I got myself sent to jail to escape horror home (06.04.08)

News of the World, 6th April 2008
By Philip Whiteside

Victim who sparked Jersey abuse probe speaks to News of the World.

THE child abuse victim who sparked the Jersey House Of Horrors probe today reveals how he was attacked over and over by three paedophiles before he was 15. Martyn Clark was so desperate to escape his evil attackers that he deliberately got himself sent to a borstal in England. But when he returned to the island years later to get revenge he had to face court on another charge-and was able to blurt out the truth and expose the hell of the Haut de la Garenne children’s home.

Martyn, who is pleading for other victims of the abuse to come forward, says: “No one should have to suffer what I went through-it wrecked my life.I had to break the law before someone paid attention to what I had been through.”

Martyn’s nightmare began at 10 when he was sent to Haut de la Garenne along with three brothers because his widowed mother couldn’t cope. They all joined the St John Ambulance Brigade run by Thomas Hamon, who was dating a care worker at the home.

“On the first night I joined, Hamon asked me to get some bandages from a store room,” says Martyn, now 50. “He came in after me, locked the door and grabbed me from behind. I was frozen in fear as he molested me. Afterwards I didn’t know what to do. I was only ten and I thought no one would believe me if I told. So I said nothing.”

A few weeks later evil paedophile Hamon, then in his late 20s, got Martyn on his own in his car. “He pulled up on a quiet road between St Helier and the home. I was terrified- and the abuse was even worse than before.”

Hamon attacked Martyn every week for about a year. He only escaped when he quit the ambulance cadets and was away from Hamon’s clutches. But as soon as he was free from the clutches of one paedophile he fell victim to another…his uncle who, like Hamon, dated a care worker.

Marty recalls: “Every year, the senior kids at the home were taken camping. My mother’s brother, Tony Watton, used to come and play his banjo. One night he followed me into my tent and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m your uncle’, and then started to abuse me.

“It started a horrible pattern which went on for years. Every now and again he would invite me to his house for lunch. I would start eating and then wake up in his bed. He had drugged me and then abused me while I was asleep. Again I felt no one would believe me.”

When Martyn was 14, he became pals with a boy at his school called Lloyd Jarrett who invited him over to his parents house for the weekend. On the first night there, Martyn woke to find Lloyd’s dad Terrence in his bed attempting to molest him. He says: “I woke up and realised he was behind me. I just wanted to get back to the home. Again, I wasn’t going to tell anyone-but then I found out another boy had been invited to Lloyd’s home and I felt I had to speak up. I told a staff member I had been attacked by Lloyd’s father.”

The case went to court where Martyn’s evidence sent Jarrett, in his mid-30s, to jail. But still the youngster’s ordeal went on. He was shunned by his friends and received almost no support from Haut de la Garenne.

Within months, his evil uncle Watton was back in his life-taking him drinking before slipping a drug in his drink and abusing him. One night, when Martyn was 15, he had had enough. He stole Watton’s car and was sent to borstal in England for nine months. Tragically, he says it was the first place he had ever been where he felt safe. After his release he stayed in England and over the years plotted revenge. In 1997 he was caught bringing cannabis back to Jersey which he intended to plant on his uncle. Martyn admitted drugs smuggling and got nine months. But he had his day in court and broke more than 20 years of silence to tell all about his abuse.

Cops believed Watton, in his mid-20s, had carried out numerous attacks on boys. But he killed himself in 2001 before the case came to court. The police investigation that would lead to Haut de la Garenne also netted Hamon, 68, who admitted abusing eight boys aged 10 to 15 between 1964 and 1989. He died in 2006.

Another ex-member of the St John Ambulance brigade, Roger Holland-who has previously been convicted of assaults on girls-is awaiting sentencing after admitting more offences. Jarrett is believed to have died in the early 1990s.

Now Martyn says: “What others as well as myself have had to go through is appalling. If some abusers are still alive, I want them all to go to prison. But there are many, like mine, who are dead and I think it’s important the abuse they committed is not just swept under the carpet and forgotten.”

Jersey cops probe care home No 2 (23.03.08)

News of the World, 23rd March 2008
By Douglas Wight & Andrew Buckwell

COPS investigating the Jersey child abuse scandal are looking into allegations of cruelty at a second kids’ home, the News of the World can reveal. A secret report alleges a woman who worked at notorious Haut de la Garenne oversaw a reign of terror when she was in charge of another home nearby.

