Orfanato, El (The Orphanage)

Orfanato, El (The Orphanage)

Excellent piece of art…Spanish movie Released in Oct 2007

Details about movie can be found on Google but I wonder if these supernatural/horror stories can be quite close to reality.



www.theage.com.au
February 26, 2008


Search for bodies at old Jersey orphanage
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BRITISH police are to dig for six children's bodies at a former orphanage on the Channel Island of Jersey, where the remains of a child were found under the floor at the weekend.

The officer leading the case said yesterday that sniffer dogs had identified the six potential sites, following a police investigation that has taken statements from 140 alleged child abuse victims from as far afield as Australia, Thailand and Germany.

A Jersey Police spokeswoman said two officers had been sent to interview alleged victims in Australia. She did not specify the number or location of people affected but said it involved a "handful" of people from "far-flung" parts of the country.

The child's remains were found under a concrete floor at the building — now a youth hostel — and are believed to include a skull, fragments of fabric, a button and what may be a hair clasp. They are to be tested to determine the child's age and sex.

Lenny Harper, the senior investigating officer, said 40 suspects had been identified in the investigation, most of whom were "respected figures of the establishment" in positions of power at the home.

The inquiry began more than a year ago after officers found links between an earlier abuse inquiry involving the Jersey Sea Cadet Corps and institutions including the former orphanage of Haut de la Garenne.

In November, they publicly appealed for alleged victims of abuse to contact them. The dedicated hotline for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children received four times more calls in the first week than any other British case of this type.

The alleged abuse is believed to have occurred between the 1940s and 1986, when the home was closed, with the bulk of attacks happening in the 1960s.

"Allegations range from physical assaults right through to rape," Mr Harper said. "It is difficult to envisage more horrific crimes than some of those that are alleged to have been carried out here." One man, Gordon Waterfield, 76, has been charged with three indecent assaults on girls under the age of 16, allegedly committed while he was employed at Haut de la Garenne. Waterfield is not being investigated in relation to the remains.

Mr Harper said some residents had reported sexual and physical abuse, but agencies had failed to act. "We are talking about a different age with different attitudes. Some people suffered because they were not dealt with in the way they should have been," he said.

Jersey's former minister for health and social services, Senator Stuart Syvret, was ousted in September after blowing the whistle on what he called "systematic and long-term failure" of child protection on the island.

"We are looking at the last six decades — since the end of the Second World War — at instances of abuse on vulnerable children, children in care," Mr Syvret told the BBC. Haut de la Garenne — meaning "top of the rabbit warren" in French — was opened in 1867 as an industrial school "for young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children" in Jersey's east.

Standard practice reportedly included bad behaviour being punished with deprivation, flogging and solitary confinement.

After World War II, the building was used as a school and orphanage for children with special needs, before closing in 1986. A refurbishment converted the building into Jersey's first youth hostel.