A SCOTTISH couple were yesterday convicted of abusing children for over two decades at a children’s home in Jersey, where fragments of a child’s skull were found by police in 2008.
Anthony and Morag Jordan, both 62, were found guilty of eight charges of abuse of children at the Haut de la Garenne home – which became known as “the House of Horrors” when it was searched by police two years ago – as former residents looked on. However, the jury acquitted Mr Jordan of four charges and his wife of 28 more.
The two had been accused of inflicting “casual and routine violence” on the children while they worked as house parents at Haut de la Garenne. One of the victims recounted she had her face pushed into urine-soaked sheets.
“She used to pull my face into the sheets and let the other children know what I had done, called me ‘pissybed’ and ‘pissypants’,” the woman, now in her 40s, told the court during the two-week trial.
The jury did not find that she had been force-fed and pulled around by the ears, as alleged.
The verdicts in the Jersey trial are the final chapter in a multimillion-pound investigation – one of the largest child abuse investigations ever held in the UK, but one that has been heavily criticised.
More than 100 former residents gave testimony to the inquiry that they had been abused, but only a handful of convictions have resulted.
Charges against three other people named by the former residents were dropped due to a lack of evidence. However, the inquiry did find that children held by the Jersey authorities had been abused for decades.
The Channel Island’s police force’s reputation has been seriously affected because of its failings over the years to uncover the abuse.
Speaking outside the courthouse, some of the former residents of Haut de la Garenne who gave evidence to the court said they now wished to “draw a line” under the case: “This is a mixed result, but the general consensus was there were abuses carried out and it has finally been recognised in a court of law,” they told reporters.
Both defendants remained silent as the verdicts were read out, but a former resident who gave evidence during the trial was led from the public gallery in tears.
