in St Martin, close to Haut de la Garenne. After his
trial, his wife, Joan, wrote a book claiming Paisnel used to visit the
care home to take gifts to the children, who he asked to call him
"Uncle Ted".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/29/ukcrime.childprotection

Police discover shackles in Jersey abuse case home· Sources say find
tallies with victims' accounts
· Second underground 'punishment room' sought
Helen Pidd in Jersey The Guardian, Friday February 29 2008
Article history
Shackles were found yesterday in one of the underground chambers found
hidden under two concrete floors at the Jersey care home where a skull
was found on Saturday.

Police sources said the find was significant, and that it matched
accounts given by many of the victims, who said they had been sexually
and physically abused while in solitary confinement in "punishment
rooms" underneath Haut de la Garenne home.

A bath has already been found in the room, which was also mentioned by
many of the 160-plus victims who have reported abuse to the
authorities. Police believe there is a second, adjoining, underground
room that they have yet to break into.

"They are items that witnesses have said were in there when offences
were committed against them," said Lenny Harper, the officer in charge
of the case. "They certainly help corroborate accounts given by
victims."

A search dog trained to find human remains started barking when it
entered the room earlier this week. The dog's "extremely strong
reaction" was the same as when it helped find a child's remains buried
under inches of concrete at the house last weekend.

Harper said the room had unrendered walls and would take weeks to
search because of the amount of dust and rubble that would need to be
carefully moved and sifted through.

Police yesterday also began excavating a third site in a field to the
right of Haut de la Garenne. Harper said the dig began because of
"unspecific information which related to items that somebody has said
might be out there".

When asked if that meant more remains, he said yes. The area measured
approximately 15-20 yards by 10 yards, he said. The sniffer dog which
led police to the skull over the weekend had shown a strong reaction
when led to the area.

It also emerged yesterday that a number of employees of the States of
Jersey parliament had worked at Haut de la Garenne.

One was named by the States press office yesterday as Mario Lundy, the
current director of education on the island. There is no suggestion
that he is among the 40 suspects in the abuse inquiry.

The island's chief minister, Senator Frank Walker, said yesterday:
"There are no States of Jersey employees that have been subject to any
police investigation. Had there been anything significant that they
were involved in, anything the police found suspicious, that would not
be the case."

He added: "You should not conclude that [the States employees who
worked at Haut de la Garenne] were involved in any sort of abuse."

At a press conference yesterday Walker rejected the suggestion that
the States of Jersey owed an apology to the victims of child abuse on
the island.

It has emerged that bones found in the building when it was being
converted into a youth hostel five years ago were not all classified
as animal bones.

"There were some that were unidentified by the pathologist that
examined them," said Harper. None of the bones can currently be
located.

Detectives launched an inquiry into Haut de la Garenne after
accusations of violent and sexual abuse dating back to the 1960s.

The main focus of the investigation centres on allegations about
events in the 1970s and 1980s.

Since the discovery of a skull on Saturday officers have not ruled out
finding more bodies.

Harper said he was confident there would be arrests and prosecutions
in due course.

He did not believe the abuse at the home was carried out by an
organised "ring".

He said: "The abuse was spread over so many years and there are a
succession of people coming through there in positions of
responsibility ... but it was not a totally organised ring as the
years went on."

Quote:'I have known about Jersey paedophiles for 15 years,' says award-winning journalist
UK Daily Mail / 02-03-2008

The award-winning journalist who exposed terrible abuse in Islington children's homes now reveals horrifying links to sinister discoveries at Jersey's Haut de la Garenne.

I met the frightened policeman at an isolated country restaurant, many miles from his home and station. Detective Constable Peter Cook had finally despaired, and decided to blow the whistle to a reporter.

He was risking his career, so made me scribble my notes into a tiny pad beneath the tablecloth.

He had uncovered a vicious child sex ring, with victims in both Britain and the Channel Islands, and he wanted me to get his information to police abuse specialists in London.

Incredibly, he claimed that his superiors had barred him from alerting them.

He feared a cover-up: many ring members were powerful and wealthy. But I did not think him paranoid: I specialised in exposing child abuse scandals and knew, from separate sources, of men apparently linked to this ring.

They included an aristocrat, clerics and a social services chief. Their friends included senior police officers.

