Abuse Inquiry Soap Opera Is a Diversion from What Survivors Deserve

By Nick Hopkins
The Guardian
October 14, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/14/abuse-inquiry-soap-opera-is-a-diversion-from-what-survivors-deserve

Inquiry chair Professor Alexis Jay will give evidence to an MPs’ committee next week. Photograph: Dave Higgens/PA

The allegations of racism levelled at Lowell Goddard – which she has denied – represent the latest dispiriting episode in the soap opera known as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

The investigation has certainly, and in some instances rightly, become a pinata for critics who say it is too big, too unwieldy and too shambolic. As it has lost three chairs, its senior legal team and any dignity it once had, they have a point.

Not easy, then, for the new chair, Prof Alexis Jay, who is expected to address some of these issues when she gives evidence to the home affairs select committee next week; sources suggest she is likely to accept she cannot oversee all 13 elements of the inquiry, instead appointing heads for each one and retaining an overarching role.

That will not be enough to stop the snipers who want the inquiry abandoned, and it may infuriate some survivors’ groups, who risk being stripped of “core participant” status as part of Jay’s rationalisation. So expect more argument – the inquiry will remain a mess for the time being.

But it is important to disentangle the myriad problems of process from the clear higher goal – to investigate the extent and causes of child abuse in Britain, however difficult and uncomfortable that might prove.

Two years ago, a Tory MP explained why the inquiry was needed. She had heard appalling allegations of abuse over many years, across the country. The MP knew more than most. “Where there has been a failure to protect children from abuse, we will expose it and we will learn from it ... we will adopt a presumption of maximum transparency.”

So said Theresa May when she was home secretary as she agreed with the 150 MPs across the Commons who had urged her to set up an independent inquiry. At the time, the media was obsessing about VIP paedophiles – celebrities and politicians.

Some of those cases uncovered abuse, others exposed fantastic, and probably untrue accounts. The claims of a man known as “Nick” about Dolphin Square have proved the most contentious.

But as the arguments within the establishment over abuse by the establishment rumbled on, something more significant was happening away from Westminster.

In places such as Nottingham, Rochdale and Lambeth, south London, men and women who grew up in care had started to come forward to tell survivors’ groups – and in some instances the police – about the abuse they say they suffered.

In Lambeth, for instance, an organisation set up two years ago, the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, now has almost 700 members. Having met some of them, and heard their stories, I know they need to be taken seriously.

Certainly, there now seems to be no official dispute that the Shirley Oaks children’s home where they grew up was a sanctuary for paedophiles over a 30-year period. Some of these abusers have been convicted.

But this raises numerous questions – and not just for Lambeth.

How could this abuse have gone on so long, and relatively undetected? Was the way social services were run during the 1970s and 1980s somehow a contributory factor? Did the police investigate allegations properly – or were claims too readily dismissed? These are all legitimate questions – with not a conspiracy theory in sight.

This inquiry remains the first attempt to join the dots, to see whether there are patterns that could have been seen, practices that should have been avoided, and people who should have been identified.

It is a massive undertaking, mainly because it has taken so long to acknowledge that Britain might have a massive, ugly problem that it has managed to sidestep for decades.

The row over Goddard’s alleged remarks are another embarrassment for an inquiry that is getting used to wiping egg from its face.

But Goddard has gone and, to many survivors, this is just part of a Westminster conversation that has little to do with what they want: a forum in which to be heard and taken seriously, an opportunity to understand why they were let down, and a chance to prevent others from ever having to endure what they went through.