UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Patrick Wintour, political editor
Wednesday 31 December 2014
Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the appeal court judge forced to stand down as chair of the government child abuse inquiry, has said she fears the government will never be able to find an experienced figure to run the investigation, but that victims should not think they can do it.
Butler-Sloss was forced to stand down as the chair of the broad inquiry into child abuse in July because her late brother Sir Michael Havers had been attorney general in the 1980s and his actions would have been subject to investigation by the inquiry.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday she said she was adamant that the establishment had covered up its role in child abuse. “I do believe the establishment has in the past looked after itself, partly because people did not really recognise the seriousness of child abuse and they did not think it was so important, and it was important to protect members of the establishment.
“So I would want to go in with a knife and cut the whole thing open and expose it, bearing in mind of course that the views of those people are different to people today. That is a difficulty, but I don’t believe I was unsuitable to do it because as a judge with 35 years’ experience on the bench I was quite able to be independent and say that people got it wrong and be critical of them.”
She said that would be true even if some of the people she had to criticise were close to her. “That is the way I was trained,” she insisted, but added, “I absolutely understand the public do not believe it.”
buse cases – for them to be deciding who should be the person chairing it creates real problems.”
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