Repeatedly, inquiries by junior detectives were closed down, so I, a journalist, was asked to convey confidential information from one police officer to others. It seemed surreal.

I duly met trusted contacts at the National Criminal-Intelligence Squad. That was more than 12 years ago, and little happened - until now.

Last weekend, a child's remains were found at a former children's home on Jersey amid claims of a paedophile ring.

More than 200 children who lived at Haut de la Garenne have described horrific sexual and physical torture dating back to the Sixties.

When I heard the news, my eyes filled with tears. I felt heartbroken, not least at my own powerlessness. I have known for more than 15 years about Channel Islands paedophiles victimising children in the British care system.

I was relieved that the truth was finally emerging. But I felt devastated. Children had probably been murdered. I had so not wanted to be right.

I stood outside the forbidding Victorian building of Haut de la Garenne this week and watched grim-faced police in blue plastic forensic suits hunt its bricked-up secret basements for children's bones.

Outside, a large cross commemorates the 35 former residents who died fighting for their country: "Their names liveth forever." Oh yes?

What are the names of the children whose bodies may now be dug up - and why did no one miss and search for them earlier? Jersey's residents and political class must ask these questions.

Disturbing allegations about the murder of children in care have characterised other scandals I investigated in Britain, but today I can reveal for the first time the links between the abuse I uncovered at care homes in Islington, North London, and the horrifying discoveries on Jersey.

I have never before written that 14-year-old Jason Swift, killed in 1985 by a paedophile gang, is believed to have lived in Islington council's Conewood Street home.

Two sources claimed this when I investigated Islington's 12 care homes for The Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the London Evening Standard, in the early Nineties.

But hundreds of children's files mysteriously disappeared in Islington and, without documentation, this was not evidence enough.

We did, however, prove that every home included staff who were paedophiles, child pornographers or pimps. Concerned police secretly confirmed that several Islington workers were believed "networkers", major operators in the supply of children for abuse and pornography.

Some of these were from the Channel Islands or regularly took Islington children there on unofficial visits. In light of the grisly discoveries at Haut de la Garenne, the link now seems significant, but at the time we were so overwhelmed by abuse allegations nearer home that this connection never emerged.

What we did report prompted the sort of vehement official denials that have come to characterise child abuse claims. Margaret Hodge, then council leader, denounced us as Right-wing "gutter journalists" who supposedly bribed children to lie.

Our findings were eventually vindicated by Government-ordered inquiries, and two British Press Awards. Yet I knew we had only scraped the surface of Islington's corruption.

Now Jersey police under deputy chief Lenny Harper - a 'new broom' outsider - have been secretly investigating a paedophile ring linked to the island's care homes for months, I have been struck by common factors with the British abuse scandals: innocent-sounding sailing trips, where children can be isolated and abused, away from prying eyes, then delivered to other abusers; the familiar smearing of whistle-blowers; and the suppression of damning reports.

Jersey social worker Simon Bellwood was sacked early last year after speaking out, and popular health minister Stuart Syvret, 42, was fired in November after publicising the suppressed Sharp Report into abuse allegations.

"The smears on me are water off a duck's back," this brave man told me yesterday in a St Helier cafe. But his hands shook.

I have never assumed that the officials, politicians and police who cover up abuse scandals are all paedophiles, nor does Syvret.

"They just want a quiet life and their competency unquestioned. I'm angrier with them than the abusers, and want several prosecuted for obstructing the course of justice. The police are considering charges," he added.

Traditionally, police fear paedophile ring inquiries as expensive and unproductive. Traumatised witnesses can be hazy and collapse under cross-examination.

Convictions are rare. Police therefore raid suspected abusers for paedophile pornography, which more easily yields convictions.

Well - in theory. In June 1991, police in Cambridgeshire raided the home of Neil Hocquart who abused children in Britain and Guernsey and, with a social worker from Jersey, supplied child pornography for a huge sex ring.

It should have been a major breakthrough. But, as DC Cook told me, it went horribly wrong.

A handful of child sex-ring victims become "recruiters". They are not beaten but rewarded with gifts,

money and 'love'. In return, their job is to procure other victims. Such a man, my whistle-blower believed, was Neil Frederick Hocquart.

Hocquart, original surname Foster, was abused while in care in Norfolk and was eventually 'befriended' by an older man, merchant seaman Captain H. Hocquart of Vale, in Guernsey, whose surname he adopted.

