Child Abuse Judge Lambasts Enquiry

DAME Lowell Goddard, who became the third judge to walk out when she resigned last month, described the inquiry’s size and scale as an 'inherent problem' that needs 'remodelling'. 
She also claimed it is under-funded and suffers from a lack of experienced staff. 
The New Zealand judge urged home secretary Amber Rudd to review the inquiry’s remit, which was set up to probe child abuse allegations in institutions, such as Westminster, the church, councils and schools, over the past 60 years. 
In a memo to the home affairs select committee, which was seen by The Times, she wrote:
'With the benefit of hindsight, or more realistically the benefit of experience, it is clear there is an inherent problem in the sheer scale and size of the inquiry (which its budget does not match) and therefore in its manageability.' 
The new head is Professor Alexis Jay, a social work specialist. 
She added:  'My departure provides a timely opportunity to undertake a complete review of the inquiry in its present form, with a view to remodelling it and recalibrating its emphasis more towards current events and thus focussing major attention on the present and future protection of children.'
Dame Lowell, 67, stepped down on August 5 after it was reported that she had spent three months of her first year in the job either on holiday or overseas, primarily in New Zealand, her home country. 
She had been appointed with an salary and benefits package totalling £500,000 after Mrs May’s two previous choices for the post also resigned. 
The new head is Professor Alexis Jay, a social work specialist who is backed by a panel, victims of sex abuse and other expert advisers. 
The inquiry, set up in March last year, has already amassed millions of pages of documents but has yet to take evidence from witnesses.

Dame Lowell Goddard & Child Abuse

LAST night's resignation of Dame Lowell Goddard the chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, has sent shock waves through the media and horrified the child support agencies.  A few minutes ago it was revealed that the chair of the Commons home affairs committee, Keith Vaz  had written to the New Zealand judge, who announced her resignation on Thursday night, to ask whether she would appear before the committee when parliament returns 'to help us in determining what is going to happen in the future'.
The Guardian website has reported that the chair of the Commons home affairs committee, Mr Vaz, has asked Dame Lowell Goddard to appear before MPs to explain her sudden resignation as chair of the public inquiry into institutional child abuse, the third person to quit the role in little over two years.
The Labour MP told Sky News: “She is someone with impeccable credentials, so this is a big shock that she chooses to resign now. I think what’s really important is that we find out the reasons why she has decided to take this course of action.”
Mr. Vaz said he wanted to know more about the reasons behind the departure of Goddard, whose resignation statement said the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, set up in 2014, was beset with a 'legacy of failure'.
Keith Vaz said he had written to the New Zealand judge, who announced her resignation on Thursday night, to ask whether she would appear before the committee when parliament returns 'to help us in determining what is going to happen in the future'.
The Labour MP told Sky News: “She is someone with impeccable credentials, so this is a big shock that she chooses to resign now. I think what’s really important is that we find out the reasons why she has decided to take this course of action.”
Vaz said he wanted to know more about the reasons behind the departure of Goddard, whose resignation statement said the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, set up in 2014, was beset with a “legacy of failure”.

Northern Voices, which took a leading role in the revelations surrounding Cyril Smith in Rochdale, has long thought that this Enquiry into Child Abuse had bitten off more than it could chew.  But politicians such as Simon Danczuk, the disgraced MP for Rochdale, and Tom Watson MP, insisted that this matter could only be approached by a vast overarching public enquiry such as that of Justice Goddard. 

Now child abuse pundits are questioning the remit of the enquiry.                  

Sue Berelowitz, the former deputy children’s commissioner, has called for a review into the inquiry, which was established by Theresa May when she was home secretary.  She told The Guardian:

'There should be a review of where it has got to and how it is doing,” Berelowitz said.  'It seems to me the inquiry has lost its way. The real importance of learning lessons about institutional failings in the past is to stop children being abused today.

'I think there needs to be some reform of the inquiry. I don’t think it was right for it to have been set up as a quasi court for hearing individual cases. In a sense the inquiry has got too specific.'

Meanwhile, Graham Wilmer, who established the Lantern Project, which helps victims of sexual abuse, and was a member of the abuse inquiry panel under its second chair, Woolf, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the existing structure was 'far too complicated'.

He said: 'There are just too many people involved trying to cause difficulties for this inquiry, and I think the best solution now would be not to have a chair but to appoint one of the very capable existing panel members. The infrastructure is superb. It’s a massive inquiry but it has got some massive resources. They just need to be allowed to get on with it.'

Vaz added: “Because although we’ve had ministers and parliament and others involved, she of course has been intimately concerned with establishing this very difficult inquiry, so what she has to say is extremely pertinent, and I don’t really think a resignation letter or a statement is enough.”
Following a brief resignation letter to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, Goddard released a statement that indicated that the controversies and challenges of the inquiry were insurmountable.
Without fully explaining her reasons, Goddard said it had been “incredibly difficult” to take on the job, and leave behind her family in New Zealand. Earlier this week it was reported that the judge had taken three months’ holiday since being appointed in April last year.

Others, like Lucy Duckworth, who sits on the inquiry’s victims and survivors’ consultative panel, are determined to soldier on, insisting the process would continue despite Goddard’s departure.

Readers shouldn't hold their breath for any relevant findings anytime soon.

Harvey Proctor: Goddard Inquiry & 'Long Grass'

by Les May

LAST August, Harvey Proctor courageously sacrificed his anonymity in order to expose what he evidently considered an abuse of process in the way that accusations of child abuse and being a party to murder had been investigated.  Yesterday he took the fight literally to Scotland Yard's door by holding a second press conference about the affair just a few metres away at St Ermin’s Hotel, Westminster.  

