Top Lancashire Detective Leading Jersey Abuse Probe

Lancashire Telegraph, Wednesday 27th August 2008

A DETECTIVE who has handled some of East Lancashire's biggest crime cases is to head up the investigation into child abuse in Jersey.

Police on the island are set to unveil the appointment of Detective Superintendent Mick Gradwell.

He will lead the inquiry into the former Haut de la Garenne children's home, where children's teeth and bone fragments have been found.

It will bring to an end a career spanning over 28 years with Lancashire Constabulary for Mr Gradwell, who was been detective superintendent since 2000, and has been the head of CID in both Blackburn and Blackpool.

At present Mr Gradwell is head of East Lancashire's major crime team which investigates the most serious cases.

During his time with the force he has led a series of high profile cases, most recently the murder of Sophie Lancaster in Bacup in August last year, the stabbing of dad-of-five Mohammed Shafiq in Burnley in March this year and the house fire in Accrington which killed six members of the Riaz family in November 2006.

His team was awarded the Justice Shield, the highest national Criminal Justice award, in 2006, after the handling of the Morecambe Bay cockling deaths.

Mr Gradwell himself was presented with a national innovation award for his work designing a computer system which was used in the complex investigation into the Morecambe Bay tragedy in 2004.

He has also been a Council of Europe Expert lecturing on the Human Rights Act, and in February was invited to become a member of the European Homicide Working Group.

Two years after Jersey Police started a covert investigation into abuse at Haut de la Garenne following allegations by former residents, the inquiry has discovered the partial remains of young children.

As of the end of July 2008, police said the remains of at least five children aged between four and 11 have been found, but a murder inquiry is unlikely because they cannot be precisely dated.

Searches have uncovered 65 milk teeth and more than 100 bone fragments.

Mr Gradwell was unable to comment until the official public confirmation from Jersey Police.

A spokesman for the force said an administrative issue was delaying the announcement.

COMMENTS:

NEVARTI, London says...
 Wed 27 Aug 08
When one considers that NASA's Phoenix lander at 36 million miles from Earth can detect water on Mars, it takes a wild leap of the imagination to imagine that the same modern scientific technology cannot be used to put the date to human remains! Come on! What the HELL is going on here? - And WHAT hell!

Kilbarry1, Dublin, Ireland says...
Thu 28 Aug 08
NEVARTI is correct. According to Jersey Evening Post some fragments have been dated to 1650. The "fragment of childs skull" that started this hysteria last February was later found to be a piece of coconut shell! This is a witch-hunt.

Between 1999 and 2004 approx we had similar historical allegations of child murder in Irish institutions. As most of them related to times when no child died of any cause, I coined the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". The hysteria simply died away a few years ago but no one was called to account for causing it. I hope things will be different in Jersey