UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Nick Hopkins
The allegations of racism levelled at Lowell Goddard – which she has denied – represent the latest dispiriting episode in the soap opera known as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
The investigation has certainly, and in some instances rightly, become a piñata for critics who say it is too big, too unwieldy and too shambolic. As it has lost three chairs, its senior legal team and any dignity it once had, they have a point.
Not easy, then, for the new chair, Prof Alexis Jay, who is expected to address some of these issues when she gives evidence to the home affairs select committee next week; sources suggest she is likely to accept she cannot oversee all 13 elements of the inquiry, instead appointing heads for each one and retaining an overarching role.
That will not be enough to stop the snipers who want the inquiry abandoned, and it may infuriate some survivors’ groups, who risk being stripped of “core participant” status as part of Jay’s rationalisation. So expect more argument – the inquiry will remain a mess for the time being.
But it is important to disentangle the myriad problems of process from the clear higher goal – to investigate the extent and causes of child abuse in Britain, however difficult and uncomfortable that might prove.
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