UNITED KINGDOM
The Northern Echo
by Mark Tallentire
THE North-East’s most senior churchman has criticised delays to the Government’s historic child abuse inquiry.
The Bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Paul Butler, predicted the high-profile investigation would not get under way until late November at the earliest and said this was “undoubtedly an unfortunate delay”.
The bishop, who chairs the Church of England’s committee on abuse, cited the “very heavy duties” of the inquiry chair, Fiona Woolf, in her role as Lord Mayor of London.
Mrs Woolf, a 66-year-old commercial lawyer, was appointed after retired judge Baroness Butler-Sloss stepped aside because her brother had handled child abuse cases involving high-profile figures when he was Attorney General in the 1980s.
Addressing an international conference on Church safeguarding in London, Bishop Butler said: “Fiona Woolf, we now know, is to chair the national inquiry.
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