NEW ZEALAND
Otago Daily Times

Editorial

What a shambles. The supposedly august and sweeping Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales appears increasingly tenuous after the departure of its third chairwoman in two years.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced last week that New Zealand judge Dame Lowell Goddard had resigned from the inquiry, which was established in 2014 in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal and tasked with investigating how state and other institutions handled their duty of care to protect children.

Dame Lowell had been in the job for 18 months. The announcement appeared to have come out of the blue and no explanation was given. Dame Lowell later made a public statement in which she commented about the inquiry’s “legacy of failure” which had been “hard to shake off”. It appeared very much as if she was simultaneously admitting defeat…