UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday
Duped: What campaigners felt when they found abuse inquiry chief had secretly decided to resign – BEFORE emotional meeting
By Martin Beckford and Simon Murphy for The Mail on Sunday
Abuse victims last night angrily accused the Home Office of ‘duping’ them into attending a pointless meeting to discuss the Fiona Woolf controversy – after they found out she had decided to quit as abuse inquiry chairman days earlier.
Survivors, pressure groups and lawyers travelled from all over the country to make their voices heard at the showdown on Friday morning. Some got up before dawn and spent hundreds of pounds on train tickets.
Officials listened to almost all of the 21 people present declare that they would not support the inquiry into historical child abuse while Mrs Woolf remained chairman, because of her friendship with former Home Secretary Leon Brittan – a friendship first revealed by The Mail on Sunday.
But the campaigners later discovered that Mrs Woolf had told the Home Office several days earlier that she had decided to step down.
The three-hour meeting at Millbank Tower in Central London ended at 1.30pm, yet by 3pm corporate lawyer Woolf was recording a TV interview announcing her departure and giving her side of the story, as well as issuing a formal press statement at 5pm.
And she even admitted to the BBC: ‘I made my decision a few days back and warned the Home Office of it.’
Last night those present at the meeting said they were furious when they began to suspect that it had been hastily arranged simply to provide a ‘stage-managed’ way for Mrs Woolf to say she was quitting the inquiry after listening to their views.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.