Up to £60,000 compensation is to be made available per person for the most serious cases of abuse for those in care in Jersey. To be eligible under the historical abuse redress scheme people will have to have been resident in a Jersey care home between 9 May 1945 and 31 December 1994 and suffered [...]
People working with children and vulnerable adults can now be checked in Jersey for criminal records.
April 11, 2011 from Leave a Comment
People working with children and vulnerable adults can now be checked in Jersey for criminal records. The checks will be carried out in the island by the Jersey Vetting Bureau. It involves filling out an application form and showing proof of identity. Kevin McKerrell, from the Jersey Vetting Bureau, said: “This marks the start of [...]
Bungled Jersey child abuse probe branded a ‘£20million shambles’
October 6, 2009 from Leave a Comment
A three-month investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed: David Rose reports: The main witness behind Harper’s decision to begin the search for bodies was a woman with a known history of psychotic fantasy and alcoholism. She named children she said she had seen jumping to their deaths from Haut de la Garenne windows [...]
Jersey – Update
July 21, 2009 from Leave a Comment
A 71-year old pensioner has become the fourth person to be charged in connection with Jersey’s historical abuse inquiry. Ronald George Thorne, of St Helier faces four charges of inciting acts of gross indecency with a boy on four separate occasions. The alleged offences are said to have taken place between 1983 and 1987. The [...]
Jersey: former resident found guilty of sexual abuse
June 22, 2009 from Leave a Comment
A man who sexually abused boys at a Jersey care home when he was a teenage resident in the 1970s was today sentenced to two years’ probation. Michael Aubin, 46, who was born in Jersey and lives in Southampton, carried out the attacks while he lived at the Haut de la Garenne home in the [...]
The Times (Mick Hume) reports on the Jersey care home case
December 17, 2008 from Leave a Comment
When a deputy police chief announced that children had been killed and buried at a Jersey home, the media were satisfied. But was it true? Throwing a miniature rugby ball around his cramped office in Broadcasting House, the run-down former BBC centre that now serves as a police HQ in Jersey’s capital, St Helier, Detective [...]
Police chief accused of loosing the plot over the Jersey children’s home ‘murders’
November 16, 2008 from Leave a Comment
For some of the journalists assembled for a Press conference at Jersey’s police headquarters last Wednesday morning, the shock was almost palpable. Since February 23 this year, when the island’s then deputy chief officer, Lenny Harper, first addressed them outside the granite walls of the Haut de la Garenne former children’s home, they had been [...]
Jersey children’s home inquiry – police admit errors – chief suspended
November 12, 2008 from Leave a Comment
Jersey’s police chief was suspended today after confirmation that suspicious bone fragments found at Haut de la Garenne were up to 500 years old, and that there was no evidence to back up claims of murder at a former children’s home dubbed the island’s “house of horrors”. Graham Power, Chief Officer of the States of [...]
Jersey police chief suspended
November 12, 2008 from Leave a Comment
The following article by Phillippe Naughton appeared in the Times (here) on 12th November 2008 Jersey’s police chief was suspended today after confirmation that suspicious bone fragments found at Haut de la Garenne were up to 500 years old, and that there was no evidence to back up claims of murder at a former children’s [...]
Jersey whistleblower unfairly sacked
July 23, 2008 from
Community Care have reported that the sacking of a UK social worker from a Jersey secure unit would have been considered unfair if his employment tribunal had concluded, an inquiry has found.Simon Bellwood, who went public in Community Care last year with his concerns, claimed children were being locked up in solitary confinement for 24 hours or [...]
Justice Minister Urged To Intervene in Jersey Case
July 2, 2008 from
Jack Straw faced pressure yesterday to appoint an independent judge to oversee the child abuse investigation in Jersey, after police were prevented from charging two suspects.Detectives said that there was sufficient evidence to charge the couple with serious sexual and physical assaults within the childcare system during the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the [...]
Suspended Jersey manager reinstated
June 2, 2008 from
A Jersey care manager who sacked a UK social worker from a secure unit has been reinstated after an internal investigation.Joe Kennedy, the residential services manager for the States of Jersey, was suspended and investigated after the sacking of Simon Bellwood who had criticised practice on the island.Bellwood had complained about Kennedy’s policy of locking children in solitary [...]
Jersey: whose pulling the wool over our eyes?
May 9, 2008 from
The skull fragment found in the Haut de la Garenne children’s home has always been the most important piece of evidence in the investigation. But some of the facts given to the press about it by the police were untrue. Richard Webster conducts his own inquiry (here) during which he speaks to the scientist who carried [...]
Jersey: critique of recent press and media reports
April 17, 2008 from
There has been a considerable amount of comment in the press and media regarding the claims that children were abused at the Haut de la Garenne Children’s home in Jersey. What ever the facts of the case much of this comment has been whipped up by a media frenzy and by misleading leaks to the [...]
‘Child abuse is horrid … but the system’s misused by those who are making false claims’
April 16, 2008 from
Impact of false accusations on care workers is great Being caught in the tangled web of false allegations is a nightmare that many struggle to recover from. Of all the bogey men that haunt teachers’ nightmares, none is more dreadful than that of the false, malicious allegation. F.A.C.T. (Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers) was initially formed [...]
Jeresy: update on bone fragments
March 27, 2008 from
There has been a great deal of media speculation (some of it quite irrational) regarding the significance of the discovery of bone fragments at Haut de la Garenne former children’s home in Jersey – According to recent reports in the Times it now apears that the police have said …..” ….. the latest bones found [...]
North Wales police survey puts child protection at the top
March 3, 2008 from
The following article by Carl Butler on 3rd March appeared in the North Wales edition of the Liverpool Daily Post (here)Fighting child abuse should be the number one priority for North Wales Police, a survey of public opinion undertaken by the police authority has revealed. The wide-ranging independent study commissioned by North Wales Police Authority reached [...]
Archaeologists and forensic scientists search former children’s home in Jersey
February 29, 2008 from
The BBC have reported that archaeologists and forensic scientists are conducting fingertip searches of a former Jersey children’s home where the remains of a child have been found. The remains found at Haut de la Garenne on Saturday were detected by a sniffer dog through several inches of concrete.Jersey police say the dog has also [...]
Jersey whistleblower to take case to employment tribunal
February 22, 2008 from
According to Community Care the UK social worker who was sacked after he blew the whistle on “abusive” child care practice in Jersey is taking his case to an employment tribunal next month.Simon Bellwood is claiming he was unfairly dismissed from his job as centre manager at Greenfields secure unit on the island last year.Bellwood raised [...]
Jersey
November 30, 2007 from
The following Press release (here) has been issued by the States of Jersey Police The States of Jersey Police can now confirm that they have now had contact with around 60 victims and witnesses who have contacted them following the launch of the historical abuse inquiry at Island institutions last week. Around 33 calls have [...]
A Good Name Vanishes [USA]
June 28, 2005 from Leave a Comment
By David Zucchino, Times Staff WriterBEAR, Del. — It took a lifetime for Eboni Wilson to build a reputation, and just a few hours to lose it. The son of drug addicts, Wilson grew up poor and rootless in South Los Angeles. He lived in a garage, stole food and a car, and witnessed killings [...]