UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail
By REBECCA CAMBER and STEPHEN WRIGHT FOR THE DAILY MAIL
The crisis-hit probe into child abuse was dealt yet another blow last night as victims called for its fourth chairman to be sacked.
Professor Alexis Jay has lost the ‘respect, confidence and trust of survivors’ and her ‘shambolic’ inquiry should be suspended, victims told Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
The dramatic twist came before a review due to be published today by Professor Jay to scale back the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, as it threatens to run on for a decade and cost tens of millions of pounds.
Victims now want Miss Rudd to appoint a High Court judge to carry out a judicial review of the ‘shambolic management of the inquiry’.
Professor Jay, who has no legal experience, also faces claims of a ‘potential conflict of interest’ over her past as a social worker in Scotland, which critics say may taint her views about those abused while in the care of council staff.
The developments raise new questions about Theresa May’s judgement in hastily appointing the inquiry’s fourth chairman in two years, after Dame Justice Lowell Goddard quit in August.
Last night Imran Khan, a solicitor who represents 47 victims, wrote to Miss Rudd saying: ‘Professor Jay is not legally qualified; has no record in cross-examination or questioning of witnesses in a forum such as this; and has no experience of legal decision- making.
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