11/08/2016 Newsnight

The Inquiry into child sexual abuse gets its fourth head in two years.

Alexis Jay will spend up to ten years on the investigation.

Is she, finally, the right person for this huge job?

Can the enquiry satisfy those campaigning for justice?

One of the three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green who fled to join

She had expressed a desire to come back. The problem with that was, the

risk factors around leaving were quite terminal also.

She takes me to the cutting field, where there are notches on the tree

She was a fearless reporter, and our colleague, who travelled

to the most dangerous parts of the world to report on the plight

of women shunned, abused, tortured and killed for their gender.

She left behind a book in which she pays tributes

Her daughter is hear to tell her story.

That is the verdict of the shadow minister for preventing abuse,

on the new, fourth, head of the Independent Inquiry

into Child Sexual Abuse, Alexis Jay.

Professor Jay, a child protection expert who led the Inquiry

into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, promised

she would handle her work with "pace, confidence and clarity."

The Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that the government's commitment

So is she the right person for the job and, if so, what will be

Three times a high-profile lawyer has been appointed to lead

Three times they have ended up resigning,

Today the replacement was unveiled - not a lawyer.

Professor Alexis Jay was already a member of the inquiry panel,

With a background in social work, she is best known as the author

of an inquiry into Rotherham's failure to deal with local abuse.

There were examples of children being doused

with petrol and threatened with being set alight.

They were threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent

rapes and threatened they would be the next if they told anyone.

That damning report led to major changes for the town.

Resignations and change followed, but there are still some concerns

The first two chairs of the inquiry had to stand down

because, being members of the establishment,

they happened to know some central government decision-makers

whose work it was likely they would end up scrutinising.

Alexis Jay's appointment has been broadly welcomed, but there

are similar concerns about her background in social work

She's a social worker, when one of the key aspects of this

enquiry is looking at the abject failure of the social work

profession, and the amount of paedophiles who were social

workers - every week there is one arrested, or it's a teacher.

These are not the people you would go to to lead the enquiry.

The first is that Professor Jay isn't even a lawyer,

and this sort of inquiry would usually be chaired by a judge.

The second is that perhaps no one could manage this inquiry.

There are 13 separate investigations that have formed part of it.

Perhaps, some people suggest, we should aim for a smaller,

Take Lambeth, the subject of one of the 13 enquiry strands.

They've received 5000 documents from an old inquiry,

a further 100,000 items will need to be sifted,

and there are another 26,000 archive boxes to deal with.

I think Alexis Jay could be a very good chair.

She would need support on the legal side and if she gets that I think

In terms of the remit of the inquiry, and is this

If you interpret the terms of reference literally,

then yes it is, but I think the inquiry will adopt a much

narrower and focused approach and look at institutions,

they will look at the most serious examples of failure,

and they will draw from that the evidence they need

While Professor Jay has wide support, the survivor representative

Some core participants in the inquiry are angry

that they were not consulted about her appointment.

This is vitally critical to our lives and healing process,

but we were treated as we were children,

And that affects our faith and our confidence in an inquiry.

Professor Jay has a much harder task than she did in Rotherham.

She needs to keep survivors contributing to this inquiry,

but it's two years old, it's on its fourth chair,

and it's still years from drawing any conclusions.

