UNITED KINGDOM
ITV
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Waleshas begun its first hearing, two and a half years after it first began.
The inquiry has been dogged by controversy since being set up in 2014 and is now on its fourth chairwoman and has cost £23.6 million to date.
The IICSA was set up after the death of Jimmy Savile in 2011 when hundreds of people came forward to say he had abused them as children.
The spotlight then fell on sexual assaults carried out in schools, children’s homes and at NHS sites, as well as on claims of past failures by police and prosecutors to properly investigate allegations.
The first hearing will begin with the child migration programme, which were large-scale schemes in which 130,000 children from poor families or in the care system were sent to parts of the British Empire between 1920 and 1974, by religious institutions and charities with the aim of giving them better lives.
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