Victims demand changes to new child sex abuse inquiry, by David Barrett, Telegraph (April 8, 2015)

Victims demand changes to new child sex abuse inquiry

By David Barrett
Telegraph
April 8, 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/child-protection/11522013/Victims-demand-changes-to-new-child-sex-abuse-inquiry.html

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has received a letter from survivors of child sex abuse which complains about the set-up of the new inquiry

Justice Lowell Goddard

The Government’s child sex abuse inquiry is facing further turmoil after survivors and campaigners condemned the new set-up as “discriminatory”.

In a letter delivered to the Home Office more than 500 signatories voiced their strong objections to a decision by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to exclude survivors from the inquiry panel.

Mrs May went back to the drawing board last month after a series of false starts and set up a new four-strong panel to hear the inquiry alongside Justice Lowell Goddard, a senior New Zealand judge.

Unlike the first panel, it did not include any adult victims of sexual abuse and a separate victims and survivors consultative panel is due to be created to advise the main inquiry.

In the new letter, child protection campaigners said it was a “dangerous step backwards” which needed “rectifying”.

“Many adult victims of rape will also be impacted by this discriminatory measure,” said the letter.

“It appears to say to disclosed survivors that they are not good enough, that they are not competent enough and too damaged to take part in any assessment of what has happened.”

It went on: “If the inquiry panel cannot be trusted by those who have been abused then its findings will never be accepted.

“If the inquiry panel does not include survivors every other measure such as the proposed victims and survivors consultative panel and the online blog will not only appear to be tokenistic but will be tokenistic.”

It was signed by a number of abuse survivors and professionals in child protection including Jim Gamble, the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the police body which tackles online child sex abuse.

The letter went on: “If this inquiry is to go ahead ‎as currently proposed, the elimination of disclosed abuse survivors from full membership of the panel on the grounds of lack of ‘objectivity’ is a dangerous step backwards and needs rectifying.”

It proposed giving the victims panel the power to elect two new members to join the main inquiry panel “to represent the views of survivors”.

The inquiry will examine claims that children suffered organised sexual abuse by groups which centred on Westminster and other British institutions incluing the BBC and the Church.

The first two people selected to be the abuse inquiry's chairman - Baroness Butler-Sloss, a former senior judge, and Dame Fiona Woolf, a prominent City lawyer – had to step down following accusations that they were too close to the establishment to be independent.

It emerged last month that Scotland Yard is being investigated over claims that it covered up child sex abuse because of the involvement of influential MPs and police officers.