UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
The retired judge – whose appointment as the head of a major review of child sex abuse allegations is under fire – said warnings could not be issued about dangerous paedophiles
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent 13 Jul 2014
Baroness Butler-Sloss, the retired judge appointed to investigate claims of an establishment child sex abuse cover-up, was responsible for a controversial ruling which prevented warnings being issued about dangerous paedophiles.
Senior social workers attacked her decision – made when she was an Appeal Court judge – and warned that it would have “major ramifications”.
As the Government faced growing pressure to review its decision to appoint Lady Butler-Sloss to the major new inquiry, one child protection expert said the peer’s involvement in the ruling had the unintended consequence of allowing paedophiles to get away with their crimes.
Lady Butler-Sloss was appointed by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, last Tuesday to lead an overarching review of allegations of child sex abuse by prominent politicians and other figures in institutions such as the Church and the BBC.
But critics have claimed the judge cannot be impartial because her late brother, a former Attorney General, played a key role in the affair in the early 1980s, and it has also been claimed she kept allegations about an Anglican bishop out of a report she wrote three years ago into a paedophile scandal in the Diocese of Chichester.
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