But the most interesting thing he had to say was not about the accusations or the police investigation, but about the public inquiry into historical child abuse and a separate judge-led probe into how Scotland Yard dealt with claims against public figures.

He said, 'The outcome of these two fake inquiries will be a whitewash and a cover-up and a deliberate exercise in kicking the issue into the long grass until the architects of the scandal have moved on to collect their pensions.'
The 'overarching' Goddard inquiry will probably be taking evidence for the next five years according to the most optimistic predictions and up to ten years if we believe the most pessimistic.   It has been suggested that to digest the material collected and to write the final report will take a further three years.  
If these predictions are reasonably accurate the results of an inquiry announced in 2014 will become available in 2023 or even as late as 2028.  That is very 'long grass' indeed.
The Garnham inquiry was established by Rochdale council in 2014 to look at the allegations against Cyril Smith relating to Cambridge House which date from the 1960s, and were exclusively revealed in the Rochdale Alternative Paper in 1979 (RAP), and the allegations of abuse at Knowl View special school which were first publicly aired in 1995.  Both were 'rediscovered' by Simon Danczuk sometime after 2012 and presented in a garbled form in his book 'Smile for the Camera'.  The report of the inquiry was due to be available by the end of July 2014.
But recently the Garnham inquiry was abandoned and seemingly subsumed into the Goodard inquiry which on the most optimistic assumptions will nor report until 2023.  Which will be some sixty years after Cyril Smith's activities at Cambridge House and by which time the men on the receiving end of his attentions will be approaching eighty.
It won't be quite so long in the case of Knowl View; just about thirty five years.  But there is a 'sting in the tail' in the story of Knowl View.  When this story was aired in 1995 there were claims of a 'cover up' by Rochdale council.  Such a 'cover up' could only have taken place between 1991 when Aids worker Phil Shepherd reported on the high levels of sexual activity between the boys, and 1994 when the school closed.  The two council leaders during this time were Richard Farnell and Paul Rowan.
'Smile for the Camera' has ten pages devoted to Knowl View.  And Cyril Smith's name is very prominent on seven of them.  There is certainly little emphasis on the claims of a 'cover up'.  Are we being carefully steered away from the very idea of a 'cover up'?
As I am more inclined to think in terms of 'cock up' not 'cover up' such thoughts had never occurred to me until idly flicking through the acknowledgements in Danczuk's book a couple of days ago I came across the name of the same Richard Farnell who was being thanked for allowing himself to be interviewed.  Presumably the question of a 'cover up' about the goings on at Knowl View was never raised.

Coun. Farnell: 'No interference from politicians'

ON ROCHDALE online on the 8th, June 2014, it was reported that an 'independent inquiry (under Neil Garnham QC) into the role of Rochdale Council is due to report at the end of July.'

That was the inquiry that last week Rochdale Council has just binned or otherwise disposed of by merging into the overarching Goddard inquiry, that Lord Justice Wolf in yesterday's Sunday Mail said has become so unwieldy that he feared it may  undermine the British justice system:  the Goddard inquiry is expected to take five years in its perambulations and then more time before it is published.

When the local independent inquiry of Neil Garnham QC  was set up in 2014, the Rochdale Council leader, Richard Farnell, stoutly declared:   

'Until such time as the Review is finalised I am legally advised that, as Leader of the Council, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further [and that] the review is very important to the Council and Rochdale and the Inquiry should be allowed to get on with its job without interference from politicians'

It was noticeable that Council Farnell last week left it to his deputy to announce that this local review by Neil Garnham had been now sidelined and swallowed up by the seemingly eternal Goddard inquiry.

Did Danczuk Get It Wrong Then?

No Sex Abuse Claims Against Cyril Smith at Knowl View!

Les May

TUCKED away in a report about the Goddard Inquiry in last Saturday's Rochdale Observer are a few lines which tell us that in the late 1990s when Cyril Smith was still alive, and could have been prosecuted, police investigated his involvement with Knowl View and that no allegations of sexual abuse were made against him during the investigation.  

This suggests that the claims about Smith's activities at Knowl View special school which figure prominently in Simon Danczuk's book 'Smile for the Camera' have no basis in fact.

Quite what new facts about Smith's activities in the early 1960s at Cambridge House hostel for young men remain to be uncovered I cannot imagine.  These were thoroughly exposed in May 1979 by Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) and Simon Danczuk uncovered nothing new.  

The claim in the same article by lawyer Richard Scorer that there was a failure to investigate and prosecute allegations against Smith needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, at least in the case of Cambridge House.  Scorer goes on to say, 'Our clients, as victims of Smith, want to know why that happened and who was responsible for it.'

With respect to Cambridge House this is poppycock and reads like a lawyer justifying his fees.

As I pointed out in my article below:  a statement from the CPS dated 27 November 2012 gives a very full account of why Smith was not prosecuted in 1970 and subsequently.  An explanation of the importance in 1970 of 'corroboration' is given by the website 'Law and Lawyers' in November 2012.  So what's the mystery?

We may deplore the fact that Smith was not prosecuted in 1970 but we need to recognise that the law is not a perfect instrument.  It evolves with time.  If it didn't we would still be calling men 'queers' and prosecuting them for their sexual preferences.  


http://blog.cps.gov.uk/2012/11/cps-statement-in-relation-to-cyril-smith.html
http://obiterj.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/sir-cyril-smith-corroboration-of.html#more