Inmates tell of nightly abuse by staff at horror home

Simon de Bruxelles and David Brown

The Australian

RESIDENTS of a former children's home in Jersey where parts of a child's skeleton were uncovered gave the first harrowing accounts yesterday of institutionalised brutality and sexual abuse.

A mother of two described how she was drugged so that she would remain docile while being raped and sexually assaulted by members of staff.

Another former resident, Peter Hannaford, said his earliest memories were of sexual abuse by staff at the Haut de la Garenne children's home.

The pair are among more than 150 alleged victims who have told police of abuse at the home dating back more than 40 years.

Pamela (not her real name) spent four years at the home in the mid-1970s. She claims that her complaints of abuse were ignored until the current police investigation began last year. She has told police that staff would get drunk before selecting a child to abuse.

Those who refused to co-operate were drugged with Valium or bribed with cigarettes and alcohol.

"The things that happened are indescribable - the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of. What makes it worse is that these acts were practised on very vulnerable children who had nowhere to go and nobody to turn to for help," she said.

She claimed staff would invite friends to drunken parties and then select a child from the dormitories for that night's amusement.

She said: "I don't know who came, but all of us would try and lie very still in our beds and not attract attention. They came and got kids and took them away."

Pamela, who is divorced and in her late 40s, lives alone in a council flat in St Helier. She still bears the scars of her ordeal. On one occasion she slashed both sides of her face with a razor in the hope of being transferred to another institution.

Children came and went with little or no explanation because they were sent to foster parents or because they ran away to escape the abuse, making it difficult for police to keep track of who was at the home.

Mr Hannaford, now 59, was sent to Haut de la Garenne as an infant after the death of his parents and spent 12 years at the home. "Boys and girls were abused while I was there. The abuse was anything from rape to torture. It was men and women who abused us," he said.

"It happened every night, and it happened to everyone. I was scared to go to bed. You were threatened with punishment if you said anything, which could have been a whip or anything."

Mr Hannaford called for the austere granite building, which has been converted into a 100-bed youth hostel, to be torn down when the investigation is complete. "The building has got to be razed and erased from people's memories," he said.

Police teams have focused on the home's bricked-up cellar in their search for more human remains, but were forced to suspend work over fears the structure might collapse.

Two builders who worked on the site when it was turned into a youth hostel four years ago, said they had uncovered a trapdoor leading down to a windowless room holding a single chair, and shackles.

One of them, Robert Boutillier, said: "We found some things that would send a chill down your spine." Another builder, who did not want to be named, said: "It was spooky, I felt like the place was haunted."

Cyril Turner, 48, who was sent to the home for truancy, said violence was an everyday occurrence. "Kids were thrown around a lot," he said.

- The Times, agencies