Inquiry blunder as victims’ email details are sent out

THE abuse inquiry had to refer itself to the Information Commissioner on its first day of hearings yesterday over an email error naming victims.

Within hours, it had to apologise to victims for mistakenly sending out their information.

Officials sent an email on Monday to those who had registered an interest in attending the inquiry’s victims’ forums, which wrongly identified all of their email addresses. Around 88 people were affected before IT noticed hours later.

Nigel O’Mara, an abuse survivor, told the BBC: ‘This breach of data is very concerning to survivors as these are the very people we are supposed to trust...’ An inquiry spokesman said: ‘This morning the Inquiry has apologised to a number of email recipients...

‘We will be self-referring this issue to the Information Commissioner’s Office.’