Westminster child abuse inquiry could last for FOUR years...

By Matt Chorley
Daily Mail
February 11, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2949476/Westminster-child-abuse-inquiry-FOUR-years-New-Zealand-judge-warns-faces-biggest-challenge.html

Lowell Goddard, a High Court judge in New Zealand, said leading the probe could last up to four years

Mrs Goddard, arriving at Parliament to give evidence to MPs, said the inquiry was her biggest ever challenger

Westminster child abuse inquiry could last for FOUR years, New Zealand judge warns as she faces her 'biggest challenge'

The inquiry into Establishment child abuse could take up to four years to complete, its new chairman has revealed.

Lowell Goddard, a High Court judge in New Zealand, said leading the probe was the 'biggest challenge' she has ever faced as she set out plans to start in April.  

The inquiry has already lost two potential heads, Baroness Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf, who stood aside amid concerns over their establishment links.

Home Secretary Theresa May was forced to scour the globe to find a chairman for the inquiry, after fears leading figures in the UK would be seen as too close to the Establishment.

Giving evidence to MPs, Judge Goddard, the third chair-designate of the Statutory Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, told the Home Affairs Select Committee she was reluctant to set a timescale for the inquiry as this stage.

But she said it had been indicated when she took the job that it could take 'three years, possibly into a fourth'.

She added: 'Given the breadth of the subject matter and the timespan involved, that does not seem inordinate.

'It is a long time but what will be important, in my view, is to carefully scope the inquiry to see how it should be managed and to inform along the way of the progress of the inquiry and perhaps to set milestones for interim reports.'

Mrs May has insisted she is confident that thorough checks have been carried out to ensure there are no conflicts of interest that could undermine her appointment.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, asked Judge Goddard: 'Would you regard yourself as being part of the establishment?'

She replied: 'We don't have such a thing in my country and I did have to ask carefully what is meant by it so that I did understand what I was being asked to disclose.

'My understanding is do I have any links into any institution or any person relevant to the subject matter of the inquiry? And no, I don't.'

Judge Goddard said she arrived in the UK yesterday and had already met the Home Secretary and sex abuse survivor groups.

She told the committee she will step down from her full-time job as a judge in New Zealand and relocate to the UK for the duration of the inquiry, although she has yet to be awarded a work permit.

Her husband will join her in the UK as often as he can, but her grown up children will remain in New Zealand.

'It is the biggest challenge I have faced yet,' she told MPs.   

The Home Office received more than 150 nominations from survivors, their representatives, MPs and members of the public, Mrs May said.

The Foreign Office was also tasked with combing the Commonwealth to identify any suitable candidates from abroad.

It will be a new statutory inquiry, and not a Royal Commission as some victims had hoped. With a legal status set out under the 2005 Inquiries Act, it will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.

Last week Mrs May announced the original inquiry would be axed and replaced with a new panel.

She conceded that not every victim would be happy with what she announced today.

But she told MPs: 'Let me be clear. I am now more determined than ever to expose the people behind these despicable crimes and the people in institutions that knew about abuse but didn't act, that failed to help when it was their duty, sometimes their very purpose to do so.

'And the people and institutions that in some cases positively covered up evidence of abuse.

'What we have seen so far in Rotherham, Oxford, Greater Manchester and elsewhere is only the tip of the iceberg.

'With every passing day, with every new revelation, it is clear that sexual abuse of child has taken and is taking place on a scale that we still cannot fully comprehend.'

She said the authorities had 'let down too many' victims over many years, telling MPs: 'I cannot stand here and say there has been no cover-up.'

At the time she said the inquiry will take longer than 12 months, but must not be allow to 'go on endlessly', Mrs May added.

She will urge Miss Goddard to set a date to publish a report, to prevent a repeat of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war which has not been published after six years.

The inquiry has been dogged with problems since it was first announced by Mrs May last summer.

The panel of experts was created to examine evidence that successive governments, charities, political parties, the NHS, the BBC and the Church failed to protect children from paedophiles.

But it has failed to make any significant progress after losing not one but two chairman.  

The first person appointed to lead the inquiry was Baroness Butler-Sloss, who stood down in July last year amid questions over the role played by her late brother, Lord Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s.

Her replacement Dame Fiona Woolf then resigned following a barrage of criticism over her 'Establishment links', most notably in relation to former home secretary Leon Brittan, who died last month.

Before his death, Lord Brittan had been seen as a key witness to give evidence to the inquiry over a dossier he received from MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983, documenting the alleged involvement of VIP figures in a child sex ring.