UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Examiner
By Jill Lawless, London
The British government vowed to discover whether public institutions have exposed vulnerable children to sexual abuse — and whether authorities suppressed abuse allegations to protect politicians and other powerful people.
Home Secretary Theresa May said a panel of legal and child-protection experts would investigate how public agencies, including governments and hospitals, handled child abuse allegations. She said she set up the inquiry after “appalling cases of organised and persistent” sexual abuse, including decades of assaults by the late TV host Jimmy Savile.
“Some of these cases have exposed a failure by public bodies to take their responsibilities seriously,” May told the House of Commons.
May said a related investigation, led by National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children chief executive Peter Wanless, would examine whether abuse claims handed to authorities in the 1980s were lost or destroyed to protect wrongdoers.
Last year, an internal government inquiry found that 114 files relating to allegations of child abuse that were handed to officials had been lost or destroyed. …
Abuse claims have sullied the reputations of some of the world’s most venerated institutions: Pope Francis yesterday told victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clerics that the Church should “weep and make reparation” for crimes.
In Britain, local media have alleged that a group of British politicians and others in positions of authority may have used their positions to abuse children in state care during the 1980s. It was not possible to independently evaluate those claims.
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