Posted on 02/27/2008 4:47:43 PM PST by BlackVeil
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.
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.
I didn’t know Jersey was part of Belgium.
Sorry for my duplicate post on the same subject. I didn’t do a search as I should have done.
Apparently it is. Anyway, they can bring in the Belgian police, who do a good job in cases like this ... manage to close down the case.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/je.html
From the above...
LEGAL SYSTEM - the laws of the UK, where applicable, apply and local statutes; justice is administered by the Royal Court
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