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 Superintendent Mick Gradwell is one
policeman whose lot is not a happy one. A self-styled “Lancashire Bobby”
with a track record of dealing with multiple deaths such as those of the
Chinese cocklers who drowned in Morecambe Bay four years ago, the DSI was
appointed to take over the Haut de la Garenne inquiry in September, after
the retirement of the island's deputy police chief. When he and the new
deputy police chief, David Warcup, reviewed the case of suspected child
murder in the former home, they were shocked - not so much by the evidence
as by its absence.
“We've just gone through sheer hell with the media,” he says, “trying to get
rid of the misrepresentations of the evidence that all went out earlier this
year.” Last month the new police team called a press conference to admit
that “the information that was put into the public domain by the States of
Jersey Police about certain ‘finds' at Haut de la Garenne was inaccurate.”
They announced that, contrary to many reports, no children were murdered and
no bodies hidden or burnt there. Further, microscopic examination had found
no blood in samples detected by sniffer dogs in an old concrete bath, as
initially expected; and of the three very small bone fragments found that
were possibly - but not definitely - human, two had been dated to between
1470 and 1670, and the third dated from sometime between 1660 and 1950.
DSI Gradwell showed me the photographs of the supposed remains of a child that
started the furore. The first ones appear to show a shallow hole in the
ground. In the last picture, close up it is possible to see what looks like
a small flat stone.
The boxed exhibits of rusty debris described as possible “shackles” and
restraints, later identified as objects used for guttering on old houses,
seem equally out of step with the headlines they initially prompted. “If you
go through each find as a separate item,” he says, “you have to say there is
no evidence, no nothing.”
So how did we get from the situation in February - when Jersey's deputy police
chief assured the world that he had uncovered “the partial remains of a
child” - to the damning revelation in November that what was initially
understood to be a piece of child's skull was almost certainly wood, and in
all probability, “a small piece of coconut”?
According to DSI Gradwell, fantasy played its part in the initial
investigation losing the plot: “It's like one of those celebrity
haunted-house programmes where they hear one noise, then all jump around
expecting the next one.” As with the devastating story of Baby P, the case
provides some insight into society's febrile and confused attitudes to child
abuse. For there are really two tales of Haut de la Garenne. One is a story
of the parochial world of Jersey politics and policing - “an almost
incestuous place,” as one elected deputy tells me - where accusations of
lies and cover-ups are still flying, the police chief has been suspended and
a home affairs minister has resigned. The other is the story of the
unhealthy obsession of the UK media with horror stories about children.
Haut de la Garenne is a big granite building standing in grounds on the leafy
north of the island. It has an austere Victorian façade yet a beautiful
seaside setting, yards from the brochure image of Gorey Castle.
Over its lifespan, the building has served as a school for the poor, a German
military signal station, a children's home and, for the past few years, a
youth hostel - but until February this year its only moment in the spotlight
was the time it spent emulating a police station for the 1980s TV detective
drama, Bergerac. During the course of the investigation the BBC was
asked to supply footage of that episode to the team excavating the grounds,
after officers on site were fooled into believing that false graves dug for
the programme were signs of a real burial plot. As mistakes go, it was
perhaps the most minor of the investigation.
The search of Haut de la Garenne followed a year-long, island-wide inquiry by
Jersey police in 2007 into historical child abuse. This unearthed
allegations regarding 40 suspects from some 160 victims and pinpointed the
former children's home, which closed in 1986, as the possible location for a
series of abuses.
The first rumbling of the inquiry's machinations was heard in January this
year, when a former warder at the home, Gordon Wateridge, was formally
charged with the indecent assault of three young girls. Weeks later a
literal rumble could be heard in the grounds of Haut de la Garenne as
industrial machinery began excavating the site.
On February 23, Jersey's deputy police chief announced the discovery of human
remains and told reporters of the island's heart of darkness. “Police
officers became concerned at the number of people in positions of authority
who were being connected with paedophile crimes,” Lenny Harper told The
Times. “We don't yet know how the child came to meet his or her death.
We can't say that it was homicide but have to treat it this way.”
Although what had been found was about the size of a 50p piece, the story was
largely reported in the UK as if a child's skull or even entire body had
been disinterred. Haut de la Garenne is French for “top of the warren”, and
journalists were soon speculating about a labyrinthine den of secret
“punishment rooms” within the building and a killing field of secret graves.
Within days, newspapers were speculating about multiple murders. “Six more
bodies feared buried in Jersey home” was the headline in The
Guardian only two days after Harper's first press conference. Then, on
March 7, Harper announced that a sniffer dog - a star from the Madeleine
McCann inquiry - had found traces of blood in a concrete bath beneath the
home. By July, the News of the World was claiming that “a top secret
police report” detailed how “innocent children were raped, murdered
and their bodies then burnt in a furnace at the Jersey House of Horrors”.
