Haut de la Garenne’s courtyard. Carl Denning said that the children were sometimes made to march around it. (0544663)
GUERNSEY boy Carl Denning only ever had one visit from the outside world while he was at Haut de la Garenne in Jersey, and only ever wrote one letter.
He wrote to his father one Christmas early during his stay at the infamous care home and, some time later, Carl was visited by his father, Leonard, and eldest brother Vincent, when he was camping in the Jersey countryside, a rare trip out.
Leonard remembers the States-funded trip to Jersey in the mid-1960s vividly, most memorably because of the sailing conditions on the journey over. ‘They were rough, to say the least,’ says 86-year-old Leonard, who still lives in Guernsey.
‘When I saw Carl in Jersey, he seemed really quite happy,’ he says.
‘But of course, I wasn’t there, so I wouldn’t know.
‘Maybe there were things that he didn’t want to talk to me about.’
While leafing through the national newspapers, Carl, who says he was abused sexually at the school, insists that there is part of the building missing on the scale drawings of Haut de la Garenne printed to demonstrate the areas which have currently caught the interest of the local police.
There was a boiler room within the building, which he has uneasy feelings about.
‘I can’t say they put children there, but… if some children had gone missing, maybe that would have been a way of getting rid of them,’ he says.
He draws his own diagram, explaining where, in his older years, the TV room was, where the two outdoor swimming pools were in the grounds, one for learning, one for length swimming.
‘And we used to play football in the courtyard, but all of a sudden that stopped,’ says Carl.
‘They also used to make us march around it, but, suddenly, the courtyard and the pool were out of bounds.’
One time, his best friend’s father came to visit and, luckily for Carl, he asked to see the boy too, meaning both got to watch a film being screened in the hall for parents and children.
If Carl had not been invited, he says, he would have had to stay behind, either alone and vulnerable in the dorm or working in the kitchen.
As well as this rare treat, both boys – who were not averse to the odd scrap, Carl admits – were given boxing gloves to do things properly.
He can also remember another building with a moat some distance away from the home, to which the boys would regularly go, when they sneaked out without permission.
‘But I don’t like water,’ says Carl.
‘I think that’s from being held under the water so often when I was really young.
‘I’ve moved on in my life,’ says Carl.
In many ways, he has.
After leaving the home at 11, he was sent back to the family home in Guernsey, which he promptly left.
Homeless, he ended up in care in Guernsey where he would stay – for the most part unhappily, too – until he was taken on by foster parents.
He found his way into the building trade, where he worked happily until a car accident left him with long-term physical damage, leaving him unable to work.
But now, as he says himself, he’s got four lovely children – two grown-up daughters who live in Guernsey as well as Sam and brother James, 19, who live in Wales with Carl and April.
But that doesn’t stop him from visiting Haut de la Garenne when he goes back to the island.
‘There’s so much I can’t remember,’ he says.
‘I suppose by going back it might jog my memory.’
He hopes that the same will come of meeting other residents, to help fill in the mental blanks.
The strain of the current investigation and media attention – which, admittedly, Carl has encouraged due to his willingness to talk – has undoubtedly taken its toll on the family. Carl’s wife declined to comment throughout the interview.
No photographs of Carl as a boy exist, only memories, most of them sadder and more disturbing than the darkest nightmare.
The only Haut de la Garenne old boy’s name that Carl can remember is that of his best friend at the time, with whom he has lost touch.
But perhaps Carl’s childhood, like the photographs, was simply erased.
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