The chair of the public inquiry into institutional child abuse has resigned, saying it was beset with a “legacy of failure” that was hard to shake off.



Justice Lowell Goddard, who was appointed in February last year to chair the unprecedented inquiry into decades of child abuse and its cover-up, threw the future of the huge public inquiry into doubt with her departing comments.

After a brief resignation letter to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, Goddard released a statement that indicated the controversies and challenges of the inquiry since it was set up in 2014 were insurmountable.

In her response, Rudd said she was sorry to receive her letter and accepted her decision but emphasised that the government’s commitment to the inquiry was “undiminished’.

“I want to be absolutely clear. The success of this inquiry remains an absolute priority for this government. I am determined to keep the process on track and am taking immediate steps to appoint a new chair as soon as possible.”

Goddard, a New Zealand judge who was persuaded to take on the role after two previous chairs resigned following criticism of their establishment links, quit 24 hours after being criticised in reports for taking three months’ holiday since being appointed in April 2015.

But her statement suggested there were deeper reason for resigning, which date back to the inquiry’s inception, and its troubled beginnings.

Goddard, who was on a remuneration package that included a salary of £360,000, said: “The conduct of any public inquiry is not an easy task, let alone one of the magnitude of this.

“Compounding the many difficulties was its legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off and with hindsight it would have been better to have started completely afresh.”

She said the inquiry for her had “been a struggle” but was confident there had been achievements made in getting the voices of survivors heard.

Rudd thanked her for the last 16 months of work and said: “It is testament to your commitment that you have taken the difficult decision to stand down having set the inquiry firmly on course, and allow someone else to lead it through to the end. With regret I agree that this is the right decision.”



Amber Rudd accepted the resignation ‘with regret’. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Goddard had recently started sitting on the preliminary hearings into 13 public investigations into non-recent child abuse including within the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, Westminster, Lambeth council, Medomsley detention centre, allegations against Greville Janner and the abuse allegations against Cyril Smith.

But a year after the inquiry was set up no evidence has been taken, and an unprecedented project known as the Truth project, to catalogue thousands of individual testimonies of abuse, has only just begun.

Just more than a year ago Goddard opened the inquiry with a public statement that set out its enormous scale and vowed that no individual or institution would be able to obstruct her investigations.

She had been appointed after two previous chairs were criticised publicly for their links to the establishment – forcing the then home secretary Theresa May to look internationally for someone suitable.

Elizabeth Butler-Sloss stood down as chair in July 2014 amid questions over the role played by her late brother, Michael Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s. Her successor, Dame Fiona Woolf, resigned following criticism over her “establishment links”, most notably in relation to Leon Brittan, the former home secretary who died in 2015.

May redrew the inquiry under Goddard in March 2015, responding to demands from victims’ groups that it be placed on a statutory footing, which meant it had the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.

Her departure is a critical blow for those victims who believed that, after decades in which abuse had been covered up, they would finally get to the truth of what had taken place. It came after criticism that many victims were being excluded from a key role in the hearings and a report in the Times that said Goddard – whose inquiry has been given a budget of £17.9m in the first year – had taken three months’ holiday since being appointed in April of last year.

The paper said Goddard worked for 44 days in New Zealand, her home country, and Australia after taking up the role in April last year.

This was in addition to her 30 days of annual holiday leave, the newspaper reported, bringing the total to 74 days – three working months.

But the inquiry spokeswoman said the judge had spent 44 days working in New Zealand and Australia on inquiry business, the other 30 days were her annual leave.

The spokesman said: “We do not comment on where people working for the inquiry spend their annual leave. The chair is always on call and in direct contact with the inquiry team.”

The criticism of Goddard’s leave came after some victims challenged her for not giving them a voice in the proceedings.

Writing in the Guardian Phil Frampton, a member of a survivors group known as Whiteflowers that took a legal challenge against Goddard’s decision to exclude some victims from core participant status, criticised the failure of Goddard to give victims a voice.

Reacting to her resignation, Frampton said on Thursday her departure was a chance for the inquiry to get onto “the right track”.

“It is not clear why Goddard resigned but she was the wrong choice from the beginning,” he said.

“Goddard continually refuted survivors’ attempts to have an equal footing at the inquiry to the government institutions that failed them.”

The public inquiry into non-recent child abuse and the failures of institutions to protect children was set up in 2014 following the revelations about Jimmy Savile. It is expected to last at least five years and hold public inquiries into 25 key areas and institutions.



The inquiry’s terms of reference say that its purpose includes considering “the extent to which state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation”. It covers England and Wales.

The family of Greville Janner have protested his innocence in recent days. Photograph: Neil Hall/Reuters

But the search for a new chair, who can withstand the high level of public scrutiny and criticism while successfully steering what is a behemoth of a public inquiry, is likely to be a tough one.

In recent days, the family of Lord Janner have been mounting a high-profile campaign to protest his innocence. In articles in a series of newspapers and in an appearance on BBC Newsnight, the family has criticised the Goddard inquiry for unfairness.

Marion Janner, his daughter, told Newsnight the inquiry into him was “grotesque and Kafkaesque”.

The director of public prosecutions said in a statement last year that her lawyers had assessed the allegations against Janner, and in 22 allegations of indecent assault and buggery between 1969 and 1988 the evidential test was passed.

Goddard was to hold a full hearing into the allegations against Janner next spring.



Labour MP Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs committee, said the decision to quit was “astonishing”. He said: “This is the third head of the inquiry who has now resigned. Serious questions need to be asked about why the Home Office has not monitored events more carefully.

“We will expect a full explanation from both the prime minister and the new home secretary about these matters. We need to examine again the remit, cost, purpose and ambition of what the inquiry was tasked with.”

Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour party, said: “We must not let our failure to find a judge with the relevant knowledge and the necessary staying power deter us from progressing with this complex and demanding task.

“I hope the new home secretary will not attempt to take control of the investigation. The independence of this inquiry must not be compromised by ministers or officials. The government must find a new chair as a matter of great urgency.”