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
Researching Reform 
Reblogged this on National Inquiry into Organised, Orchestrated & Historic Child Sexual Abuse.
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We are posting the following on behalf of Phil Frampton:
Descent into YES MINISTER Farce – Home Office Not Sure If Survivors on #CSA Inquiry Panel or Not? – refuse to confirm whether checked Panel
In order to confirm that the Home Office had carried out due diligence to ensure that no survivors of CSA were on the Panel I asked that question at the CSA Liaison Team “Victim & Survivors” meeting on April 8th at the Cabinet Office
The Home Office/ CSAInquiry Liaison Team refused to confirm that all members of the Panel were checked as to whether they were survivors of child sex abuse or not.
Instead, when pressed over the inconsistencies over the “direct interest” in the members chosen for the Panel and the bar on survivors, the Liaison Team, said that the act allowed a waver of this clause.
Hence, despite Justice Goddard’s bar on abuse survivors, it is still not clear whether there are abuse survivors “lacking objectivity” on the Panel or not, or whether Justice Goddard has decided to wave this stipulation for certain individuals.
Instead, the Inquiry Team argued that if it is known that there are abuse survivors on the Panel it may attract Judicial Reviews from organisations and individuals summonsed as witnesses.
The Home Office were also pressed on why they had not, despite their promises, consulted the survivors in the room about a short list for the new Chair. John O’Brien responded that they had consulted with some survivors but refused to say whom, and then declared that it didn’t matter how we got there but that we now have the statutory inquiry we wanted and Justice Goddard (who nobody had ever heard of and who has already attacked survivors as lacking “objectivity”).
Regards
Phil Frampton
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Convenient. By keeping abuse survivors off the abuse Panel they will be denied direct access to any evidence the Panel sees. Only the special people on the Panel will. As is typical in British Inquiries, don’t expect anything inconvenient involving those in power to hit the eyes of the public until the perpetrators are dead. Expect the odd fish, like pop stars etc.
Convenient. The perpetrators in public office are protected by the Official Secrets Act. Theresa May and others claimed publicly claimed it should not be a barrier to providing information to the CSA. Must be why she, and most Tories, voted against it: http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5530/how-mps-voted-on-move-to-change-official-secrets-act-over-csa
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Reblogged this on Ace Breaking News and commented:
Ace Breaking News: Everyone Should Know !!!
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