It accuses Jane Maguire and her husband Alan of violence against children spread over four years at Blanche Pierre residential care home. It also says victims claimed Mr Maguire abused young girls, subjected youngsters to severe beatings and punished them by forcing soap into their mouths. Before arriving there to be house mother, Mrs Maguire spent a year at Haut de la Garenne-now the centre of a huge police investigation and excavation of its hidden cellars.

The 1999 report by Dylan Southern, a manager for Jersey’s Health and Social Services, revealed a culture of abuse and savage beatings at Blanche Pierre. It shows that nine years earlier, when allegations first surfaced, she was simply transferred to another job in a hospital and was allowed to carry on working with needy children. He recommended that Mrs Maguire be dismissed.

Jean Michel Jarman, 26, was one of around ten kids living at Blanche Pierre during the Maguires’ reign. He was placed there aged four after his mother died. He said: “It was a hellish place. If you misbehaved you were given the most extreme punishments.

“Once Alan Maguire rammed soap so far into my mouth I had to pick it out with a comb. His fingers badly scraped the roof of my mouth. Ifelt sick and was crying my eyes out. We were children-but there was no love for any of us.”

In his official report Mr Southern said: “This was a cruel and uncaring environment with Mrs Maguire holding the responsibility for its creation and maintenance until her removal from the home in 1990.” His findings followed a police inquiry and led to her dismissal from the welfare service. The couple retired to a cottage in the French Pyrenees.

Last night Jersey police told us: “Your information has been passed to our incident room. It is something we are looking into.”

More than 100 people claim they suffered physical or sexual abuse at Haut de la Garenne, where a child’s skull was found last month. Many of the 25 suspects have since died. But last week the cop leading the inquiry, Deputy Chief Lenny Harper, said three face arrest soon. When we confronted Alan Maguire at home in the tiny village of Issel, he said: “Call my lawyer.”

Kids loaned out for rape cruises (16.03.08)

News of the World, 16th March 2008
By Lucy Panton & Philip Whiteside

Paedophile yachtsmen were given children to abuse at sea

CHILDREN from the Jersey House of Horrors were loaned to rich paedophile yachtsmen as galley sex slaves, a News of the World investigation reveals. The youngsters were told by care staff the boat rides were treats – only to be assaulted and raped at sea by pervert toffs.

Details of the sick attacks emerged as we discovered even more blood has been found in a bath in the dungeon underneath the Haut de la Garenne home-and in the drains.

And our reporters have been told how builders on renovations at the home were urged by staff to burn any bones they dug up.

Today we also uncover the full extent of the dark forces of corruption hampering the police investigation.

We can reveal worried cops feel under so much pressure over the abuse allegations they are preparing to bypass Jersey’s own legal system and hand their evidence to our government.

This could include files on up to seven social workers and carers who worked at the sinister home-including one nicknamed the ‘pinball wizard’ who hurled kids against the walls to see how far they would bounce.

At least two previous senior employees of children’s services on the island are also under investigation despite the attempts of corrupt former policemen, politicians and businessmen to scupper the inquiry.

We understand that two weeks ago Jersey ministers secretly voted to have senior police investigator Lenny Harper removed from the case because they believed he was too open with the media. But the Chief of Police Graham Power refused.

A source told us: “Such important figures have been implicated in the cover-up of abuse on the island that the cops feel the evidence should now be passed to the British government

“The latest revelations are explosive. It is going to cause massive waves within the political and legal world and could bring the whole of Jersey’s infrastructure crashing down.”

One of the most serious lines of inquiry in the investigation is that children were regularly loaned to wealthy yachtsmen to “do with them what they chose for the day,” according to our source close to the investigation.

Haut de la Garenne staff described the trips as a treat for children who spent long hours cooped up at the home. But in reality the kids were subjected to the vilest sexual abuse on board the luxury boats.

Our source said: “The allegations about the yachting community have come in from a number of different people. It is a very strong line of inquiry and when the evidence is made public people will be horrified.”

Meanwhile about a dozen bones found at the home have been sent to a DNA lab to find out how old they are -yet some bone fragments were too burnt to be tested.

Police have taken statements from local builders who were told: “If you find bones, get rid of them or burn them.” New blood spots have been discovered in cracks in a concrete bath in the underground chamber and have also been sent for tests and sniffer dogs trained to find blood have found scents in the drains underneath.

