Abuse Victims" Groups to Be Consulted before New Inquiry Chair Appointed

By Peter Walker, Harriet Sherwood and Sandra Laville
The Guardian
August 5, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/05/child-abuse-inquiry-lowell-goddard-mps

Lowell Goddard announced her decision to resign from the child abuse inquiry on Thursday night. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The government has said it will consult victims’ groups before appointing a new chair of the public inquiry into child abuse, as MPs sought answers from Dame Lowell Goddard as to why she suddenly quit the job after little more than a year.

Goddard, a New Zealand judge who stepped down without warning on Thursday night, was the third chair to depart in the chaotic two years of the inquiry, which aims to examine decades of allegations of institutionalised child abuse.

With some of the groups participating in the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse calling for it to be revamped for a second time, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has promised to find a replacement for Goddard as soon as possible. She did not, however, set out a timetable.

In an attempt to prevent another misguided appointment, the recruitment process will see Rudd consult the two panels associated with the inquiry, a group of four experts and seven people who represent survivors and victims of child abuse.

Goddard’s whereabouts are currently unknown. A spokeswoman for the inquiry said she was in the UK on Thursday, but it was not known if she had since returned to New Zealand.

In a statement, Goddard said it had been “incredibly difficult” to leave her family in New Zealand, but also indicated that the sheer scale of the task had proved too daunting. The inquiry had a “legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off”, she said, arguing that in retrospect the entire process should have started again when she took on the role.

Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who chairs the home affairs select committee, said he had written to Goddard asking her to appear after the parliamentary recess to explain her actions, and how she thought the process could go on.

“I think what’s really important is that we find out the reasons why she has decided to take this course of action,” Vaz told Sky News. “What she has to say is extremely pertinent and I don’t really think a resignation letter or a statement is enough.”

Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader who pushed for the inquiry to be established, called on Rudd to explain Goddard’s departure fully, and to “provide reassurance and a remedy to this very shortly”.

Goddard’s resignation came hours after it was reported that the 67-year-old judge, who had a salary of ?360,000, had spent more than 70 days working abroad or on holiday since officially opening the revamped inquiry in July last year.

A Home Office spokesman said the department was still working on Goddard’s terms of departure, including whether she would receive any payoff.

It is the latest in a string of high-profile departures for the inquiry, set up by Theresa May as home secretary in July 2014. In less than four months, the first two chairs - Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf - had both quit amid questions over their links to establishment figures associated with the inquiry’s work.

Goddard was selected in 2015 to head a refashioned statutory inquiry, with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence. At the end of the year, however, Hugh Davis QC, deputy counsel to the inquiry, also resigned.

Some participants in the inquiry greeted the news of Goddard’s departure with dismay. Andrew Lavery from White Flowers Alba, a group representing Scottish victims of abuse, said he and others had only learned the news from the media.

“I’m still ringing round very distressed individuals, telling them that Goddard has gone,” he said. Lavery said he had requested a meeting with Rudd to seek assurances about the continuation of the inquiry. “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing we have,” he said. “If we don’t have this there’s nothing.”

Lucy Duckworth, who sits on the inquiry’s victims and survivors’ consultative panel and as such will help select the new chair, insisted the process would continue.

“It’s not called the Goddard inquiry, it’s the independent inquiry,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There are many staff there that are working extremely hard to lay down the infrastructure, which they have done as a foundation.”

A spokeswoman for the inquiry said that even without a chair work would carry on as usual, led in the interim by the expert panel. Two members - Alexis Jay, who led an inquiry into child abuse in Rotherham, south Yorkshire, and Drusilla Sharpling, a barrister and child protection expert - have been mentioned as potential new chairs.

The Home Office meanwhile, has sought to play down the worries. Rudd “has been clear that the work will continue without delay and that the government’s commitment to the inquiry is undiminished,” a spokesman said. “The inquiry will continue to challenge institutions and individuals without fear or favour, and get to the truth.”

Some experts wonder whether the inquiry’s focus should be redrawn. Sue Berelowitz, the former deputy children’s commissioner, called for a review. “I don’t think it was right for it to have been set up as a quasi court for hearing individual cases,” she said. “In a sense the inquiry has got too specific.”

Graham Wilmer, who established the Lantern Project, which helps victims of sexual abuse and was a member of the abuse inquiry panel under Woolf, told Today that the existing structure was far too complicated.

“There are just too many people involved trying to cause difficulties for this inquiry, and I think the best solution now would be not to have a chair but to appoint one of the very capable existing panel members,” he said. “The infrastructure is superb. It’s a massive inquiry but it has got some massive resources. They just need to be allowed to get on with it.”