UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail
By Rebecca Camber and Emily Kent Smith for the Daily Mail
An investigation into sexual assault claims against the top lawyer at the Government’s child abuse inquiry was dismissed as a ‘whitewash’ yesterday after key evidence was kept secret.
The review was ordered last year after Ben Emmerson QC was accused in a BBC Newsnight programme of groping a member of staff at the headquarters of Britain’s biggest public inquiry.
Mr Emmerson, who quit the inquiry last September, was cleared of wrongdoing three months later following a secret probe commissioned by Matrix Chambers, the law firm he co-founded.
Stung by criticism of a cover-up, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse then launched its own review, hiring Mark Sutton QC to look at ‘the events surrounding the resignation’ of Mr Emmerson from the £100million probe.
Yesterday – after a seven-month investigation thought to have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds – Mr Sutton announced that he couldn’t say if the allegations against the top human rights barrister were true or false.
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