From the start, the charismatic Harper's unusually open attitude endeared him
to many in the world's media, as he held briefings in the grounds of the
home. Others were less impressed. “I'd never seen a police press conference
like it,” recalls Sean Power, the States of Jersey deputy, of Harper's live
rolling news broadcasts. “I asked myself why we had this guy in a leather
jacket and windblown scarf feeding all this stuff live into the world's
media. It amazed me.”
More amazing, however, was what the media was not being told. It is now clear
that serious doubts about the origin of the piece of child's skull found in
February emerged within 24 hours. By the end of March, as scientific tests
were completed, the Oxford carbon-dating expert Dr Tom Higham stated that he
did not believe it to be bone, and by mid-April Julia Roberts, the
anthropologist who initially identified it as a child's skull, said that she
no longer believed it was.
Yet on April 29, Jersey's police chiefs allowed the home affairs minister
Wendy Kinnard, in reply to a question from Power, to assure the island's
assembly that “it was and continues to be the partial remains of a child”.
At strategic points, Harper continued to make headline-grabbing
announcements such as the discovery of underground chambers and two pits
containing some lime which, it was claimed, could have been used to hasten
the decomposition of bodies.
In May, as serious doubts were being aired about the original discoveries,
Harper announced that police had found children's teeth that could not have
come out before death - something I am assured no expert could swear to - as
well as bone fragments that had been cut and burnt, suggesting “evidence of
a dead child or children in the cellar”. By the end of July, Harper was
still insisting that the remains of “at least five children, many burnt”,
had been found, although he now conceded that if precise dating was not
possible, there would be no murder inquiry. A week later, on August 7, he
retired from the States of Jersey police.
DSI Gradwell took over the inquiry in September. In November, he and deputy
police chief Warcup organised a press conference to clear away the
misinformation about bodies, bones and possible murders so that he could get
on with investigating the real crimes of what police call “historic child
abuse” that they believe were committed on Jersey. The reaction to his
revelation was indifference from much of the national media (it didn't even
make the main BBC news bulletins), while on the internet and on the island
there were immediate claims of a political cover-up by the Jersey
establishment to protect the island's reputation at the expense of victims.
The subsequent suspension of Graham Power, Jersey's chief of police, by the
administration only fuelled the beliefs of conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile,
from his Scottish retirement home, Harper launched several attacks on the
report - he claimed that his successors were claiming credit for his
findings, while still insisting that there were bodies buried at Haut de la
Garenne. “The whole thing,” he told the Jersey Evening Post,
“stinks to high heaven of a political carve-up.”
Simmering behind his tinted spectacles in his fourth-floor office in St Helier
last month, Jersey's chief minister Frank Walker told me that Harper's claim
that he had sought to influence the inquiry was “an absolutely fantastic
suggestion”. Walker, who has since retired from office, counter-accuses the
former deputy police chief of misleading the administration; in May, Harper
sent him a “secret” e-mail revealing that more remains had been found, of
recent origin, and that a homicide investigation would probably be
necessary. “That e-mail was never retracted.”
There is certainly no shortage of “fantastic” rumours flying around Jersey, as
I found when an e-mail circular from a local politician, suggesting that I
might be an apologist for abusers, preceded me on to the island. Opponents
of the close-knit Jersey establishment claim that the child-abuse scandal is
evidence of the island's “culture of cover-up and concealment”. The year
before the search of the home, the island's minister for health and social
services, Senator Stuart Syvert, criticised the quality of childcare on the
island by his own department and called for an independent inquiry into
child abuse; the states assembly subsequently voted to dismiss him from
office. As states assembly subsequently voted to dismiss him from office. As
the Haut de la Garenne investigation took off, and Syvert loudly alleged a
cover-up, the island's chief minister accused him of “shafting Jersey
internationally” (a personal remark recorded by the BBC). For some, that was
proof that the island's governing “oligarchy” is more interested in
protecting Jersey's reputation as a safe tax haven for international finance
than in protecting the victims of abuse - an allegation that Walker
“categorically” denies, pointing out that he gave the police “an open
chequebook”. However, the bailiff of Jersey did the administration no
favours in his Liberation Day speech in May, when he announced that “the
real scandal” of Haut de la Garenne was “the unjustified and remorseless
denigration of Jersey”.
An old Marxist such as me is generally all for exposing the perfidies of an
establishment, and I carry no torch for any financial oligarchy. But the
fact remains that nobody has provided any evidence of a political cover-up -
indeed, the allegation of a cover-up can itself look like a cover for the
absence of an argument. Neither am I a natural supporter of a police “line”
- 25 years ago I was on the opposite side to Mick Gradwell during the
miners' strike. But the DSI seems a straight copper, whose frustration at
having his reputation questioned is real and justified. The multiple-death
expert does not strike me as one who could be persuaded to cover up murder,
or be told what to do by the burghers of Jersey.