Well, here in the studio are Gabrielle Shaw from

the National Association for People Abused in

Childhood and the barrister Anthony Heaton-Armstrong,

who is an expert on evidence in sexual cases and has personal

But first let's talk to Esther Baker, who has made

allegations of being abused as a child and has previously been

Good evening to all of you. First of all, Esther Baker, what do you make

of the appointment? I think this is a good appointment. I think it's the

first time the enquiry has managed to get a good chair. What is it

about her that gives you faith? I've got faith that Alexis Jay has proven

herself in the past with the Rotherham enquiry. I think she's got

a good concept of listening to survivors, which none of the former

chairs have had experience in. What do you make of the fact she doesn't

have a legal background? She isn't a lawyer. She's not a lawyer, but I

think in this case it's a good thing. She has a good legal team

around her. I think not being a lawyer will make her more

approachable for survivors. You heard in the film that there are

also concerns about social workers being involved. Social workers do

not have the cleanest of hands always. No, I think he's right in

one respect that social workers haven't got the best reputation at

the moment within the enquiry, however I think that we will never

find somebody who is completely not associated with abuse or any of the

strands in any way. It's physically not possible. Before we finish, can

we talk about the time frame. In the terms of reference of the enquiry,

there is an interim report promised by 2018, two and a half years, but

it looks as if Alexis Jay will have to work for ten years. What do you

think about the timescale for the enquiry? The timescale worries a lot

of people, but I think if we are to do the right job and get justice and

correct recommendations for survivors in the future, then it

will take time. It's not something that can be rushed. A rushed job

will not please anybody. Thank you for joining us. Anthony, a barrister

with decades of experience and your own experience, do you think this is

a good appointment? I don't know the new chairman very well. I've read a

little bit about her, but I doubt she is the right person for this

massive job. Why? I don't believe she has the experience that is

needed for somebody to manage such a huge operation. And I agree with

those who consider that a lawyer with the right sort of experience

would be the correct appointment. Except they're rather very few

people who have dealt with an enquiry on this scale in the United

Kingdom and abroad as we know. Maybe that's not the key criteria. No, I

don't suggest that the person that ought to have been appointed needs

similar experience, in other words, managing such a massive operation,

but they need to have experience of operating a public enquiry. What do

you think, Gabrielle? Do you have the same concerns? No, not

particularly. I would like to pick up on something we heard from Ms

Baker, a survivor herself. It's about confidence. Adult survivors of

sexual abuse as children, for them to come forward and give evidence,

which the enquiry wants them to do with the truth projects and hearings

etc, they want to have confidence in the chair and somebody who

understands what's happening. Alexis Jay has proven herself through

Rotherham. You talk about the truth project which is just one of 13

strands. It's there in front of us, the terms of reference, there will

be an interim report in less than three years at the end of 2018. If

this is about being thorough and, as Crick Chris Cook says, the documents

from Lambeth itself, how good you have an interim report of any merit

in less than three years? A great point, and public confidence in the

enquiry has been knocked by the resignations of the three previous

chairs. Communication needs to improve. There needs to be more

regular output. That's what a lot of people and survivors would urge,

regular output and regular reports. We do talk about progress reports to

be fair. We can't wait two and a half years or five years for a

magical report that will suddenly solve everything. We need to rebuild

that confidence. Anthony, what do you think about the terms of the

enquiry, is it too broad and should it be honed down? I think it's much

too broad. I think the ambitions set for it are totally unrealistic. What

has to be thought about is what the enquiry can achieve for the future,

and for the future protection of potential victims of sexual abuse.

Not what has happened in the past. The enquiry needs to look at

procedures that have already been set in place by a number of the

institutions whose activities or in activities are under the spotlight.

Given it could be another ten years before we get a final report, going

historically back through every institutions' track record would not

even be productive, it would end up being frustrating for people. I

think the focus should be on the progress that has been made by the

institutions whose activities or in activities are under the spotlight.

Is that the more realistic thing or does it mean things will be brushed

under the carpet? I slightly disagree with that. Surely the best

way, if you fail to learn the lessons of the past you are doomed

to repeat them. This scale is massive, but so is the scale of the

problem. Children are being abused and failed by the state on an

industrial scale in the past. It's not pleasant, nobody wants to think

that they live in a society where this happens to children and they

failed time and time again. But they have been, and on a huge scale. So

the enquiry must be commenced at to encompass that. Of scale, it makes

more sense to have one enquiry, massive as it is, to oversee these

13 different strands of work. The lessons, the failings that have

happened, are likely to be similar and there are likely to be themes

that come through that. If you break it down to 13 different enquiries,

is not good or wise. Have it under one roof, one enquiry. That would

suggest you could actually report on the 13th one by one, it doesn't have

to come out in a Big Bang. What Gabrielle seems to be saying is that

there is a massive problem historically. If everyone is agreed

that there is, the focus should be on the cure, and making sure that

procedures are put in place, if they haven't already been, that will

prevent the same thing happening again. What is the point in

investigating things that everybody seems to accept have happened in the

past? Before I finish, we are on the fourth head in two years. When Judge

Goddard was brought over from New Zealand, that was going to be it,

this was the best person to conduct and complete this enquiry, and look

what's happened. Are we sure that Alexis Jay will actually work on

this for another decade? I think so. She has the past, the history to

prove that she can take on an enquiry of this nature. I think she

has the will as well. We heard some reporting a past saying it's a

poisoned chalice. I don't think it is. I think it's a great opportunity

for right to come to survivors in the past. If this one doesn't work

though, they presumably can't keep doing it. This has to be it? This

has to be it, as in it it has to be the last attempt? I think the

enquiry, within the scope set for it is totally unmanageable, and I think

it will hit the rocks again, frankly. I can't see anything coming

out of it with its present scope being anything particularly useful

for the protection of future potential victims. You are

optimistic? I have to be. One of the three schoolgirls

from Bethnal Green Academy who ran away to join IS in Raqqa in February

last year has been killed, Five months after they fled, two

of the teenagers told their families by phone and social media

that they were now married. Amira Abase and Shamina Begum

were 15 and Kadiza Sultana

was one year older. Secunder Kermani is here with more

details on the death. A lot of people remember this case

because it provoked a lot of national soul-searching about the

reasons why young British Muslim in were travelling off to Syria to join

Isis. Kadiza was 16 when she left her family home in east London in

February last year to go off to Syria. You can see her in this

image, she is the girl in the middle with the glasses. It was a case that

sparked a lot of soul-searching. Their families released very

emotional pleas for them to return home when they first disappeared.

