Fragments of bone and children’s teeth found during the search of cellars at a former children’s home in Jersey may be too old to justify a murder inquiry, police said yesterday.

A five-month search of the Haut de la Garenne home in the east of the island found the partial remains of five children. The officer leading what is still an inquiry into child abuse said that radiocarbon dating of the bones had failed to establish when the children died. None has been identified.

Stuart Syvret, the Jersey States senator who drew public attention to the allegations of child abuse at the home, called yesterday for the British authorities to intervene. The island’s former health and social services minister claims that the close-knit Jersey Establishment helped to establish a cover-up for fear of a scandal.

He said: “The only hope for justice is if London intervenes and it sends a completely independent judiciary, prosecution and courts, without any prior connection with Jersey.”

Remains found at the home include 65 milk teeth and more than 100 fragments of bone. The only two fragments that have been identified positively are a piece of shin and a bone from a child’s inner ear.

Detectives believe that children were dismembered in the basement room, where former inmates have alleged that physical and sexual abuse took place, and incinerated in a boiler.

Lenny Harper, deputy chief officer of Jersey police, said that despite difficulty in dating the remains, a murder inquiry could be started if further tests on the unidentified young victims were more conclusive.

Radiocarbon dating of the bone fragments at a laboratory in England has been inconclusive, confirming only that their owners had lived between 1650 and the 1960s. Without specific dates, investigators have no way of knowing who was in the home or who was running it when the children died. Mr Harper, who is due to retire this month, said: “If the dating remains as inconclusive . . . a homicide inquiry is unlikely.”

There is evidence that bodies were burnt and buried at Haut de la Garenne, he said, but it was possible that the children died accidentally or through natural causes. “I believe that it is very likely that children died here. What I cannot say is how they died,” he said. “We are highly suspicious of the circumstances of how we found bones and the teeth burnt and buried.”

No decision will be made until after the results of further forensic tests, according to Jersey police.

More than 100 former inmates of Haut de la Garenne, which closed in 1986, have alleged that they were sexually abused there. The police investigation has concentrated on the period between 1960 and 1980, although allegations of abuse have been made dating back to 1945.

Six people have been arrested. Three have been charged with offences relating to the abuse of children and three others have been released on bail pending further inquiries.

Jersey police started searching the building in February, two years after allegations by former residents initiated an investigation into abuse.

Mr Syvret said that it was important to remember the abuse that occurred at the home, even if there was no murder inquiry. He said: “The abuse aspect was quite appalling enough without children dying.”

The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming also called on the British Government to intervene to ensure the “rule of law” in Jersey.

There is little enthusiasm in the island for a murder inquiry. One resident said: “The local attitude to the investigation is that it is all a storm in a teacup, that that sort of stuff went on then, and the sooner that Harper goes and stops embarrassing the island the better.”

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