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Trap door located in Jersey search

Published: Friday, 29 February 2008, 7:39AM

A trap door leading to a cellar has been found during the search of a former children's home in Jersey, as police draft in more help.

The discovery gives further weight to accounts by victims who say they suffered horrific sexual and physical abuse at Haut de la Garenne, police said, following last weekend's discovery of a child's skull there.

Seven sites which were identified by a sniffer dog specially trained to find human remains are now being excavated.

More than 160 former residents of the home, which closed in 1986, have come forward with abuse claims dating back to the 1960s. Victims claim rooms at the site were used for abuse and have described being raped, drugged and flogged.

Jersey Deputy Police chief Lenny Harper said: "We have uncovered what victims have referred to as a trap door. We have found an opening in the floor above the cellar. What we have found corroborates aspects of victims' statements."

He said members of the public continue to make allegations of serious sexual crimes, and a request has been made for a further 12 staff to assist with the investigation. More than 70 calls were received in recent days relating to alleged abuse involving over 40 suspects.

Mr Harper said more victims came forward last night, with two more people claiming they had been sexually abused at the home. And another former victim said children in the home "were being groomed by paedophiles".

Carl Denning, 49, from Gwynedd, south Wales, was six when he was moved to the home in 1964 and said he quickly found he was "getting messed around with".

He said: "It was always at night when we were put to bed. Lights went out. Occasionally somebody would come in and mess around with one of us in the dormitory. It was sexual."

Police forensic officers are engaged in a slow, methodical process of removing debris from the first chamber, in which officers have found two significant items, reportedly a bath and shackles.

There may also be two other rooms alongside the first, which are still to be searched and which were bricked up from the outside. The excavation process is expected to take many weeks.

The excavation site is in a stairwell approximately 20ft long by 8ft wide. Teams of between two and four forensic experts have worked on the area every day since the operation began.

Mr Harper said officers have been given new plans of the building which suggest the rooms referred to as the cellar were previously the ground floor. They showed the rooms existed at ground level more than 100 years ago, he said.

Currently the two working on the site are an anthropologist and an archaeologist. They have removed the top layer of concrete and have excavated between six to eight inches of material working in excess of 30 hours since Saturday.

Mr Harper said detectives have taken statements from witnesses as far away as Australia and Thailand.

The NSPCC said that it had received more than 100 calls from adults reporting allegations of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse in Jersey.

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