Residents of a former children’s home in Jersey where parts of a child’s skeleton were uncovered gave the first harrowing accounts yesterday of institutionalised brutality and sexual abuse.

A mother of two described how she was drugged so that she would remain docile while being raped and sexually assaulted by members of staff.

Another former resident, Peter Hannaford, now a trade union official on the island, said that his earliest memories were of sexual abuse by staff at the Haut de la Garenne children’s home. The pair are among more than 150 alleged victims who have told police of abuse at the home dating back more than 40 years.

Pamela (not her real name) spent four years at the home in the mid1970s. She claims that her complaints of abuse were ignored until the current police investigation began last year. She has told police that staff would get drunk before selecting a child to abuse.

Those who refused to cooperate were drugged with Valium or bribed with cigarettes and alcohol.

She said: “The things that happened are indescribable – the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts you could think of. What makes it worse is that these acts were practised on very vulnerable children who had nowhere to go and nobody to turn to for help.

“I remember one of the men, who smelt sweaty and was often drunk. He touched me and I tried to fight him off. I often woke up with a massive headache and bruises over my body after being drugged. I was abused and assaulted.”

The woman claims that staff would invite friends to drunken parties and then select a child from the dormitories for that night’s amusement. She said: “I don’t know who came, but all of us would try and lie very still in our beds and not attract attention. They came and got kids and took them away.”

The woman, who is divorced and in her late forties, lives alone in a council flat in St Helier. She still bears the scars of her ordeal. On one occasion she cut herself with a razor in the hope of being transferred to another institution.

Children came and went with little or no explanation because they were sent to foster parents or because they ran away to escape the abuse, making it difficult for police to keep track of who was at the home.

Mr Hannaford, now 59, was sent to Haut de la Garenne as an infant after the death of his parents and spent 12 years at the home. He said: “Boys and girls were abused while I was there. The abuse was anything from rape to torture. It was men and women who abused us.

“It happened every night and it happened to everyone. I was scared to go to bed. You were threatened with punishment if you said anything, which could have been a whip or anything.”

He is expecting to be called to give evidence if charges of abuse are brought as a result of the police investigation, and has felt able to speak of his experiences only recently. He said: “My experiences at Haut de la Garenne have affected my life. It was not just sexual abuse I suffered, it was physical abuse too. I can only describe it as something out of Oliver, without the pig swill.”

Mr Hannaford called for the austere granite building, which has been converted into a 100-bed youth hostel, to be torn down when the investigation is complete. He said: “The building has got to be razed and erased from people’s memories.”

Cyril Turner, 48, who was sent to Haut de la Garenne for truancy, said that violence was an everyday occurrence.

“We were quite often given dead arms and dead legs by the staff. I remember being frogmarched around the place. If you were bad, you would get locked in a dark room with just bread and water,” he said.

“That’s the way it was back then; people said things about what was happening but nothing was done. A lot of the staff would be very physical. Kids were thrown around a lot.”

A number of victims are still too traumatised to come forward, according to friends. Trina Romeril, 38, an acquaintance of some of them, said: “I wasn’t surprised at all when this came out. It has been an open secret. I know two men who were in Haut de la Garenne in the late 1970s and were sexually and physically abused. They have been coming to terms with this for a lifetime. One of them has been approached twice by the police but he won’t say anything.

He can’t bear to have it all dragged up again, he doesn’t want to relive it.”

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