In a new update on the Inquiry website, officials have responded to the recent concerns by survivors and child welfare professionals surrounding the decision not to include survivors and victims of abuse on the central panel but to create a separate panel for them.

The reasons given for the creation of a separate panel (to be called the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel, or VSCP) include concerns about legal challenges where survivors or victims may have a direct interest in an area or case relating to the Inquiry, which is forbidden under S.9 (1)(a) of the Inquiries Act 2005, and the view that one or two survivors on the central panel would not reflect the diversity of opinion and background of existing survivors and victims.

The Inquiry is also now calling for survivors and victims who wish to be part of the VSCP, to come forward. The process allows people to nominate survivors and victims, and put themselves forward, too.

So, what do you make of the latest update? Do you think the Inquiry’s reasons for a separate survivors’ panel are sound or do you feel they’re simply spinning the rules and lines of reasoning to create an apartheid?

Lowell Goddard, Chair for the Statutory Inquiry Into Child Abuse