The new chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has pledged to neither reduce nor restrict its scope, adding that she expects “significant progress” to be made by the end of 2020.
Professor Alexis Jay, the fourth chairwoman to have led the IICSA, said in a statement on Monday that she intended to speed up the inquiry, but promised that this would not come at the expense of its 13 investigations. “I treat with some scepticism calls for us to forget the past,” she said. “Only by understanding the lessons we can learn from that and the possible failings and cover-ups that might have taken place in certain institutions will we go forward with confidence.”
The inquiry, which is investigating abuse in the Catholic Church through two case studies, the English Benedictine Congregation and the Archdiocese of Birmingham, will no longer hold public hearings into every institution. “I believe that the concerns that our Terms of Reference cannot be delivered are founded on an assumption that we must seek to replicate a traditional public inquiry in respect of each of the thousands of institutions that fall within our remit,” Professor Jay said. “We will do so for some, but we would never finish if we did it for all.”
Peter Saunders, a member of the Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel and former chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said he had complete faith in Professor Jay. “She’s continuing to review the ways of working which I think is entirely appropriate,” he said. “Everything is going to be speeded up and streamlined a little bit so it doesn’t go on for decades. I spoke to members of her panel this week and they are totally united. There’s not a cigarette paper between them in terms of their commitment to this.” He said that the inquiry had come under “the worst kind of attack” since its conception. “There’s been an unrelenting attack into the inquiry, on people within the inquiry, on us as members of the victims’ panel, and a lot of hypocrisy,” he said. “I think it’s the forces of evil: I think the rape and abuse of children is the most evil thing on the planet.”
Mr Saunders said he would attend the House of Commons on Tuesday and sit behind Professor Jay as she appeared before the influential Home Affairs Select Committee, which is investigating allegations of misconduct around the inquiry. This week Mr Saunders said he had received an email from the IICSA’s former chairwoman, Dame Lowell Goddard, who he said was “reeling from vile, personal attacks”. Last week she was accused of using racist language and abusive behaviour, something Dame Lowell has strongly denied.
He also revealed that he had met with Baroness Sheila Hollins, who sits on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, to find ways that he could continue to work with the commission after a leave of absence.
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