Hundreds of alleged abuse victims threaten to boycott Jay inquiry | The Guardian
![Professor Alexis Jay, the fourth chair of the abuse inquiry [Image: Dave Higgens/PA].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160908-Alexis-Jay.png)
Professor Alexis Jay, the fourth chair of the abuse inquiry [Image: Dave Higgens/PA].
An independent inquiry into the sexual abuse of children has been dealt another blow after hundreds of alleged victims of abuse threatened to boycott it.
Former inmates at Medomsley detention centre in Consett, County Durham, where abuser Neville Husband preyed on children and young adults over a 15-year period from the late 1960s onwards, have written to their lawyers stating that they want to withdraw from the inquiry after learning that it will not hear evidence from people who were aged 18 or over at the time they were abused.
The inquiry has been beset by problems. This week Dame Lowell Goddard, the third chair to resign, sent a 10-page critique of its setup to the home affairs select committee, calling for a complete review and remodelling to focus it “more towards current events and thus focusing major attention on the present and future protection of children”. She said the scope of the inquiry, including every state and non-state institution, meant that “the terms of reference in their totality cannot be met”.
On Wednesday the inquiry was further undermined when another group of victims, Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, threatened to pull out after suggesting that the independence of the inquiry had been undermined by the fact that the new chair, Prof Alexis Jay, had spent 30 years working in social services.
Source: Hundreds of alleged abuse victims threaten to boycott Jay inquiry | Society | The Guardian
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When I started to research exactly what the Child Abuse Inquiry was set up to achieve, I found institutionalised child abuse in this country is on such an incomprehensible scale, that it could take years to get any acceptable conclusion. Many of those involved in the abuse may die before they can be brought to account. And, unfortunately many of the children may be unable to give evidence due to age and may even have passed on.
Whilst this Inquiry is taking its course what is being done to deal with current, (as I am sure it has not, and will not just stop because of this Inquiry), children who are still being systematically abused!