Even the fiercest critic of Dame Lowell Goddard must admit she’s got a point. Earlier this week, Goddard revealed why she resigned last month as chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. She sent a 10-page critique of the setup of the inquiry to the home affairs select committee, saying it was too big, took in too many institutions (church, councils, schools, Westminster, Medomsley detention centre – to name but a few of its 13 strands), was too complex, went back too far (60 years), would take too long (possibly 10 years), and was underfunded.
Many commentators have been too busy sniping at the New Zealand judge’s annual financial package of £500,000, her apparent failure to grasp key legal issues, the amount of time she has spent overseas in the past year, and the lack of progress, to acknowledge the one crucial fact: Goddard is right.
It was to widespread approval that Theresa May, then home secretary, announced the launch of the public inquiry in 2014. But what a mess it has been. Its remit was to investigate whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales. In other words, pretty much all child sex abuse that has or might have occurred over the past 60 years. It was a remit so broad as to make success impossible.
In her memo this week Goddard wrote: “I have recommended in my report to the home secretary that 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 focusing major attention on the present and future protection of children.”
This might well be the most sensible option. But it is crucial that historic institutional abuse should not be ignored. As May herself said only three months ago: “Perpetrators must never be allowed to think that their horrific acts will go overlooked or go unpunished ... Victims and survivors … deserve to be heard now, just as they should have been years ago, and they deserve justice, just as they did then.”
Nowhere are the failings of the inquiry, or the need to provide justice for victims, more apparent than in the case of Medomsley, home to some of the most horrific sex abuse this country has witnessed, in a 15-year period from the 1960s to the 1980s – when youngsters were sent to this detention centre in Consett, County Durham, for committing minor offences.
Throughout, the prison officer Neville Husband, who ran the kitchens, preyed on the children in his care. In 2003 Husband was convicted of abusing five young inmates, after pleading not guilty. Two years later Husband’s colleague, Leslie Johnson, a storeman at the Home Office-run centre, was jailed for similar offences. They have both since died.
The story of Medomsley was barely reported when the men were convicted. This was a time when Britain didn’t have much sympathy for bad lads who deserved whatever short sharp shocks were in store for them. Soon after a Guardian investigation in 2012, Durham police launched an investigation, Operation Seabrook. By last month it had heard from more than 1,350 inmates who say they were sexually and/or physically abused at the centre. The investigation has identified 31 surviving suspects, and sent files to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The stories we heard were unimaginable. Kevin Young told us he was taken out of the centre, a rope was put round his neck till he passed out and he was then raped by three or four men in Husband’s house. When he was released from Medomsley just before his 18th birthday, he went straight to Consett police station and said that he had been raped again and again. He was told that by making such a claim he could find himself locked up again. He has been suicidal, and has never managed to live in peace.
When victims like him heard about the police investigation they felt hopeful. But when details of the inquiry emerged that hope faded. Most of the men who were abused are now in their 50s and 60s. They have suffered long enough, and most do not have the mental reserves to wait a decade for the outcome of a public inquiry. More importantly, the alleged rapists are now old men. The longer an inquiry takes, the more chance they will have of evading justice. The very scale of the inquiry could let them off the hook.
While victims are hoping that the Crown Prosecution Service will charge some of the alleged perpetrators, the likelihood is that few will ultimately face a criminal prosecution. (The CPS only charges people when it believes it has a 50% or greater chance of success.) The reality is that for most victims the chance to be heard would come at the inquiry rather than in a criminal court. No wonder they were dismayed when they learned it could take a decade to reach its conclusion.
Even more perverse, though, is that they’ve learned the inquiry will hear evidence only from victims who were under the age of 18. It is believed that 80% of the 1,350 people who have claimed they were abused were 18 or over at the time, meaning at most 20% would be able to give evidence to the inquiry. And yet the age of homosexual consent (not that there was any issue of consent) for males was 21 at the time they were abused. Indeed, they had been sent to Medomsley rather than prison because they were young and needed protection. For their sins, they were raped by officers of the state while “innocent” members of staff simply looked away. At Husband’s trial, one officer said: “Husband used to keep one boy behind in the kitchen at night. We always felt sorry for that boy.” None were charged with failing in their duty of care.
Many of the victims only spent a few months in Medomsley. Yet it ruined their lives. Now they want the chance to describe what happened, and how there was a culture among staff of turning a blind eye.
John McCabe says that he was raped repeatedly in his six months at Medomsley – by Husband and by other men who have never been prosecuted. But he will not get his chance to tell his story to the inquiry because he was 18 at the time. That is why he and other Medomsley victims have told their lawyers they will boycott the inquiry.
In Goddard’s memo this week, she said she hoped her resignation would provide the opportunity to reassess the remit of the public inquiry. McCabe is one of many former Medomsley inmates who want to see the detention centre separated and given a public inquiry of its own. “I cannot stand by and see victims, who were detained by the state and abused by the state at Medomsley, stand before an inquiry that is not fit for purpose,” he says. As far as McCabe is concerned, only once they have all had the opportunity to have their say can they start to repair themselves.
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