Jersey police find more bone fragments at former children's home
Haroon Siddique
Detectives investigating allegations of abuse at a former Jersey children's home have found more bone fragments and another child's tooth, police said today.
Experts discovered the remains during a sieving operation in one of the underground chambers at Haut de la Garenne during the weekend.
Eight milk teeth have now been found in the building's cellar, along with more than 30 bone fragments.
Last week, police said an earlier find of bone fragments in the building's cellar could suggest homicide. The bones appeared to have been cut and burned.
The weekend's finds came as Jersey police faced increasing pressure to directly link the items discovered to allegations of child abuse on the island.
Earlier this month, it emerged that the fragment that sparked the search at Haut de la Garenne - initially described as being part of a child's skull - was believed more likely to be a piece of wood or coconut shell than bone.
The island's deputy chief police officer, Lenny Harper, has rejected media accusations that he had withheld experts' doubts about the finds to avoid embarrassment.
Harper said different experts in the UK had returned conflicting test results when dating the fragments found prior to the weekend, making it difficult to know exactly how to proceed.
He added that the bones had been sent away for testing, and if the results showed children had died in the 1950s or 60s, or more recently, "we would say it is a homicide inquiry".
"If they are from the 1940s, or during the war, it may not be possible to proceed," he added. "If the bones are 150 years old, we are obviously not going to launch a homicide inquiry."
More than 100 people have claimed they were abused at Haut de la Garenne.
Forensic teams uncovered a network of four secret underground chambers, where the teeth and bone fragments were discovered.
Officers found shackles, a bloodstained bath and the message "I've been bad for years and years", scrawled on a wooden post, in other chambers.
Police have identified around 70 suspects or "people of interest" they want to question, although only one man has so far been arrested in connection with alleged child abuse at Haut de la Garenne.
Gordon Claude Wateridge, 76, originally from London, is charged with three offences of indecent assault on girls under 16 between 1969 and 1979 when he was a warder at the home.
A second man, 68-year-old Claude Donnelly, of St Brelade, Jersey, has also been arrested as part of a wider abuse inquiry.
He has been charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl on the island between 1971 and 1974.
Neither man has entered a plea.