Second care home ‘torture pit’ is opened

By Caroline Lovell on March 11, 2008 in Asylum and refugees, Child safeguarding, Children, Disability, Family support, Mental Health, Residential care, Sexual exploitation, Substance misuse, Workforce, Young people, Youth justice

Second care home ‘torture pit’ is opened

A second suspected underground torture chamber was broken into by a police search team yesterday at the Jersey care home at the centre of a child abuse investigation. A sniffer dog last night indicated the presence of possible human remains.

The discovery came as detectives said that corrupt former police officers, politicians and a businessman were trying to discredit the inquiry into the Haut de la Garenne home.

Migrants vanish after police put them on train

Nine suspected illegal migrants arrested at a lorry depot are on the run after police trusted them to make their own way to an immigration office more than 80 miles away.

Cambridgeshire police seized the Afghan men as they were hiding in a lorry at a depot in the village of Fordham near Ely. They were believed to have entered on the lorry via a port on the south coast.

TUC attacks motherhood penalty in the workplace

The difference between men’s and women’s pay more than trebles when women reach their 30s, TUC research revealed today. It found women leaving school at 16 and going into a full-time job earn 9.7% more than their male contemporaries. But from the age of 18 – and throughout the rest of their working lives – they earn less than men.

Lighter sentences for ‘desperate’ thieves

Burglars and thieves who steal to fund an addiction to drugs, gambling or drink could escape jail even if they target a vulnerable victim such as an elderly shopkeeper, under new official guidelines.

Judges and magistrates have been told to take an offender’s dependency into account when sentencing.

Couple who want deaf child angry at IVF ban

A deaf father who wishes to have a deaf child has spoken of his anger that a clause in new fertility legislation will make it illegal to use embryos with a genetic abnormality in IVF treatment, when ones without the same defect are available.

Pupils to ‘swear oath of allegiance to the Queen’ under new British citizenship plans

British schoolchildren could be encouraged to join in citizenship ceremonies and to swear allegiance to the Queen under proposals to be published by ministers today.

Hundreds of children are being removed from school and ‘forced into marriages abroad’

Official figures which reveal that hundreds of children from ethnic minorities are being removed from school have sparked concerns that many are being forced into marriages abroad.

The figures were compiled in an official Government report to highlight how many children have disappeared from school registers in England – it is feared that some have been forced into unhappy marriages against their will.

Priest quits over claims he gave collection plate cash to homeless heroin addict to fund £100-a-day habit

A parish priest has resigned after allegedly giving a drug addict thousands of pounds to buy heroin and crack cocaine.

Father Alan Sharpe was filmed by an undercover documentary team handing over at least £100 a day to the 24-year-old homeless man.