'Intimidating bullies' are jailed for abusing children at Jersey home

• Anthony and Morag Jordan, from Kirriemuir, were said to have used 'casual and routine violence' as house parents. Picture: PA

Morag and Anthony Jordan, both 62, from Kirriemuir, Angus, received jail terms of nine months and six months respectively at the Royal Court of Jersey.

They had been found guilty in November last year of eight separate counts relating to abuse at the home.

Morag Jordan, originally from Dundee, was acquitted of a further 28 counts and her husband of four.

Morag Jordan, who worked at the children's home between 1970 and 1984, was convicted of assaults including pushing a child's face into urine-soaked sheets after she wet the bed and hitting other children with her hand and a wooden shoe.

Her husband was found guilty of hitting children with a metal spoon, a knife and his hand.

Prosecutors said the couple were "intimidating bullies" who used "casual and routine violence" while working as house parents.

The court heard earlier how the Jordans regularly used violence against children at the home.

One victim, a woman now aged in her forties, recalled her humiliation at the hands of Mrs Jordan.

"She used to pull my face into the sheets and let the other children know what I had done, called me 'p***ybed' and 'p***ypants'," she told the court.

Also giving evidence, a former resident recalled being hit with such force by Mr Jordan that he fell off his chair. It happened when he refused to eat a meal that had originally been served to him the previous day.

He told the court: "I was nine or ten, I came back for lunch and it was just me and Tony. I was presented with something I had been given the night before. I refused to eat it."

Last year, another former carer at the home, Gordon Wateridge, then 78, was convicted of eight charges of indecent assault and one of assault against teenagers living there during the 1970s.Wateridge, also a house parent, would grope girls' breasts, hug teenagers inappropriately and kiss them on the neck, the court was told. He indecently assaulted three teenage girls and assaulted one teenage boy.

Also last year, a former teenage resident of the home, Michael Aubin, was convicted of sexually abusing other boys there.

The 4.5m police investigation into alleged crimes at Haut de la Garenne has faced criticism, however.

In February 2008, the Jersey force said it had found the "potential remains of a child" buried under the Victorian building, prompting a long and expensive excavation.

But later that year a new officer taking charge of the case said there had never been compelling evidence to justify the dig.

Despite lurid reports suggesting torture and murder at the home, no evidence emerged to support this.

Of 170 bone fragments tested, only three were found to be possibly human - two dating back as far as 1470 and the other between 1650 and 1950.