UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Sandra Laville
Wednesday 1 March 2017
Lawyers have called for more transparency from the national child abuse inquiry over the naming of the perpetrators after their identities were withheld from the public hearings.
Aswini Weereratne QC, who represents the Child Migrant Trust, said she was unhappy about the ciphering of the names of abusers at the public hearing particularly as many of them are now dead.
“I want to put it on the record,” she said. “Really it is about the naming of abusers. It is really an issue of open justice that they should be heard.” Weereratne was speaking on the second day of the inquiry’s first public hearings. She indicated she may challenge the whole basis on which the redaction of abusers’ names was being applied.
She told the hearing that the trust was trying to help by providing information to the inquiry about which perpetrators might be dead. “We consider it a matter of the principle of open justice that there should be as much openness about the naming of the perpetrators,” she said.
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