Forensic officers are now focusing on the wooden trapdoor leading to a second torture cellar in a bid to extract DNA or fingerprints.

Our source said: “Detectives are doing everything they can to ensure every scrap of evidence is properly investigated. They are very aware that the home dates back to 1856 and some of these bones could be very old.

“This is going to be a long process but the officers have been presented with so many accounts of abuse and cover-ups it is crucial we get answers. People disclosing the abuse have been easy to ignore but finally they are getting a chance to be taken seriously.”

The horrors being uncovered at Haut de la Garenne have revealed a Jersey tourists have never seen.

Former abused care home residents claim what happened to them has been covered up by those in high office, desperate not to tarnish Jersey’s good name or risk politicians in London reducing their power over the tiny, but extremely wealthy, island.

Although Jersey is part of the British Isles and under the Queen’s rule, it has a separate government system dating back to King John’s reign, and makes its own rules and laws.

Jersey’s 53-member parliament has no political parties. Its politicians, judges, policemen and business leaders come from a small elite-often linked by friendship or family.

The island’s equivalent of our Commons Speaker is also its top judge-so the system of checks and balances between politics and the law we have in the UK is almost non-existent.

This is a place where the authorities allowed 43-year-old convicted paedophile Roger Holland to stand for election as an honorary constable officer- similar to a special cop in the UK, but with more powers. They knew that six years earlier he had indecently assaulted a mentally impaired 14- year-old girl and admitted molesting another girl. But he got the job and in 1997 rose to become vingtenier-the second most senior cop on the island’s volunteer force.

In 2001 he was jailed for indecently assaulting a young girl in the back of a police van.

“Jersey has for too long been a law unto itself-it is time the truth came out,” says our source.

Among those fighting for that is ex-health minister Senator Stuart Syvret, who resigned over the cover-up and has given statements to police claiming two senior legal figures were involved in the abuse.

Mr Syvret said: “I have given formal statements to the police concerning a number of establishment individuals. Officers I have spoken to are from a force external to Jersey police at the request of Jersey police.” Solicitor Nick le Cornu is also demanding change. “Jersey’s political class have for 60 years been ignoring and covering up poverty and injustice,” he claimed.

Police investigator Lenny Harper, an outsider from Northern Ireland, was the target of a hate campaign- including threats to torch his house -after a string of cops were sacked for corruption. Colleagues say Harper, 56, laughed it off, saying: “I had the IRA on my tail for years-so a few disgruntled people are not going to deter me from doing my job.”

Now he’s facing the biggest test of his career-on the island of fear.

‘Black magic’ story in isle sex trial (03.09.71)

Daily Mail, 3rd September 1971

Paisnel gets 30 years (14.12.71)

Daily Mail, 14th December 1971

Crowds try to see sex case man (20.07.71)

Daily Mail, 20th July 1971

Jersey home was studio for evil child-porn empire (30.03.08)

News of the World, 30th March 2008
by Philip Whiteside and Lucy Panton, Crime Editor

VILE pictures of babies being raped were taken for a child porn ring at the Jersey kids’ home of horror, police feared last night.Experts think the home is the source of many of the network’s 9,000 sick pictures, discovered in an infamous haul in Holland in the Nineties.It was dubbed the Zandvoort stash, after the town where it was found- but the studio was never uncovered.

Experts are now 90 per cent certain it was the baby unit at Haut de la Garenne’s Aviemore wing. Some of the victims in the black and white pictures were just 18 months old.

None has ever been traced.

A Belgium anti-paedophile group which uncovered the pictures in a computer shop has contacted Jersey police. Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper said: “We are looking at the claims and will follow up significant new lines of inquiry.”

Pictures of a second “punishment room” cellar were released this weekend. It is three times bigger than the first chamber but the ceiling is even lower, meaning children would have stooped. More than 200 people say they were abused or know victims. Around 40 people have been identified as potentially being involved in the abuse or covering it up.

The News of the World can also reveal that 121 sex offenders roam Jersey unsupervised as it has no sex offenders’ register. Their crimes range from paedophilia and rape to downloading child porn and cops say they may pose a risk. Politicians say they will make the register law this year.

Jersey beast’s reign of terror (26.2.08)

Daily Express, 26th January 2008

My ordeal of rape, drugs and assault as Jersey orphan (27.2.08)

Daily Express, 27th February 2008

Senator from Jersey accused of leaking police report wants asylum after fleeing trial (25.10.09)

Daily Mail, 25th October 2009

by Eileen Fairweather

A leading Jersey politician accused of leaking a police report is claiming asylum at the House of Commons because he believes he will not be given a fair trial on the island.

