Lowell Goddard quits UK child sex abuse inquiry

The head of a major British child sex abuse inquiry has quit, the third person to leave the post since the probe was announced two years ago.

The chairwoman, Lowell Goddard, quit without giving a reason, just over a year after taking on an unprecedented five-year inquiry into historical sexual abuse and its cover-up in Britain.

The independent investigation, which was set up in 2014, examines decades of child sex abuse in public and private institutions in Britain.

Goddard said the inquiry had a “legacy of failure which had been hard to shake off.”

Public hearings into allegations of abuse relating to Lord Greville Janner are due to start on 7 March and are expected to finish by the end of May. Janner was a British politician, barrister and writer who was alleged to have abused vulnerable children.

A British national born to Lithuanian Jewish parents, he died before court proceedings could formally establish the facts.

The news of Goddard’s resignation comes just as fresh shocking data surface about child abuse in England and Wales.

The Office for National Statistics revealed that one in fourteen adults was sexually abused during childhood.

The findings also suggest over half a million women and over a hundred-thousand men suffered sexual assault by rape or other forms as minors.

Recent figures in the UK show the number of child sex abuse cases reported to police is dramatically on the rise, with cases being passed to police at a rate of 100 a month by the public inquiry set up following the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The number of sexual abuse cases being reported to police in England and Wales rose 80 percent between 2012 and 2015, The Guardianreported in May.