UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News
By Tom Symonds
Home Affairs correspondent
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse formally opened in July – but it won’t begin public hearings until next year. So what is it up to?
Justice Lowell Goddard, the senior New Zealand judge leading it, opened the inquiry with these words: “The task ahead of us is daunting. The sexual abuse of children over successive generations has left permanent scars.”
She wasn’t overestimating the challenge.
Her terms of reference mean she will have to examine the causes and effects of child abuse in all state or non-state institutions, as far back in history as required.
That could take 10 years. No-one really believes the official estimate, that it could take five.
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