Dame Lowell Goddard has resigned as Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Goddard was appointed in February 2015, and is the third inquiry chair to quit the inquiry. Baroness Butler-Sloss stood down in July 2014 following questions about the role played by her late brother Lord Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s. Dame Fiona Woolf, who replaced Baroness Butler-Sloss, resigned in October 2014, after it was revealed she had links to highly placed individuals, including former home secretary Leon Brittan, who died in 2015. Her resignation letter has been published on the Home Office’s website Sky News reports: It comes amid reports she spent three months on holiday or abroad in her first year in the £500,000 job. The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, reassured victims of abuse that “the work of the inquiry will continue without delay and a new chair will be appointed”. Dame Lowell, a New Zealand judge, was appointed after two previous chairwomen quit. The inquiry was established in 2014 to look at claims of a cover-up by the establishment, after allegations a paedophile ring operated in Westminster in the 1980s. It has yet to hear any evidence from witnesses. Dame Lowell’s letter reads: “I regret to advise that [...]
