SCOTLAND
Scotsman
CHRIS MARSHALL
Wednesday 03 June 2015
SURVIVORS of historical child abuse say Scotland’s churches have been “let off the hook” by a national public inquiry set up to investigate the issue.
The inquiry, which is set to get under way later this year, will look at allegations of abuse relating to children in residential care, including independent boarding schools.
But it will not examine allegations where the child was living with its family or an adoptive family, or where the child was attending a “faith-based organisations on a day-to-day basis”.
Survivors are due to meet their legal advisers amid concerns the inquiry will exclude those abused by members of the clergy, but not residing in an institution at the time.
The Scottish Government said the inquiry had to have a “clear remit” if it was to conclude in the four-year time period.
Alan Draper, a spokesman for In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas), said: “We have some major concerns about how the inquiry is going to work in practice. I think they have let the churches off the hook again and that is worrying. What we wanted was any organisation that had a duty of care to be included, and that would have included churches and the Scout organisation. A priest in a parish who abused ten children is not included.”
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