UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
@owenbowcott
Wednesday 4 February 2015
Justice Lowell Goddard, the newly appointed chair of the inquiry into child sexual abuse, is a New Zealand high court judge who has served on United Nations committees.
The first woman from a Maori background to sit in her country’s high court, Goddard, 66, has experience working with victims of sexual assault; as a barrister she helped establish support programmes for survivors of abuse.
Goddard has also been chair of New Zealand’s Independent Police Conduct Authority and has sat on the UN subcommittee on the prevention of torture.
A law graduate from the University of Auckland, she began practising as a barrister in 1977 and was appointed Queen’s counsel in 1988. In 1992 she was appointed deputy solicitorgeneral for New Zealand. Goddard was appointed to the high court bench in December 1995.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.