Radar used in search for bodies

A specialist military team has started work inside Haut de la Garenne where a skull fragment was discovered and pieces of what are believed to be human bones were found.

The former home in Jersey is the focus of a major child abuse investigation involving 160 victims with allegations going back four decades.

Now detectives have said the hotspots could have been caused by the BBC when they made the police drama Bergerac. Haut de la Garenne featured as the police station in the series and involved a fake graveyard being built in one of the fields.

A spokesman for Jersey Police said officers have known since the start of the inquiry that it was a possible explanation for the disturbed earth but said they have also got witness accounts that remains could be buried in a field.

The excavation in a field at the back of the building has uncovered a number of animal bones but no human remains.

Police said that filming has not affected the hotspots identified within the building.

Those hotspots have led police to the remains of a child buried in a stairwell and a network of secret underground chambers where victims say they were abused.

There are believed to be four underground chambers - referred to as "punishment rooms" by victims - and so far one has been excavated.

Victims claim they were kept in solitary confinement in the cellars and were drugged, raped and flogged by both staff and other children at the home.