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Child Abuse Inquiry Too Big To Succeed, Says Judge Who Quit

Sky News
September 6, 2016

http://news.sky.com/story/child-abuse-inquiry-too-big-to-succeed-says-judge-who-quit-10566980

Dame Lowell Goddard wants to see a complete overhaul of the investigation

Alexis Jay has taken over from Dame Lowell

Baroness Butler-Sloss originally headed the inquiry

Fiona Woolf quit over her links to the establishment

The judge who resigned as head of the inquiry into child sex abuse says it is too unwieldy and needs to be completely overhauled.

Dame Lowell Goddard became the third inquiry chief to resign when she quit last month.

She is pressing Home Secretary Amber Rudd to put more focus on current issues and the protection of children in the future.

At the moment its brief stretches back 60 years and covers institutions including the church, schools, councils and Westminster.

It is expected to run for at least 10 years and cost around £100m.

The Times said it had seen a memorandum from Dame Lowell, in which the New Zealand judge called for the inquiry to be "remodelled".

"With the benefit of hindsight, or more realistically the benefit of experience, it is clear there is an inherent problem in the sheer scale and size of the inquiry (which its budget does not match) and therefore in its manageability," she wrote.

"Its boundless compass, including as it does every state and non-state institution as well as relevant institutional contexts, coupled with the absence of any built-in time parameters, does not fit comfortably or practically within the single inquiry model in which it currently resides."

Dame Lowell also criticised the inquiry's staff for being inexperienced, and when she quit she said there had been a "legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off".

Baroness Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf also resigned from heading the inquiry, which has been described as the most ambitious public inquiry ever in England and Wales.

It was set up in 2014 amid claims of an establishment cover-up following allegations that a paedophile ring operated in Westminster in the 1980s.

After she quit, Dame Lowell was asked to appear before the Home Affairs Select Committee to explain why she had stood down, but it is unclear if she has agreed to appear.

There had been reports she spent three months on holiday or abroad in her first year in the £500,000 job.

Ms Rudd is due to appear before the committee on Wednesday.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The independent inquiry has a vital role to play in exposing the failure of public bodies and other major organisations to prevent systematic child sexual abuse.

"Our commitment to this inquiry is undiminished. We owe it to victims and survivors to confront the appalling reality of how children were let down by the very people who were charged to protect them and to learn from the mistakes of the past."

Baroness Butler-Sloss stood down in July 2014 amid questions over the role of her late brother, Lord Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s.

Dame Fiona Woolf resigned after criticism of her links to the establishment, most notably in relation to former home secretary Leon Brittan.

The inquiry will now be headed by Professor Alexis Jay, a social work specialist who is backed by a panel, victims of sex abuse and other expert advisers.




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