UNITED KINGDOM
Spiked
LUKE GITTOS
LAW EDITOR
This huge inquiry into child abuse has nothing to do with truth.
Last week, more details were announced about the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (aka the Goddard Inquiry). Justice Lowell Goddard, a member of the judiciary of New Zealand who was appointed chair of the inquiry in 2014, announced what the ‘first 12 investigations’ of the inquiry would focus on.
These initial investigations will cover, among other things, the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches and the local councils of Nottinghamshire, Rochdale and Lambeth. Goddard indicated that these investigations represented the ‘first phase’ of the inquiry’s work and were ‘by no means the total of the work we intend to conduct’. In fact, Goddard has indicated in the past that the remit of the inquiry will include both public and private institutions throughout the UK, with some investigations looking back over ‘many decades’. While Goddard herself gave assurances that the inquiry would conclude within five years, many think this is unrealistic — they estimate that it could take as long as 10 years.
The Goddard Inquiry was announced by home secretary Theresa May in 2014, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. It aims to expose institutions’ past failures and make recommendations for how to improve child-protection mechanisms in the present. Of course, Goddard is going to have to work hard to surpass the litany of child-protection measures that have been introduced in recent decades. CRB (now DBS) checks and a vast array of powers enabling the criminal courts to disbar people from working with children are just some features of the contemporary framework of anti-abuse law.
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