Scope of Child Abuse Inquiry "Must Be Reconsidered" after Chair's Resignation
By Peter Walker
The government should reconsider the scope and remit of the huge public inquiry into institutional child abuse in the UK in the wake of the resignation of its third chair in little over two years, victims’ representatives and experts have argued. Dame Lowell Goddard, the New Zealand judge who was appointed in February last year to chair the unprecedented inquiry into decades of child abuse and its cover-up, announced her resignation on Thursday evening, saying the inquiry was beset with a “legacy of failure”. Following a brief resignation letter to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, Goddard released a statement that indicated that the controversies and challenges of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, set up in 2014, were insurmountable.
Rudd said she was sorry to receive Goddard’s letter and accepted her decision but emphasised that the government’s commitment to the inquiry was undiminished. Sue Berelowitz, the former deputy children’s commissioner, called for a review into the inquiry, which was established by Theresa May when she was home secretary. “There should be a review of where it has got to and how it is doing,” Berelowitz said. “It seems to me the inquiry has lost its way. The real importance of learning lessons about institutional failings in the past is to stop children being abused today. “I think there needs to be some reform of the inquiry. I don’t think it was right for it to have been set up as a quasi court for hearing individual cases. In a sense the inquiry has got too specific.” Berelowitz, who as deputy children’s commissioner investigated child sexual exploitation, said she would be willing to undertake the review if asked. Graham Wilmer, who established the Lantern Project, which helps victims of sexual abuse, and was a member of the abuse inquiry panel under its second chair, Dame Fiona Woolf, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the existing structure was “far too complicated”. He said: “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. 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.” Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader who has campaigned on child abuse issues, said Goddard’s departure, following the resignations of the two initial inquiry chairs amid criticism of their establishment links, posed “a very big challenge” for Rudd. “First of all she needs to reassure people that she’s still committed to this inquiry, that it will be far-reaching, it will be properly resourced, and have the powers it needs to get to the truth,” Watson told Today. “I hope she will be able to explain precisely why Lowell Goddard is gone, I think that’s important, but also provide reassurance and a remedy to this very shortly.” Lucy Duckworth, who sits on the inquiry’s victims and survivors’ consultative panel, insisted the process would continue despite Goddard’s departure. “It’s not called the Goddard inquiry; it’s the independent inquiry. There are many staff there that are working extremely hard to lay down the infrastructure, which they have done as a foundation,” she told Today. “We need to make sure that, going forward, survivors that are encouraged to come and share their story with the inquiry are well supported and that is what is taking the time.” Duckworth said she was “frustrated by the situation” but did not want to unduly blame Goddard, who “came over to England from the other side of the world and she worked very hard, she was incredibly professional”. Phil Johnson, who has spent 20 years campaigning for justice for survivors and is acting chair of Macsas (Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors), said his initial reaction to Goddard quitting was “complete shock, and I felt a bit betrayed”. He added: “I’m seriously concerned about the future of the inquiry. Goddard was its third chair. In the public eye, the credibility of the inquiry is in tatters – so much public money is being spent, and it seems to be achieving so little.” “Michael”, who was allegedly repeatedly raped by a Church of England vicar in the 1980s and has accused the church of a cover-up, said: “When I saw the news, I thought: ‘Here we go again’ – this is grind to a halt time.” Survivors like him were left with no confidence in the processes, he added. But David Greenwood, a solicitor who has specialised in child sexual abuse cases for 20 years, said he had confidence in the inquiry. “My first reaction was that [Goddard’s resignation] was a shame – I thought she was committed to the task. But the whole inquiry and its job is bigger than just one person,” he said. “There are dozens of really committed staff members and lawyers working at the inquiry. So I have complete confidence that it will continue and result in really strong evidence-based recommendations at the end of it.” Greenwood rejected “paranoia from some quarters” that the inquiry itself was “some sort of establishment organisation. It really isn’t – its focus is to get to the truth of the whole thing.” Others questioned the home secretary’s assurance that the inquiry would continue with a new chair without delay. Jim Gamble, former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), said: “How can this go on without delay? This should be a chance to pause and reflect on the health of the whole inquiry. To simply push on for the sake of it makes no sense without the independent leadership that this inquiry requires.” Responding to Goddard’s resignation on Thursday, Rudd said she was determined to keep the process on track. Goddard quit 24 hours after being criticised in reports for taking three months’ holiday since being appointed in April 2015. But her statement suggested there were deeper reasons for resigning, which date back to the inquiry’s inception, and its troubled beginnings. Goddard, who was on a remuneration package that included a salary of ?360,000, said: “The conduct of any public inquiry is not an easy task, let alone one of the magnitude of this. “Compounding the many difficulties was its legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off and with hindsight it would have been better to have started completely afresh.” Goddard had recently started sitting on the preliminary hearings into 13 public investigations into non-recent child abuse including within the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, Westminster, Lambeth council and Medomsley detention centre, and allegations against Greville Janner and Cyril Smith. But a year after the inquiry was set up no evidence has been taken, and an unprecedented project known as the Truth project, to catalogue thousands of individual testimonies of abuse, has only just begun. The first chair, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, stood down in July 2014 amid questions over the role played by her late brother, Michael Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s. Her successor, Woolf, resigned following criticism over her “establishment links”, most notably in relation to Leon Brittan, the former home secretary who died in 2015. May, the then home secretary, redrew the inquiry under Goddard in March 2015, responding to demands from victims’ groups that it be placed on a statutory footing, which meant it had the power to compel witnesses to give evidence. Goddard’s departure is a critical blow for those victims who believed that, after decades in which abuse was covered up, they would finally get to the truth of what had taken place. It came after criticism that many victims were being excluded from a key role in the hearings and a report in the Times that said Goddard – whose inquiry has been given a budget of ?17.9m in the first year – had taken three months’ holiday since being appointed in April of last year. The paper said Goddard had worked for 44 days in New Zealand, her home country, and Australia after taking up the role in April last year.
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