Captain Hocquart was not the only Channel Islands man with an interest in children in care. Satan worshipper Edward Paisnel, "The Beast of Jersey", was given a 30-year sentence in 1971 on 13 counts of raping girls and boys. The building contractor fostered children and played Father Christmas at Haut de la Garenne in the Sixties.

Cambridgeshire police, in a joint operation with Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad (now the Paedophile Unit), raided Neil Hocquart's Swaffham Manor home in June 1991.

They found more than 100 child-sex videos and 300 photographs of children. At nearby Ely they found his friend, Walter Clack, trying to dispose of a sick home video of a middle-aged man abusing a boy.

Who were the children in these films and photos? Police needed properly to question these men. But they never got the chance.

Hocquart secretly took an overdose of anti-depressant dothiepin and died at Addenbrooke's Hospital soon after his arrest. Was his suicide a last act of loyalty?

DC Cook told me incredulously that a senior officer broke with normal procedure and informed Clack, before he was questioned, that the other suspect was dead. Clack then blamed the dead man for everything, and escaped with a £5,000 fine - and inherited one third of Hocquart's wealth, at his bequest.

Wills featured strongly in the fortunesof the Islington and Channel Islands paedophiles. Police discovered that Neil Hocquart inherited his wealth from the Guernsey sea captain.

But Captain Hocquart possibly paid dearly for befriending orphans: he died soon after making out his will in the younger man's favour.

Scotland Yard detectives told me they found at least "two or three" wills of older men who died of apparent heart attacks shortly after leaving everything to Neil Hocquart.

The officers cheerfully called him a "murderer". These deaths were never investigated: the suspect, after all, was now also dead.

Hocquart wasn't the only person in his circle to become rich this way. A Jersey-born friend of Hocquart's, who started his childcare career on the island before becoming a key supplier of children from Islington's care homes to paedophile rings, similarly inherited a fortune.

Nicholas John Rabet was for many years deputy superintendent of Islington council's home at 114 Grosvenor Avenue.

He and a colleague, another single man later barred from social work by the Department of Health, both took children on unauthorised trips to Jersey. Allegations mounted but nothing was done.

Rabet's opportunities to obtain victims massively increased after he befriended the widow of an American oil millionaire. She died after rewriting her will in his favour.

He inherited her manor house at Cross in Hand near Heathfield, Sussex, where he opened a children's activity centre, and regularly invited children in Islington's care to stay.

Hocquart spent £13,000 on quad bikes for the centre, called The Stables, and he and Walter Clack became "volunteers" there.

Hocquart befriended one young boy and took him on a sailing trip, where there would be little risk of being spotted. Police found disturbing film from the trip of men spraying the naked child with water.

But Hocquart left the boy another third of his money, and he denied abuse when questioned.

Police also found at Hocquart's home naked photos of a boy of about ten, whom they learned was in the care of Islington social services. I shall call him Shane.

Sussex police raided Rabet's children's centre. But he had plenty of warning and, they believed, emptied it of child pornography. However officers still found a "shrine to boys", with suggestive photographs everywhere, including pictures of Shane.

They approached Shane, at his Islington children's home. He tearfully confirmed months of abuse. But their attempts to investigate further were thwarted by Islington Council.

Many professionals had, for years, expressed grave fears about Rabet, and put their concerns in writing. But Islington falsely told Sussex officers it had no file material on Rabet or his alleged victim.

Staff had in fact been ordered to find the complaints and deliver them to the office of Lyn Cusack, Islington's assistant director of social services - but they were handed over to Sussex police only when I revealed their existence.

Islington's appalling mishandling of vital records was highlighted by the independent White inquiry into the abuse in Islington children's homes, which found that "at assistant director level . . . many confidential files were destroyed by mistake, although there is no evidence of conspiracy."

During the investigation into Rabet, Islington also refused to interview any other children in care, or, scandalously, help Sussex police identify other children in Rabet's photos.

With only Shane's evidence to rely on, police decided not to prosecute.

I traced Shane. He was furious that Rabet was never prosecuted, but not surprised. "This goes right to the top," he said, "You have no idea how big this is."

He showed me photos of another victim, a young Turkish boy with a sweet shy smile whom Rabet also regularly took from the Islington home to spend weekends at his manor house.

