Carl Denning, now 49 and living in north Wales, spent many of his childhood years in the Guernsey and Jersey care systems. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0544034)
ABUSE has been inflicted on children at States-run care homes in Guernsey, according to a former resident of now-infamous Haut de la Garenne.
Guernsey-born Carl Denning, 49, was sent to the former Jersey children’s home now at the centre of a huge police investigation to get him away from domestic abuse at home. He claims that when he later stayed in Guernsey care homes, abuse continued to be part of both his life and that of other children.
Regularly beaten, starved and ignored at home, five-year-old Carl resorted to truancy and thieving, which led to his being sent to Haut de la Garenne. He was to remain there until he took his 11-plus.
‘I felt so relaxed, so relieved to be at Haut de la Garenne,’ said father-of-four Mr Denning, now married for a second time and living in Snowdonia.
‘It was like Christmas, going in there and getting fed every day. And to have a bed, to me it was just like heaven. But I had been through such a violent time at home.’
But it was not long before Carl was regularly subjected to horrific assaults in the home.
‘I couldn’t name them, but I knew someone was in my bed doing things to me that they shouldn’t in the dark,’ said former builder Mr Denning, who since a car crash some years ago has been unemployed.
Mr Denning said that he had shut away many of his experiences, including that of being raped.
Now he can recall how at Haut de la Garenne between 1964 and 1965 two of his friends hanged themselves – and he remembers reports of two more children taking their own life.
The boys had been kept in one of the detention cells at the home – but not, said Mr Denning, in the cellar currently being excavated by Jersey Police.
‘We never saw them again,’ he said. ‘The police were never there, nor an ambulance. No one ever came. The staff just told us that they had hanged and had been dealt with.’
In another disturbing account, Mr Denning spoke of a time he was forced into sexual behaviour with another boy by a male member of staff.
‘You were so scared that you just got on with it,’ said Mr Denning.
Throughout his six years in Jersey, Mr Denning cannot remember ever having been visited by a Guernsey social worker.
His only contact with the outside world was a visit from his father, Leonard, now 86, and his eldest brother, Vincent, who went over on a day trip.
Once back in Guernsey, it was not long before Carl found home life unbearable again and ran away. He ended up in a children’s home in Guernsey, run by the then Children Board.
He claimed that abuse occurred there, too, with some of his female friends being sexually assaulted.
He also alleged that two nurses were sexually assaulted at the home but were told to keep quiet.
Mr Denning said physical violence was rife at the home during his stay, with one adult regularly punching the teenager.
‘One day he knocked me flying,’ said Mr Denning. ‘He was a big, stocky bloke and used to bash the kids around, but you could not say anything. No one would listen.’
In his later teens, Mr Denning was sent to another home in Guernsey.
‘Haut de la Garenne was a totally different kettle of fish,’ he said.
‘But the Guernsey homes were not squeaky clean, you know. Far from it.
‘I was not abused at the second home, because by then I was too much of a loose cannon. I would have said something. But I know there were boys who were.’
Mr Denning wants Guernsey’s authorities to recognise what happened to him and, if his accounts are correct, so many of his contemporaries who were in the care system. And he wants both the Jersey and Guernsey children’s services authorities to admit that they failed their youngsters.
‘If you have a reciprocal agreement between the islands, you have a duty to check that the children in your care are safe,’ he said.
‘A reciprocal agreement means if the Guernsey authorities send local children to Jersey, then they are both liable.
‘But I feel like the Guernsey authorities really don’t believe what went on.’
And those staff who turned a blind eye at the time should also be punished. ‘For not speaking up, they’re worse than the person abusing the children.’
Health and Social Services minister Peter Roffey strongly denied that there was any desire in his department now to play abuse complaints down.
‘Both Children’s Services and the Guernsey Police would welcome anyone coming forward,’ he said. ‘And if someone came forward with a criminal matter we would refer them to the police.’
The department’s staff, Deputy Roffey said, had since early last week been sorting through records dating back decades.
‘Even going through the records right now, quite honestly, you can see how it might well have been difficult for anyone to have made a complaint back then,’ he said. ‘It’s almost got to the stage where we are short of hands to look after our present generation of children, there is so much work involved.’
Deputy Roffey added that he knew people in Guernsey who had worked in the island’s children’s homes in the 1970s.
‘But from talking to them, the impression I got was that by then things had moved away from physical violence as a form of discipline – though that’s not to say it did not happen,’ he said.
‘I’ve never been an advocate of corporal punishment and what we have to do is to break down what was a disproportionate act of physical violence against what was acceptable at the time.’
Article posted on 4th March, 2008 - 2.30pm
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