Senator Stuart Syvret, a former Jersey health and social security minister described by supporters as a ‘voice of the people’, fled to London shortly before he was due at a court hearing on Wednesday.

He has moved into the home of Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who is backing the senator’s case for ‘legal asylum’.

As a Channel Islands citizen, Mr Syvret has an automatic right to live in Britain, but the senator will tomorrow ask the British Government for ‘protection from harassment’ from the Jersey authorities.

He was arrested and charged in April for data-protection offences after he made public a police report into an aborted investigation into the conduct of a male nurse on the island.

On Friday, Jersey magistrates made an order for Mr Syvret’s arrest when he failed to turn up to two court hearings.

But Mr Hemming, MP for Birmingham Yardley, along with Labour MP Austin Mitchell and Lib Dem peer Lord Wallace of Saltaire, are supporting the senator’s application for protection from the Jersey judiciary.

They say the British Government should intervene because Jersey is a Crown dependency and Britain has a responsibility for its good governance.

Mr Syvret was the ‘whistleblower’ who previously claimed island officials covered up child abuse at Jersey’s Haut de la Garenne children’s home.

Arrests and charges were made. But when Mr Syvret called for an independent inquiry into the handling of that case, he was accused of damaging Jersey’s reputation and dismissed as health minister.

Mr Hemming said: ‘He is staying in my London flat as my guest and they can arrest him over my dead body. He is a brave and principled politician.

‘Jack Straw must act. The Jersey establishment care more about covering up their failures than protecting patients. Stuart has revealed a botched investigation into a major crime, but the authorities are prosecuting him rather than investigating the allegations about the nurse.

‘It is quite clear that the judicial processes in Jersey are skewed against Stuart. We should not allow him to be extradited, to be prosecuted in a kangaroo court.’

In March this year Mr Syvret, Jersey’s longest-serving senator, published details of a police investigation into a registered nurse in what he described as an effort to challenge ‘the Jersey way of constant cover-ups, a toxic culture of concealment’.

He claimed police feared the nurse was obsessed with death and that further investigation was needed, but that officers had been obstructed from interviewing witnesses by the island’s health services and senior officials.

The nurse has previous convictions and was sacked from his post after having sex with a seriously ill patient.

He was also arrested after a girlfriend claimed he had gone to her home and hidden stolen hospital drugs, for which he was convicted.

Police reports confirm that detectives found drugs at her house.

Background checks revealed further grave concerns, including complaints by relatives who claimed they had discovered him turning up morphine doses and a senior nurse who found that he had blocked a heart patient’s life-saving drip with a bung.

Following Mr Syvret’s publication of details of the investigation, Jersey police asked the Metropolitan Police to review its handling of the case.

A report by former Detective Chief Inspector Keith Eldridge of the Met’s Specialist Crime Directorate, which reviews unsolved homicides, confirmed that the nurse was ‘potentially a danger to women’ and prone to ‘predatory and violent sexual behaviour’.

He recommended that Jersey police ‘carry out an up-to-date risk assessment with a view to prevention of offences against vulnerable members of the Jersey community’.

However, he added that there were ‘no grounds to invite the Crown to review its position as there is no new evidence’.

Despite the report, Mr Syvret, 44, is still facing the possibility of a jail sentence should he be found guilty of breaching the Data Protection Act.

But he claims he fled Jersey only after he was advised that he may be barred from mounting a public-interest defence in court.

Mr Syvret said: ‘My home was raided in April by ten police officers, my parliamentary email account downloaded and I have even been billed thousands of pounds in court costs. I haven’t even been allowed legal aid so I have had to represent myself.

‘It has been a travesty of justice. During the past three months I have made around 50 different applications before the judge – relating to disclosures of evidence and the calling of witnesses – and every single one has been rejected.’

Mr Syvret intends to give himself up to police at the House of Commons tomorrow and then go through the unprecedented process of claiming the right to a fair trial on the mainland.

Lord Wallace claimed the Jersey government was attempting to silence its critics. He added: ‘Senator Syvret is a leading member of the States of Jersey. As an elected representative, it is his job to investigate the quality of public administration in Jersey and to respond to what those who voted for him have told him about past administrative actions.’