Shane didn't know where the boy was now, he just disappeared. I was never able to find the boy, either. Many children in care are missed by no one.

I retraced Shane two years ago to tell him that justice had finally caught up with Rabet. Third World police had succeeded where Britain's finest in Cambridgeshire, Sussex, London and Jersey had failed.

Rabet fled to Thailand's notorious child sex resort of Pattaya after the White inquiry. He was arrested there in spring 2006 and charged with abusing 30 boys, some as young as six.

Thai police believed he had abused at least 300. But he was never tried: on May 12, 2006, Rabet died of an overdose at the age of 57.

Two other Jersey-born social workers, who for legal reasons I cannot name, also worked in Islington and later with young offenders.

One arranged more of those mysterious sailing trips to Guernsey, the other sent children to Rabet's centre. Both were accused of abuse.

In 1995, we reinvestigated Rabet and met DC Cook at the restaurant. He had gone through Hocquart's papers, investigated other members of the paedophile ring and met their victims. He was horrified at what he discovered.

One man, for example, married a single mother purely so he could abuse her two young sons.

"He told these poor children to keep quiet, that their mother had been lonely so long they would ruin her life if they said anything," the officer told me.

The vicar who married them knew the groom was a paedophile but did not care: he was one too, and got his victims from a British care home.

DC Cook travelled to Guernsey, which Hocquart regularly visited. There local CID officers drove him round, and he met two brothers whom Hocquart abused, then delivered them to a high-ranking, respected local man to rape.

DC Cook traced another distraught victim in England who provided invaluable information about the man, based in Wales, who copied the ring's child pornography for distribution.

This man clearly needed his door kicked in by police, as did Hocquart's other contacts in Britain and the Channel Islands. But no action was taken.

Then word came from on high to drop his inquiries. DC Cook accepted that there might be an innocent explanation - that his local force might not want the financial burden of a national investigation.

But he became deeply troubled when told not to forward his vital intelligence to specialist officers elsewhere.

Britain's new National Criminal Intelligence Squad (NCIS) had the job of disseminating intelligence on paedophiles across the country. Would I, asked the troubled officer, take his information to the squad's Paedophile Unit for him?

And so we pretended to share a meal while I secretly scribbled down the names, addresses, dates of birth and believed victims of dozens of suspects.

My diary records that I met NCIS on January 4, 1996, at 10.30am, and I also channelled the intelligence to Scotland Yard. Neither, unfortunately, had the power to make local forces take action, so I was not optimistic.

This was not the first time I had acted as a go-between. In 1994, another police officer was barred from investigating a paedophile ring, which included an Islington social worker of Channel Islands origin.

We alerted Scotland Yard. This man was, I learned, involved with five overlapping paedophile rings - but he has never been convicted.

Peter Cook has now retired and agreed to go on the record. He told me the partner of Hocquart's video producer was eventually imprisoned for abusing his own sons. "But we could have stopped so much else, so much earlier," he said.

"The news from Jersey is horrifying. I've thought of Rabet all week. The hierarchy does not like these inquiries, they're expensive and produce embarrassment, so people shove it all under the carpet, they don't want to know even when children are dying.

"There will be people now crawling out claiming they were always worried. What cowards, what bastards!"

Jersey police confirmed this week it was aware of Nick Rabet and keen to learn more about his friends. Peter Cook told me: "I will help all I can."

Michael Hames, the former head of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications Squad, once told me that he never doubted paedophiles were killing children in care.

But the climate of disbelief was fierce, and he asked sadly: "What police chief will dare risk his career by hiring JCBs [to search for the bodies]?"

Courageous Ulsterman Lenny Harper has. Deposed Jersey health minister Stuart Syvret told me: "My family has lived here since William the Conqueror. But if an indigenous police officer were in charge, this investigation would never have happened. Jersey is an oligarchy, where the elite look after each other."

When I flew home late last night, in time for Mother's Day, I felt utter relief.

This tiny island with its high-hedged lanes looked so pretty when the police series Bergerac was filmed here, but to me said just one thing: that there is no escape from here for a terrified child.

If witnesses who want, finally, to help these tragically un-mothered children, now is the time to speak out.

Charles Drago Wrote:The posting of this material represents our reason for being.

Understand this horror for what it is: The deepest manifestation of the evil we fight.

