UK: independent abuse inquiry. Catholic and Anglican Churches and Westminster involved. Hundreds of cases each year

A 147-page report that should be the last word on the abuse committed by the Catholic Church of England and Wales and on the preventive mechanism set up to avoid a repeat. The drafting of the report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse began in 2015, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, a famous BBC DJ who had for years abused innocent young people with the complicity of his colleagues and superiors. Top officers and the media channels of various institutions were investigated to shed light on the abuses. Alongside the Catholic Church, Westminster Parliament and the Church of England were also placed under investigation. Investigators spent seven weeks hearing from witnesses and investigating abuse cases from the 1970s in the abbeys and schools run by the Benedictine congregation in Ampleforth, Ealing, Downside and also in the Archdiocese of Birmingham. Among those who gave evidence to the Commission are Catholic Primate Card. Vincent Nichols, who was Archbishop of Birmingham between 2000 and 2009; the current head of the same Archdiocese, Archbishop Bernard Longley; and Martin Shipperlee, who was the abbot of Ealing Abbey Benedictine monastery from 1993 to 2000. According to the findings of the report, “between 1970 and 2015, the Church received more than 3,000 complaints of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals”. “Since 2016, there have been more than 100 reported allegations each year”. “The true scale” of abuse “ is likely to have been much higher”.
Silvia Guzzetti