UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today
Mark Woods CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 22 July 2016
A year after it opened on July 9, 2015, the Goddard inquiry into institutional child sex abuse has spent nearly £18 million on highly-paid lawyers and setting up regional offices, but has still not heard any actual evidence. The inquiry is gradually creeping toward the point where it will, however, and next week there will be preliminary hearings about organisations including the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
This inquiry seems to have been going for ages already.
Not really. But it seems like it because it was first mooted after revelations about the scope of Jimmy Savile’s offending in 2012. It was actually set up in 2014, but two people appointed to chair it, Baroness Butler-Sloss and Dame Fiona Woolf, resigned in succession due to perceived conflicts of interest. Former home secretary and now PM, Theresa May, eventually settled on New Zealander Dame Justice Lowell Goddard.
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