Ruling class? I do my job without fear or favour, says judge leading child sex abuse inquiry

By Simon Walters
Mail Sunday
February 14, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2953998/Ruling-class-job-without-fear-favour-says-judge-leading-child-sex-abuse-inquiry.html

Here to stay: The first two women picked by Home Secretary Theresa May to head the inquiry had to stand down over their links with the Establishment, but Justice Goddard insists it is 'not a poisoned chalice'

Ancestry: Goddard, 66, is descended on her father's side from Renata Kawepo (pictured), chief of the Ngati Kahungunu Ki Heretaunga Maori tribe

Axed: Baroness Butler-Sloss quit as chairman of the inquiry after questions were raised about her brother sitting in the Cabinet in the 1980s. Her replacement Fiona Woolf later resigned over her links to former home secretary Leon Brittan

Justice Lowell Goddard clearly doesn't believe in the old adage that bad news comes in threes.

If she did she would have run a mile when she was asked to take charge of the independent inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

The first two women picked by Home Secretary Theresa May, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf, had to stand down over their links with the Establishment.

But as Justice Goddard sits in her office in Millbank Tower, Westminster, she shrugs off the suggestion that the job is cursed.

'It was unfortunate for the people concerned but not a poisoned chalice.'

Elegant New Zealander Goddard, 66, is descended on her father's side from Renata Kawepo, chief of the Ngati Kahungunu Ki Heretaunga Maori iwi (tribe) in the mid-1800s.

Her forefather's first name translates as Leonard Returns By Night, a quaint fusion of English and Maori. Although only one-sixteenth Maori, it shows in Goddard's tall, athletic frame.

She was made a Dame last year, but talk of the Establishment is batted away. It doesn't exist where she comes from, she maintains.

'New Zealand is a classless society. We aren't concerned who people's great-grandfather was, it's what they do themselves that's important.

'How do I come to grips with the fact that there's a ruling class? Go about my job without fear or favour, that's how I operate.'

She has a natural authority, but a relaxed air, too, as she demonstrated when her phone beeps during the interview.

'It's my husband wanting to know how long I'll be,' she says.

Hopefully, not as long as your inquiry, I joked. 'No, or we'll be sitting here like Miss Havisham covered in cobwebs.'

Goddard's father, New Zealand Air Force pilot Pat, was killed in an air crash when she was three. She was 20 when she fell in love with first husband Johnny Scott in 1969.

Or to give him his full name, Sir Walter John Scott, 5th Baronet, of Beauclerc. As Establishment as they come.

'He's just Johnny,' she says. 'He was travelling with some chums.'

Within months Johnny returned to England – with Lowell as his bride. A whirlwind romance?

'Probably. People didn't have these lengthy engagements that they have now. I get married, other people just live with people and apparently that's not remarkable.

'These days people live with someone for years, get engaged for two years, then eventually get married, I can't see the point of it.

'When I married Johnny, I was still living at home.'

A year later they had a daughter, Rebecca. But the marriage was quickly over.

'By Christmas 1970 I was very homesick. I came home with the baby and didn't go back. It was difficult for both of us.'

Goddard was soon swept off her feet by another Englishman abroad, Tony Cotton, a lecturer at Auckland University, where she was studying.

'He was a gorgeous man,' she recalls. But their love was tragic. 'Tony had done voluntary service in Jordan and got hepatitis, it attacked his heart muscle and got worse.

'I knew he was dying but it mattered to him very much to marry me, so we did and he died a year later, just after my 26th birthday.'

Goddard buried her head in her law studies – and being mum to daughter Becky. She is the first woman with Maori ancestry to become a High Court Judge in New Zealand.

In 1992 she married third husband and fellow lawyer Christopher Hodson. The couple share a passion for horses – something that made child abuse survivors fear she was another member of the Establishment.

'They said, 'This sounds posh.' I told them it's not like that at home – most of our riders come from farms. In New Zealand, rugby, racing and beer are the national pastimes.'

Goddard is no soft touch: as a New Zealand judge she handed out a record 28-year jail sentence to a child killer. 'Judges have to do more than simply take a 'legal' view,' she says. 'Judges are human beings. You have to look at the human misery that has been caused – and we're all shaped by our experiences.'

The experiences that have shaped Goddard include having a 'lovely and sporty' Down's Syndrome brother, aged 64. But she fears the huge amount of internet pornography could encourage sex crimes. 'It can't be healthy. I'm sure psychologists would say the desensitisation gives it an artificial air of normalisation, which is very dangerous.'

Goddard is a common-sense traditionalist with more than a dash of modern liberation. But not so modern or liberated to be interested in 50 Shades Of Grey.

'I haven't read the book and won't be seeing the film,' she grins. 'I gather it's pretty gross.'