UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
Robert Mendick, chief reporter
16 DECEMBER 2016
Child sex abuse victims have condemned as “insulting” the decision to consult paedophiles as part of the Government’s £100 million national inquiry.
Professor Alexis Jay, the inquiry’s chairman, yesterday unveiled her long-awaited review following a series of crises that have dogged the abuse investigation, admitting its progress had been “too slow”.
But campaigners have accused Prof Jay of watering down victims’ public evidence sessions while adding an extra research project that will conduct interviews with convicted paedophiles.
The review states: “In addition we will carry out qualitative research with convicted sexual offenders to understand how child sexual exploitation networks are formed and sustained.”
But victims’s groups said it was outrageous that paedophiles would be ‘consulted’ by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and said it was evidence that Prof Jay, an eminent social worker, was attempting to ‘theorise’ crimes committed over decades by predatory abusers.
Raymond Stevenson, founder of the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, who was the victim of abuse in a children’s home in south London, said: “This is pathetic. You will not learn anything from speaking to paedophiles. They just lie anyway. It is a waste of public money.”
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