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Inquiries should rebuild faith in our institutions, not conveniently kick problems into the long grass
By Juliet Samuel
How far back does accountability stretch? The Bible tells us the sins of the fathers can be visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. What if the father isn’t a man, though, but an institution? What if the institutional staff involved in a crime are now dead? The biblical answer being rather frowned upon nowadays, we have developed a new catch-all answer: set up an inquiry. In the last two weeks, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has been holding the first of many hearings to demand answers from institutions suspected of facilitating abuse. Victims involved in the current investigation gave their testimony in February and now, it is the institutions’ turn. The current investigation – the only one to hold any hearings so far – looks at the child migration programme, a government-sponsored, charitably-run scheme that sent 130,000 British children to far-off Commonwealth countries to live at boarding schools or with adoptive families. In its day, it was supported by royalty and feted for spreading British influence and helping wayward or orphaned youth.
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