Jersey - No murders at Haut Garenne

[Janos]

I know that there are other stories in the news which are understandably getting a lot of attention.

But does anyone else think this absolutely stinks of a cover up?

HautGarenne

Very odd story.The CC has been ousted and previos investigative lead 'tec is disputing new investigative teams' finding from my understanding of news tonight.Weird.

Previous.

I thought this was very strange as well, don't know what to believe

It does seem very odd.

I know next to nothing about police procedure but what about previous evidence? How is it possible that the police got it so wrong, IYSWIM?

And all the stories from people who 'grew up' there?

It 'feels' wrong.

They said the bones were hundreds of years old, but ther were stories too weren't there? Why would there be archelogical bones in the cellar? Very odd

It's all very very odd isn't it.

I'm wondering what happened re the witnesses who grew up there and said they were abused.

They are still pursuing abuse claims.

Was it the meeja getting over excited? Or the police briefing over-enthusiastically? Or what?

Very bizarre.
I don't necessarily think the 'no evidence for murders' part is a cover-up, because it was always going to be possible that the human remains were earlier and if you don't have human remains you can't (I believe) have a murder enquiry, but obviously they had to investigate when they found the remains.
What is bizarre is the sacking of the person leading it and the way this is being presented as if there was no story at all. Surely the reports should be stressing that there were still MANY people who say they were abused. That's hardly unimportant, murder or no murder.

I'm hoping someone will come along with some clue what is going on here.

It seems fairly clear that even if nobody was actually murdered a lot of people were badly abused at that wretched place.

The whole thing is weird - the reporting now, the reporting then... the stories and anecdotes of abuse and dissapearances and the lack of records to indicate who those people were...

I was wondering if Jersey had funny laws on what journalists can report, that are different from mainland British ones? After all they have different tax laws right?

is it me, or is the whole article very badly written?

It looks to me like they want to downplay the abuse claims.

It looks a bit odd. I am reminded of the Satanic Panics, when the story started with a few allegations of abuse, some of which were genuine, and then a few nutjobs and axegrinders got involved and suddenly every nut on the planet seemed to be circulating wilder and wilder allegations.

I would speculate that there probably was some abuse at this home (it is unlikely that any care home has always been free of it) but that some people may have been pursuing some other agenda that was best served by scaremongering and horror-relating.

Yes Totalmisfit it is badly written, but so are the articles on the same subject I've read in other papers online. Which is what makes me wonder if there's some kind of reporting restriction going on so journalists can't say the things they need to say to make the story make sense.

That's what I thionk LittleBella.

Even if there were no murders, something happened somewhere along the line.

It just seems that child abuse is often covered up and I really hope this isn't the case here, I recall that quite a few people came forward with stories.

Thankfully I was never abused as a child but I think if it happens, not being believed when you try to tell people must be devastating.

Whilst loathe to be a conspiracy theorist, it feels very dodgy that they are speaking in such absolutes. As far as I knew, dating of the bones couldn't be very accurate and the original investigating police officer on radio 4 was clear that the murder investigation couldn't really proceed further as there was insufficient evidence (this was before he retired about 3 months ago and before he was discredited). Quite different from saying it's all completely wrong.... Jersey's a small place with lots of potential for cover ups or at least attempts to minimise embarrassment at mistreatment at the least at haute de la garenne. And as others have said, the real point is that abuse seems to have occured in a large scale and that in itself needs fully investigating. I wouldn't have thought you could entirely separate an abuse investigation with an investigation into suspicions of murder.

Funny how the minute Lenny Harper goes, the Jersey establishment find there's nothing going on at all. Quel surprise.

"No evidence of murder" is not the same thing as "let's stop the investigation" but I bet that is how it is used.

Social workers have been sacked for daring to protest about sexual abuse in care homes. The former minister of health was forced out when he tried to raise the issue. Former residents of children's homes have given chilling testimony and several people have been charged with abuse. Very bad things clearly did happen on Jersey, but now the outsider Harper has gone, what's the betting the cabal at the top manage to shut everything down, as they have ever other time?

Very, very odd, and it stinks of a cover-up to me. What are they doing about all the allegations by former residents then?

Two of my closest friends are archaeologists and one of them knows people at the BM. I'm going to ask them about the dating of the bones.

The last three posts have said with much greater eloquence what I was thinking.

It all reeks of 'let's pretend nothing happened here' when clearly it did.

Very distressing.