Head of abuse care home "raped teenage girl"

Friday 23 January 2015

A witness has told the abuse inquiry that she was raped at Haut de la Garenne as a young girl in the 1980s by the then-superintendent who ran the home, Jim Thomson.

During harrowing evidence yesterday, Tina Maguire - who spoke via video link from the UK, and who gave the inquiry consent to be named - told the inquiry about her abuse at the Haut de la Garenne where she lived between the ages of 13 and 18. She said that on many occasions Thomson raped her on his sofa when she was cleaning his flat at the home.

Her evidence is the first time at the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry that Thomson, who ran Haut de la Garenne in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has been publicly accused of rape.

And Tina also told the inquiry that when she was around 14 or 15 she was drugged at a children's disco attended by older strangers when a member of staff, Morag Jordan, gave her a thick, green drink, which she drank. The next thing that she remembered was waking up in a corridor outside with her trousers and underwear around her ankles, and when she told a member of staff that she didn't know what had gone on, he just laughed at her.

And as the hearing went on into the afternoon, she also gave damning evidence about the conduct of the police, saying that she was raped again by the father of a younger boy who she had befriended at Haut de la Garenne, but was laughed out of the police station when she tried to report it because she had a "bad reputation".

Tina said that she asked to speak to an officer in private, but was not questioned about what had happened or medically examined - instead, in her own words, she was "sent packing". She said that walking out of the police station something snapped inside her, and a couple of days later she unsuccessfully poisoned her rapist, but she was reported to the police and charged with attempted murder and sentenced to six years in prison.

Tina told the inquiry that during her five years at Haut de la Garenne there were two members of staff who she trusted and looked up to, but that she and other victims of abuse never told them about what was being done to them. She said that had she done so, the only adults that she trusted would have disappeared from her life.

She said: "If I had disclosed to the two staff members that I got on with, then Morag Jordan, Tony Jordan or Jim Thomson would have found a way to get rid of both of those staff. If I'd spoken to them, they would have been gone. We would not have seen them again."

Tina also gave evidence that children had "disappeared" from the home at odd times, and that they were never given any warning about when it might happen.

When asked by a lawyer for the inquiry if she thought they were simply being transferred to other institutions or going into foster care, Tina said: "No, I think there is a bit more to it than that. But whatever that is remains to be seen."