UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Daniel Boffey
Saturday 13 August 2016
Lawyers for nine men said to have been repeatedly sexually abused at school have accused Justice Lowell Goddard of treating their clients with contempt and costing them money by “walking off” from the troubled child abuse inquiry.
The men who attended Stanhope Castle approved school in Co Durham travelled to the high court in London, days before the judge from New Zealand resigned, to offer evidence as to why they should take part in the independent inquiry into child sex abuse.
Even though the men – one of whom has been bed-bound for more than a decade – are vulnerable individuals who claim to have been “seriously and repeatedly sexually abused” as children, they were not offered any resolution on their application for “core participant” status before Goddard quit.
Their lawyer, David Enright of Howe & Co solicitors, has written to Keith Vaz, chair of the Commons home affairs select committee, to complain about the treatment of his clients by the judge, who was on an annual pay package of £500,000. In a letter obtained by this newspaper, Enright says: “My clients were shocked that, subsequently and just days after they had made their renewed application for core participant status to Justice Goddard, she resigned with immediate effect.
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