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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/24/the-guardian-view-on-abused-footballers-never-again
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| The Guardian view on abused footballers: never again | The Guardian view on abused footballers: never again |
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| The terrible stories of sexual abuse told to the Guardian in the past week by three footballers, Andy Woodward, Steve Walters, and David White – and Paul Stewart, who talked to the Mirror – are a reminder of the damage that paedophiles do, even to apparently successful sportsmen. These survivors have been horribly scarred by what happened to them when they were teenage talent. Yet they have only found themselves able to talk about it now, years after the abuse ended. Cheshire police report that 11 individuals have come forward with reports about the youth coach Barry Bennell, who in 1998 was sent to prison for nine years for abuse. A dedicated helpline set up by the NSPCC took more than 50 calls in its first day. | |
| Once again the Football Association seems to have been caught on the back foot. After the Bennell case, child safeguarding policies were reviewed, and the FA says it is confident in them. But there have been reports of abuse since; and the way the Savile affair at the BBC revealed an organisation in denial should have been a warning to look around, and in particular to make sure that this scale of abuse is not still happening in other clubs and to other young players. | Once again the Football Association seems to have been caught on the back foot. After the Bennell case, child safeguarding policies were reviewed, and the FA says it is confident in them. But there have been reports of abuse since; and the way the Savile affair at the BBC revealed an organisation in denial should have been a warning to look around, and in particular to make sure that this scale of abuse is not still happening in other clubs and to other young players. |
| The footballers’ stories might also restore the sense of urgency that originally fuelled the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) when it was first set up in 2014 – although it is not just urgency but credibility too that has leached away as the inquiry lurches from crisis to catastrophe, shedding three leaders, many lawyers and some of the survivor groups whose interests were supposed to be at its heart. | The footballers’ stories might also restore the sense of urgency that originally fuelled the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) when it was first set up in 2014 – although it is not just urgency but credibility too that has leached away as the inquiry lurches from crisis to catastrophe, shedding three leaders, many lawyers and some of the survivor groups whose interests were supposed to be at its heart. |
| The future of IICSA is on a knife edge. It has the backing of the Home Office and the prime minister, but even that has aroused survivors’ suspicions about the degree of independence it genuinely enjoys. A similar argument about the extent to which MPs on the home affairs committee can scrutinise the inquiry’s work resulted in a blunt refusal from lawyers, including Ben Emmerson, the senior counsel, to explain why they left the inquiry. Published tonight, the MPs’ report counter-argues that while they respect its independence, the inquiry must be transparent, accountable and open to scrutiny, not least because it is the lack of institutional transparency that has led to so much misery and suspicion. They are rightly critical of what appears to be the inquiry’s failure to investigate internal allegations of bullying and sexual assault, all the more damaging when it is just that kind of behaviour it will be investigating in institutions. They are concerned too that there is still no new senior counsel, nor any visible sign of progress, although a public hearing is due next week. Most of all, the refusal of Dame Lowell Goddard, paid hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to live and work in London, to give evidence about the charges she made in writing after her abrupt departure is rightly condemned in the strongest terms. | The future of IICSA is on a knife edge. It has the backing of the Home Office and the prime minister, but even that has aroused survivors’ suspicions about the degree of independence it genuinely enjoys. A similar argument about the extent to which MPs on the home affairs committee can scrutinise the inquiry’s work resulted in a blunt refusal from lawyers, including Ben Emmerson, the senior counsel, to explain why they left the inquiry. Published tonight, the MPs’ report counter-argues that while they respect its independence, the inquiry must be transparent, accountable and open to scrutiny, not least because it is the lack of institutional transparency that has led to so much misery and suspicion. They are rightly critical of what appears to be the inquiry’s failure to investigate internal allegations of bullying and sexual assault, all the more damaging when it is just that kind of behaviour it will be investigating in institutions. They are concerned too that there is still no new senior counsel, nor any visible sign of progress, although a public hearing is due next week. Most of all, the refusal of Dame Lowell Goddard, paid hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to live and work in London, to give evidence about the charges she made in writing after her abrupt departure is rightly condemned in the strongest terms. |
| Yet Dame Lowell may have done one service to the inquiry, by highlighting the uncertainty about how it should proceed. The MPs, anticipating the overdue results of the review by Professor Alexis Jay, the new inquiry chair, propose splitting the inquiry into two, with one part pursuing the kind of forensic and legal investigations necessary to establish what happened in cases of past institutional abuse, the other examining thematic and compliance issues. This has the feel of a practical solution. That matters. As Chris Tuck, a member of IICSA’s survivors and victims’ panel writes elsewhere, the inquiry is needed too much by people like him to be allowed to fail. | Yet Dame Lowell may have done one service to the inquiry, by highlighting the uncertainty about how it should proceed. The MPs, anticipating the overdue results of the review by Professor Alexis Jay, the new inquiry chair, propose splitting the inquiry into two, with one part pursuing the kind of forensic and legal investigations necessary to establish what happened in cases of past institutional abuse, the other examining thematic and compliance issues. This has the feel of a practical solution. That matters. As Chris Tuck, a member of IICSA’s survivors and victims’ panel writes elsewhere, the inquiry is needed too much by people like him to be allowed to fail. |