Images of CCTV were released of the three girls at Gatwick Airport as

they were flying out to Turkey. More images were released of them in

Turkey as they took a bus to the Syrian border. Tonight I TV news

have been reporting that Kadiza Sultana has been killed in an air

strike in Raqqa. The family lawyer says the family were informed of

this a few weeks ago although they have not been able to independently

confirm it for themselves. My understanding is that the family

received a call from someone in Syria explaining that Kadiza had

been killed in an air strike, and it was thought to be

a Russian air strike. There's nothing worse than finding

out your sibling or your family By all accounts she was a young girl

with a very promising future, and it's a great loss

to us all, really. Every effort was made from the very

beginning to try to avoid this fateful news,

and despite all efforts, it's unfortunate we find ourselves

with the loss of a young life, There are reports that Kadiza was

trying to escape from IS? That's right, I understand that after the

man she married was killed she became disillusioned with life with

Isis and she began to develop with her family in Britain very secretive

and potentially dangerous plans to be able to return to the UK. In the

end it seems she was never able to do that.

She had expressed a desire to come back.

The problem with that was that the risk factors around leaving

are quite terminal also, in that if Isis were to detect

and capture you then their punishment was quite brutal

And the week where she was thinking about these issues, a young Austrian

girl had been caught trying to leave Isis territory and was,

by all reports, beaten to death publicly.

So given that that was circulated in the region as well as outside,

I think Kadiza took that as a bad omen and decided not to take

Well, I think she found out pretty quickly that the propaganda doesn't

She had made some enquiries and some plans of her own volition,

When these three schoolgirls left for Syria last February that was

almost, if you like, part of the peak of this problem of young people

travelling out to Syria. The scale of the numbers now travelling out to

Syria has diminished somewhat, although that will not be much

consolation for the family of Kadiza Sultana. And what we don't know much

about is the fate of the other two girls who travelled out to Syria

with her. The desperate plight

of the girls from Bethnal Green, was exactly the kind of story that

campaigning investigative journalist, our colleague,

Sue Lloyd Roberts who died last She travelled the world,

often undercover, reporting on the worst atrocities

inflicted on women. When she died after a journalistic

career spanning thirty years, she left behind an almost-finished

book which told vivid stories of Yazidi Women,

women in Saudi Arabia, forced marriage; female genital

mutilation in Gambia and Glasgow. But she very determinedly

wanted the book not to be about her, but about the tremendous

spirit, resilience - and sometimes death-courting

defiance of the women After Sue's death her daughter

Sarah Morris put the book The War I'll be speaking to her in a moment

but first here is a flavour of Sue Lloyd Roberts at work,

and some quotes from her book. She takes me to the cutting field

where there are notches on the tree for every girl cut. " We cut them

one after another. The cut girl is taken away and they bring another

until we finish them all. Why is it, I ask myself, that women who make up

51% of the world's population, are still campaigning for fair and

humane treatment in the 21st-century, as if we were just

another of the world's persecuted minorities.