This transcends the mad acquisition of wealth and political power, which ultimately fail to satisfy and are appreciated as means to a grander end.

This is all about the mortification of the spiritual impulse.

Trying to make hell their home.

No effort will be spared to preserve and protect it.

Quote:David James Smith, in The Sunday Times (UK), 16 December 2007, (Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears) wrote about the Madeleine McCann case:

"I heard that a PJ officer had been surprised to find a member of MI5 at a UK meeting about the case, and this made him suspicious that shadowy forces could be at work.

Quote:The discovery of computer discs at Dutroux's house, in 1996, "unraveled an international pedophile ring involving Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, the U.S., Great Britain, Japan and the United Nations and its agencies.

"The names found on the computer disks reached into the highest levels of politics and society in the various countries and institutions, including some of the very members of the Belgian government who had originally been implicated in the assassination of Andre Cools.

"By arresting Dutroux, the Belgian authorities were simultaneously able to round up many of the people responsible for the assassination of Cools.

"In the interim, Dutroux led police to the burial site of four young girls, all of whom had been ritually murdered by his pedophile colleagues.

"Within a short time, over 30 people had been arrested, including a number of high-level politicians, judges, and senior police commanders.

"The prosecuting judge in the Dutroux case was Jean-Marie Connerrote, the same judge who had been dismissed from the Cools murder case before he could issue indictments.

"Among those he arrested in August 1996, and charged in the Cools murder, was Alain Van der Biest, a leading member of the Belgian Socialist Party and a one-time political ally of Cools and a shareholder in PRB...

"The judge also arrested two Italian Mafia leaders linked to the imprisoned 'capo di tutti capi', Salvatore 'Toto' Riina and his longtime 'capo-regime' Giovanni 'the Pig' Brusca, who had played a prominent role in the Cools killing.

"[Riina, head of the Corleone crime syndicate, had been jailed in 1993 despite the fact that he had been a covert asset of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who had helped the DEA, together withTomasso Buscetta, to make a case against his rival Gaetano Badalamenti in the famous 'Pizza Connection' case.]...

Quote:"Dutroux... was closely tied to a senior Portuguese diplomat, Jorge Ritto, a former ambassador to South Africa and Permanent Representative to UNESCO who is a close friend of the agency's Secretary General, Koiichiro Matsura.

"Ritto has been implicated and jailed as a major figure in Portugal's Casa Pia pedophilia scandal.

"Another leading figure dredged up in the widening circle of the Dutroux pedophilia operation, Jean Michel Nihoul, managed the group's finances out of posh offices on the Avenue de Louise in the heart of the Brussels business district.

"He managed a string of Dutroux's properties which functioned as pedophilia clubs in various countries, including a sumptuous and secluded villa in the Caribbean at which leading U.S. political figures, governors and members of Congress could satisfy their pedophile perversions safe from media sleuths.

"Nihoul had been in and out of jail since the 1970's, on a wide range of money-laundering, drug-trafficking, and prostitution charges.

"He was also a leading power in Belgian right-wing political circles, a close friend of U.S. General John Singlaub and Rev. Moon of the World Anti-Communist League as well as to men in the upper echelons of the Sasakawa Foundation.

Quote: Kodama, along with his Yakuza compatriot and war-criminal cellmate, Ryoichi Sasakawa, ruled Japan with an iron fist artfully concealed in the gloved hand of political puppets. Sasakawa, in particular, boasted of a close, personal friendship with Ferdinand Marcos "long before he became president." Author Sterling Seagrave believes their friendship arose during "the Quirino presidency at the end of the 1940's when Marcos and other Quirino lieutenants were busy trying to discover" where Japanese plunder had been buried in the Philippines. Sasakawa was also deeply involved with the CIA, especially during the CIA sponsored anti-Sukarno campaign of the of the 1950's when he was in charge of supplying "materials to the anti-Sukarno camp." [x]

Other founding members of the APACL included the former Chinese warlord and patron of the feared Shanghai underworld Green Gang, Chiang Kai Shek and Korea's Park Chung Hee -- whose claim to fame was to establish the Korean Central Intelligence Agency modelled on America's CIA. Another founding member was the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church [Moonies] -- a CIA tool if ever there was one. Meanwhile, one-time war criminal and Yakuza boss Ryoichi Sasakawa (together with Kodama) virtually ruled Japan from behind the scenes.