Essential information about the Jersey case

Essential information about the Jersey case

Our Community Care coverage

Jersey latest: child’s remains found at former children’s home

Jersey Police investigate child abuse allegations

Exclusive: UK social worker blows the whistle on Jersey

Jersey whistleblower – why I went on the record


Jersey Evening Post

Child’s body found at former children’s home


BBC

Last night, Community Care was interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight on Jersey’s care services. If you have Real Player listen here

BBC Today programme

Six more sites in care home probe

Secrets behind children’s home

Jersey police

First charge in historical abuse inquiry

Partial remains of what is thought to be a child’s body found at Haut de la Garenne

Guardian

Six more bodies feared buried in Jersey home

Reaction

Care Leavers Association – Call for national inquiry after Jersey abuse revelations

The only organisation in the UK that represents all adults who were in care as children, the Care Leavers’ Association (CLA)[1] is calling for a national inquiry into the scale of the abuse that took place in the UK.

Jim Goddard, the secretary of the CLA said: “We note with anger and concern, but not surprise, the revelations of a death, and widespread abuse, in a Jersey children’s home. Many of our members are the victims of physical and sexual abuse in care in the UK during past decades. Despite several inquiries, there has never been a proper accounting for the abuse that took place across the United Kingdom in the twentieth century and there remain many unanswered questions. “

He added: “We note the words of the former Jersey Health Minister, Stuart Syvret, that this discovery is “not surprising”. Nor is it surprising that both Senator Syvret and former care worker Simon Bellwood were forced out of their posts for doggedly pursuing abuse allegations on Jersey. Denial and cover-up have been a relentless feature of the history of past abuse in the child care system.”

Will McMahon, chair of the CLA said: “”In the circumstances, the claim of the Jersey First Minister that “children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse” is complacent beyond belief. This was the same First Minister who led calls for the sacking of Stuart Syvret for his courageous stand in revealing past abuse.”

“We call for a Commission of Inquiry into past abuse in the UK child care system; the evidence of adults who spent time in care as children should be at the centre of the inquiry.  We are not confident that current safeguards are adequate for protecting children from abuse, in Jersey or elsewhere. Until there has been proper recognition and acknowledgement by the State of the inadequacies of the past, there must remain major question marks over the present.”