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As Attachment, 8(2) goes to press, the UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, surprisingly announced a wide ranging inquiry into child sexual abuse and the failure to protect children. The conviction of Rolf Harris and the revelation that the Home Office had “lost” a 1980s dossier on abusers may have tipped the scales.
The inquiry, which could become a full public inquiry if necessary, is to be made up of independent law and child protection experts. It will cover public bodies from police, intelligence services, local authority care homes, NHS to parliament, and non-state bodies like schools, churches, and the BBC. It will deliver an interim report before next May.
As Sue Richardson (2013) pointed out, a degree of scepticism is in order when one considers the far reaching implications of this decision for established institutions and some leading figures. But for survivors (myself included), who for so long have waited for their pleas to be heard, and for those who have fought so hard for child sexual abuse to be brought into the public domain, the 7th of July 2014 feels like a day when the world changed for good!