The new police team appears stunned by the investigation it inherited,
described by one source as “a two out of ten”; Jersey's freedom from UK
financial regulations seems to have extended to policing procedures. And the
critical analysis that it presented of the forensic evidence gathered at
Haut de la Garenne looks irrefutable. That analysis, after all, was based
largely on the first full public presentation of detailed scientific tests
carried out by the very experts that Harper had consulted.
“You know that something is seriously amiss when scientists feel obliged to
come out of their lockers and say, ‘excuse me, this is the truth',” one
deputy remarked to me.
An initial investigation at Haute de la Garenne was justified by witness
evidence of historical abuse. But why did the inquiry turn into what was
described to me as “theatre ... a circus ... a runaway media feeding frenzy”?
One source close to the inquiry thinks it is unclear whether it was more a
case of “incompetence, inexperience or over-emotion because he [Harper] was
trying to raise an issue on the island”.
Many local figures still seem bamboozled by the behaviour of a seasoned
officer. Deputy Collin Egre, who keeps a close eye on home affairs in the
Jersey assembly and was worried about the police “keeping things from us”
even before Haut de la Garenne, can conclude only that “The guy's a ...
there's something not right there.”
Perhaps the only way to understand Harper's actions is to see him less as a
detective investigating a case than as a zealot pursuing a cause.
His defenders still insist that he acted in the interest of abuse victims, to
raise awareness and encourage others to give evidence. More than 150 alleged
victims have given evidence of abuse at Haut de la Garenne and other Jersey
homes, dating from the 1940s to the 1980s. While suspicions are high on the
island that some of these are compensation-chasers, nobody seriously doubts
that many are genuine. One source in touch with a victims' group, the Jersey
Care Leavers' Association, alleges a long record of “rape, buggery, torture,
both physical and mental”. The police are reluctant to talk about witness
evidence.
While the focus has been on the child-murder-that-wasn't, only three cases of
abuse at the home have reached the criminal justice system. On October 24
Gordon Wateridge appeared in court where he denied 17 counts involving five
victims between 1970 and 1974. The 77-year-old's trial is expected to take
place next year. Another man, Michael Aubin, 46, was charged with a serious
sexual offence involving an eight-year-old boy at Haut de la Garenne, and
the assault of two other young children between 1977 and 1980, when he was a
teenage resident at the home.
All sides on Jersey insist that they are on the side of the victims, although
they disagree about whether the island has a unique record of abuse or is
just the same as anywhere else.
Harper and his defenders claim that his media strategy was justified because
it brought forth more victims. Others point out that the debacle of Haut de
la Garenne has not only wasted time and resources that could have been
devoted to real cases but has jeopardised the prospects for convictions in
historical abuse trials - always traumatic and hard enough to achieve in
cases about who did what to whom years ago.
As one source puts it: “If you're a defence lawyer with evidence that a senior
investigating officer has been misrepresenting the facts, it will be open
season, won't it?” Walker goes so far as to say that, if guilty people now
walk free, Harper will have “a hell of a lot to answer for”.
Harper may have been behind the times in terms of police procedure but he had
a keen sense of how to play the modern media game. Although he criticised
some sensationalised reporting and was careful not to claim explicitly that
there had been child murders in the children's home, his phrasing left the
door open to that interpretation - and many reporters rushed through it.
Why did they adopt such a credulous attitude to the murder claims? Partly it
fitted the British view of Jersey as a strange little island where dark
things go on, like The Wicker Man with yachts. But more importantly, it fed
off a national obsession with child abuse.
Fear of the predatory paedophile has become a morbid symptom of a society
where we do not trust one another. As we lose faith in our humanity, the
dark side of the human condition comes to the fore in the public imagination
- and there is nothing darker than child murder. Haut de la Garenne is
perhaps the flipside of the Baby P story: we might seem unable to see brutal
abuse before our eyes, yet we seem ready to believe tales of mass murder in
a island children's home.
Recent history is littered with scandals centred on alleged institutionalised
child abuse - most notably the satanic abuse panics of the late 1980s and
early 1990s that led to parents being arrested and children taken into care.
These allegations were exposed as groundless by Professor Jean La Fontaine's
three-year investigation commissioned by the Conservative Government and
published in 1994.
There is a sordid record of abuse in children's homes. There is also a record
of moral panics and false allegations, especially when the police begin
trawling for victims.
Back on Jersey, it seems unlikely that Haut de la Garenne will be a youth
hostel again. Putting aside the cloud hanging over it, the building is no
longer at the top of a warren so much as undermined by excavations. A
memorial in the drive is dedicated to “All the boys of this home who died in
the Great War”. We now know that there is no evidence of suspicious deaths
at Haut de la Garenne, but it stands empty today as a memorial to folly of
another sort.
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