The discovery in June that some 800 babies had died at a former mother

and baby home run by nuns in Ireland and that their bodies had been put

in an unmarked and horribly inappropriate graves shocked the

world. It's a sewage tank. Why are their children buried in a sewage

area? When I look back on 30 years of human rights reporting, the

majority of my attempts to draw attention to injustice and suffering

from Texas to two G to stamp via Ireland and Pakistan have involved

women. And your sister had with her a

ten-year-old friend? Are women doomed to be just another

hopeless cause? And if so, why? Well with me now is Sue's

daughter Sarah Morris, who finished the book

that her mother started. Good evening. I mean, you were very

close to sue. I wonder if you learn something about her finishing,

policy polishing this book? I did, I think what I really learned was how

angry she was. She was really quite a joyful person in many ways. But in

the book it comes to that she was quite a cross person. And I think

her reports on the BBC were obviously constructed by editorial

balance and being impartial, but in the book she is really able to let

loose. The thing she was really angry about is how all over the

world, whether it was FGM or honour killings, she was told that these

things happen in the name of tradition, and in her eyes it was so

clear that it was abuse. And she just wanted to scream when she would

interview the father of an honour killing victim who would say, this

is just what we do, here. And in her head she wanted to scream. Because

why is such a convenient excuse? But do you think, in the end, she was

quite an optimistic person? I thought she was quite an optimistic

person. I read this book and I realise there is still so much to

do. Still so much to do. I think she was a really good example of a

pessimist of the intellect and an optimist of the will. Intellectually

she could see that so much was wrong but she had so much faith in

humanity that she was optimistic for the future. In this but you can see

her faith in women for their resilience. Some of the stories

about FGM and the Yazidi women stand out for me, and actually she was

fiercely proud of other women. She was. And although it is called The

War On Women, and many of the stories are horrifying and

devastating, it is also the Brave ones who fight back. This is the

voices of these women who are doing incredible things to fight back,

like you say, the woman in Gambia who was destined to be a cutter for

her village and decided to flee because she thought it was wrong.

And now she's here in London. She was absolutely the pre-eminent

journalist who actually explored women's stories. I wonder if you

think progressively she sought out women's stories. I think she did.

And as a female journalist herself, when she first started, there was

nobody doing what she was doing. She was really a pioneer. She had no one

to look up to. She started at ITN doing things like the Chelsea flower

show and following the royals around, which, as a strong

Republican, bought her to tears. I think her legacy is showing other

women that they can do what she did. But I wonder, because you were

young, she was awake doing incredibly madcap things, some of

her disguises were downright dangerous and so forth, did you

worry about her as much as she must have worried about you guys at home?

I think we were just used to it. And actually I must say that she often

would lie to me about stories. Later on when I was a bit older and in my

20s she would say, oh, I'm going to Africa to do a story about

elephants. She wouldn't tell me until she got back what she'd

actually been doing. I remember being much more worried about her as

an adult than I was as a child. As a child it seemed normal. At we had a

rule where she would phone every night, whenever she could get a

signal. The rule was we didn't ever discussed the story in case someone

was listening in. And all of that was quite exciting as a child. If

there was one story that stands out to you as mattering deeply, what

would it be? I think it was female genital mutilation. I think she had

a bit of a renaissance later in her career and discovered this going on.

And I think before she started doing it, people would pitch the idea of

FGM to newspapers and they would say, that's disgusting, that's not

something we are going to do. She just had a way of doing it that

meant it would get noticed and because of her we've had legislation

changing Parliament. People didn't really know what it was until she

started talking about it. Thank you very much indeed.

Rio 2016 now, and no one could fault the dedication

of our correspondent Stephen Smith, who has been submitting himself

to a gruelling regime of stretching for his snacks as he follows

But no Olympic project is worth a candle these

And who better than former Blue Peter legend Peter Purves

to encourage our man to upcycle his empties?

All the members of the British squad have now been chosen.

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

And when Rio 2016 flags for an instant what I like to do

is look back at how old games were covered.

I think Sharon and Joy have done fantastically well.

I've kind of settled in for the duration.

I'll tell you what, I could make something out of that.

How hard will he go, is the question?

You know much more about this than me.

Wasn't he Prime Minister for a while?

I used to ride but one day I was sitting up

there and I thought, I don't like this,

I don't know if that's been diagnosed officially but you'll

probably get a grant and some counselling.

Do you think golf, tennis, sports like that, should

really be at the Olympics, Peter?

I was listening to something on the radio about people applying

Somebody was saying they wanted petanque in there.

For goodness sake, it's marbles with big balls, it's pointless.

Actually my wife's very good at this.

So if you hear something in the night, you send

Well, that is the iciest water I have ever swum in.

Yes, got all my life-saving badges and everything.

You were the kind of David Hasselhoff of your day?

If you were at a party and people offered you a funny cigarette...

Because that was happening in London in those days,

If there was no press there I wouldn't have said that.

I had friends who partook, if that's the correct phrase.

No, I wouldn't have been averse to that, at all.

I can't watch this any more, this is distracting me too much.

I'm going to make something out of it.

Don't be silly, that's a diving board.

I don't want to jinx things but I smell BAFTA.

Before we go, this week one of the most eagerly-anticipated

video games of the decade - No Man's Sky - was released.

In the game, you get to explore as many of

the eighteen quintillion - yes quintillion -

The game's visual palette pays homage to the golden age of sci-fi,

so we decided to go one further, with a soundtrack that

These are the voyages of the starship enterprise. Its five-year

mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new

civilisations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Hello. Somewhat and windy weather across the North in the evening and

through to Friday morning. Ahead of the rain it will be lively across