UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Nick Cohen
There are two dangerous ways of looking at the attempts of Britain to come to terms with its buried history of child sex abuse: the conspiratorial and the despairing. They are not as far apart as they seem.
I can see why the victims of child abuse – of “child rape” as it is better called – are on edge. In their place I’d be losing my bearings too. Theresa May says that her inquiry into child abuse cases from 1970 on was “a once in a lifetime opportunity” to examine the scandals in Westminster, the BBC, children’s homes, churches and the NHS. If it is the last best chance to confront the past, Ms May has a funny way of taking it.
Astute readers may already be asking: why only examine abuse cases from after 1970? It might be worth knowing that 1970 was the year the Home Office transferred control of its children’s homes to the Department of Health. Whatever the inquiry finds, it cannot embarrass May’s department. No
To the disillusioned mind, her choice of investigators to sit on the independent panel inquiry into child sex abuse is as suspicious. May appointed Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to chair it. She was a distinguished lord justice of appeal. Unfortunately, she was also the sister of Michael Havers, a Conservative attorney general in the 1980s, when victims allege the legal system was burying scandals.
Her successor, Fiona Woolf, is an equally distinguished lawyer. Unfortunately again, the British establishment is a small world, and Ms Woolf was a friend and neighbour of Leon Brittan, home secretary when the Home Office received and lost a dossier on allegedly high-profile abusers raping children.
With both women gone, the proposed inquiry now has no one to chair it. As my colleague Daniel Boffey reports today, victims remain wary about two of the remaining panel members who will advise, when and if May can find a chair who will last more than five minutes.
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