UK police searching a former children's home for human remains said today they had found "a couple of finds of some significance" in a bricked-up cellar room.
Jersey Deputy Police Chief Lenny Harper told reporters: "They are items which witnesses have said were in there when offences were committed against them."
He declined to describe the items but said no more human remains had been found. On Saturday a child's skull was discovered at the site.
The Haut de la Garenne home in the parish of St Martin is at the centre of a major child abuse investigation involving more than 160 victims and 40 suspects going back to the 1960s.
Excavating equipment is moved in the grounds beside a police tent at the Haut de la Garenne Youth Hostel near St Martin in Jersey
Officers have excavated one bricked up underground room at the recently converted youth hostel and are working to access a second. Former workers at the home say they remember a third cellar chamber.
Mr Harper would not confirm widespread reports that one of the items found this afternoon was a bath. Nor would he describe the second item.
Victims' accounts have described a bath in a small underground room where children were drugged and abused.
They have have also described a windowless "punishment room" where children were caged in solitary confinement.
"Pamela" described a room, about 12ft by 16ft, in which "the most cruel, sadistic and evil acts" were carried out against young victims in the 1970s.
Other victims have told of a "deep dark" place beneath a trap door where youngsters were locked up, drugged and sexually abused. Workmen renovating the building in the past have told of finding shackles, leg irons and wooden stocks.
Mr Harper said: "The [first] cellar is exactly as some of the witnesses who made statements described."
The sniffer dog behind the discovery of the room gave an "extremely strong reaction" to an area in the first chamber when it was opened up yesterday.
A police spokesperson said: "We have been contacted by people who used to work here who have told us there may be a third chamber. So far we have not found any evidence of that."
"We don't anticipate going in to the second chamber until the first one is completely cleared." The first chamber is around 12ft square, bricked up from the front, and filled with rock, clay and soil, blocking access. The second room is estimated to be about the same size.
Mr Harper said the operation is worldwide, and detectives have taken statements from witnesses in Australia and Thailand.
Police would wait until they had gathered all the evidence they needed before making arrests, he said. And he was reluctant to arrest people who might be branded as paedophiles despite later being released.
Police do not have a list of missing children and are trying to piece together identities from the reports of former residents.
"What we do have are anecdotal statements along the lines of 'we were in there with such and such a person' and maybe a first name and they got in to a row and there were screams one night and they didn't appear again the next day and someone said they had run away to the UK," Mr Harper said.
PA