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Child Abuse Victims Deserve an Efficient Inquiry, Not One That Just Ploughs on

By Juliet Samuel
Telegraph
August 5, 2016

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05/child-abuse-victims-deserve-an-efficient-inquiry-not-one-that-ju/

It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The Government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, established two years ago, has now lost its third chair. Dame Lowell Goddard, the well-intentioned but unsuitable New Zealander who most recently led the inquiry, has accepted the inevitable and bowed out, a few days after a news story stated that she had spent two months of her first year in the job on holiday or abroad.

The new home secretary Amber Rudd has quickly jumped on the political hand grenade by declaring that that the investigation will continue “without delay”. The investigation should certainly continue, but Ms Rudd is wrong to suggest that it plough on without pause. She should pause and consider whether the inquiry has been set up correctly and whether its flaws can be remedied.

Ms Rudd has both good reasons and bad for ploughing on. The good: survivors and witnesses need to know the inquiry isn’t suddenly going to be abandoned and that they should continue preparing for further preliminary and public hearings. And in order to maintain some confidence in proceedings, the Government needs to sound like it’s in control (if that’s possible).

The bad: Ms Rudd is trying to save face for her new political master, Theresa May, who kicked off the inquiry and is responsible for one of its biggest problems. The inquiry itself was convened after a string of revelations over years showing that child sexual abuse was terrifyingly prevalent in certain corners of British society. It seemed sensible for a judge to lead an inquiry into the country’s institutions to try and understand their failings in this regard, whether they could be reformed and what lessons can be learned to stop these awful crimes recurring.

 

 

 

 

 




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