Carbon dating and the Jersey case

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Carbon dating and the Jersey case
Page last updated at 16:14 GMT, Thursday, 31 July 2008 17:14 UK
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

The police chief leading the Jersey abuse inquiry says attempts to carbon date remains from at least five children are unlikely to yield results ...

"Nuclear bomb testing that started in the late 1950s significantly contaminated the whole of the atmosphere. So you have very high levels of carbon-14 through that period that didn't exist prior to that," said Professor Gerry McCormac, an expert on radiocarbon dating from Queen's University Belfast ...

But even before the "bomb carbon" period, humans were already disrupting the natural radiocarbon signal by burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas ...

All of this means that if the Haut de la Garenne remains are pre-1950s, or just on the cusp of the nuclear era, it might be difficult to distinguish them from much older remains - those, say, from the 19th or 18th Centuries ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7535083.stm

Excavations confirm 5 boys buried around Great Britain orphanage
Thursday, July 31 2008 @ 11:30 AM AST

Having completed excavations around the orphanage on the British isle of Jersey, where abuse against minors is being investigated, British authorities confirmed that the human remains found are of five boys buried decades ago.

Police arrived at the house Haut de la Garenne, located on the isle of Jersey, in the French Canal, in 2006, acting on complaints by over 100 witnesses that children were the subjects of cruel abuse there. The discovery was shocking: 100 pieces of human remains including burnt and cut bones and 65 baby teeth.

Also found at the orphanage were the silent witnesses of infant torture, shackles and a blood stained bath.

Authorities confirmed today that the remains were those of boys between the ages of four and 11.

http://news.bn.gs/article.php?story=20080731105606634

Jersey mystery: police find remains of five children but may abandon murder inquiry
By Jerome Taylor
Friday, 1 August 2008

... The suggestion that children's remains had been found prompted hundreds more victims to come forward, saying they had been abused in the cellars between the 1960s and 1986. It also thrust the small Channel Island, which prides itself on being an attractive offshore banking centre, uncomfortably to the top of the international news agenda.

As the island's politicians struggled to deal with the damage wrought to Jersey's reputation, the list of potential perpetrators grew to more than 80 people. Although many of them are now dead, police are concentrating on at least 18 "priority" suspects who are still alive ...

At least four punishment rooms were uncovered alongside a concrete bath where victims described being held in cold water for hours before being repeatedly abused. Also found were flecks of blood, a set of shackles and graffiti above the bath which read: "I've been bad for years and years" ...

Some of the bones are also charred, while others show signs of trauma including lacerations. There is also archaeological evidence suggesting that efforts were made to conceal them at some point during the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there was no way of knowing whether children had been killed in the cellar or whether the bones were simply suicides and accidental deaths that had been covered up ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/jersey-mystery-police-find-remains-of-five-children-but-may-abandon-murder-inquiry-882610.html

Five dead children found, but truth to remain buried
By Caroline Gammell in Jersey
Friday August 01 2008

... The remains had been burned in a furnace and in some cases cut up before they were buried in a cellar in the 1960s ...

"We are almost certain that they were moved no earlier that the late 1960s. It is highly suspicious and indicates some kind of crime," said <Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper> ...

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/five-dead-children-found-but-truth-to-remain-buried-1444267.html

Jersey chief confident on inquiry

... William Bailhache told the BBC that although the inquiry process could be a difficult and slow process, "it's more important that justice be done" ...

"What has made this significantly different, in my perception, from many similar inquires of this nature I've been involved with before is the political hostility that it has engendered," <Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper> said ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7536536.stm