Jersey 'child graves' may be TV props
Jersey 'child graves' may be TV propsDavid Brown, Jersey
The Australian
GRAVES at a Jersey care home at the centre of a child abuse probe could be the remains of a set created for the TV show Bergerac.
A police radar search last month had uncovered a number of locations where digging had taken place in a field behind Haute de la Garenne, leading to fears that child victims had been buried.
But detectives have now been told that the finds could simply be the results of filming for the police drama series shortly after the home closed in 1986.
A police source said: “The field was turned into a graveyard. They used fibreglass gravestones but they were going to have a burial scene, so they also actually dug a number of full graves.
“The full graves go quite deep. They were filled in, and the places where there had been digging registered on the radar. No-one realised until one of the local officers pointed it out."
Lenny Harper, the deputy chief officer of Jersey Police, has insisted that the site must be dug up just in case, because he is determined that the investigation will be complete and thorough.
“When Lenny was told the real reason the radar had found so many suspicious spots was because of Bergerac, he put his head in his hands and uttered a few choice words,” said a police source. “But it (the search) is now being done in the full knowledge that there is an alternative explanation for the areas of interest.”
More than 160 former residents have told police they were victims of sexual and physical abuse from the 1960s to 1986, when the home was closed.
Detectives have said there are now well over 40 suspects including former care workers and outsiders. They are investigating claims that suicides and other mysterious deaths at the home were covered up and are drawing up a list of residents who have still not been accounted for.
A team of three Army experts began re-examining the home's grounds on Monday using a secret ground-penetrating radar. The same team was used in the wake of the floods that struck the Cornish village of Boscastle in August 2004, when it was brought in to search for people who could have been buried in mud slides.
PC Baxter Provan, a Jersey Police spokesman, said: “We are aware that graves were dug on the site. It is something that was drawn to our attention through local knowledge.
“The search teams are aware of that and will take it into consideration when carrying out their work. Ideally the ground would be as undisturbed as possible. Any disturbance will affect the way we approach the searches but to what extent we don’t yet know.”
The BBC used Haut de la Garenne as the headquarters of the island’s police and the surrounding grounds to film many other scenes for Bergerac. The drama, staring John Nettles as Jim Bergerac, was one of the Corporation’s most popular shows and ran for the 84 episodes between 1981 and 1991.
A field to the northwest of the site is believed to have been turned into a graveyard which appeared to be connected to the nearby Gouray Church in 1986 or 1987 .
Jonathan Alwyn, the producer of Bergerac for three series in the 1980s, said: “We did a lot of filming at Haut de la Garenne, both inside and out. We converted one wing of the building into a suite of police offices, and also filmed in the corridors and stairwells.”
Police have discovered a piece of a child’s skull and fragments of burnt bone which could be human in a pit dug by a stairwell in the north west of the building. They have also uncovered a cellar which victims have said was used as a “punishment room” before they were abused.
Mr Alwyn said: “It was a pretty creepy sort of feeling when I saw it on the TV news. It gradually dawned on me that it was the building we were in, because I'd forgotten it was called Haut de la Garenne.”
Meanwhile, two senior members of Jersey’s government - chief executive, Bill Ogley, and Attorney General, William Bailhache - have met officials from the Ministry of Justice in London to discuss the investigation.
Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has faced demands from MPs to appoint outside judges and prosecutors for the investigation amid fears that the islands’ close-knit establishment could be accused of a cover up.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Clearly, Jersey officials, who requested the meeting, will update their Ministry of Justice counterparts on the continuing police investigations which are clearly potentially very serious.”