Child abuse inquiry names victims in email
Officials forced to apologise and refer themselves to the regulator after data breach on first day of hearings
OFFICIALS at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) have been forced to apologise to some of the victims after accidentally sending out a list of their email addresses on the first day of public hearings.
The embarrassing blunder was contained in an email sent to people who had registered an interest in joining the Victims and Survivors Forum. Instead of hiding their email addresses, the information was visible to other people on the list, even though many of them may have wished to have their anonymity protected.
It is thought the list included around 90 email addresses, but it is not thought anyone affected has as yet made a formal complaint.
Red-faced officials have apologised for the mistake and referred themselves to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which investigates data breaches.
Nigel O’Mara, who runs the East Midlands Survivors group, expressed concern over the blunder, writing on Twitter: “We are supposed to be able to trust you with our data.”
A spokesman for the IICSA said: “The Inquiry has apologised to a number of email recipients whose email addresses were mistakenly accessible to others on the list. We have asked them to delete the email.
“The email was sent to those people who have registered for the Inquiry’s Victims and Survivors Forum. We will be self-referring this issue to the Information Commissioner’s Office.”
The mistake came on the day the inquiry began hearing evidence in public for the first time and follows setbacks including the resignation of three chairmen and the leading counsel. As the first public hearing got under way, victims of forced child migration schemes described how they had been subjected to unimaginable depravity at the hands of those who were meant to care for them. Thousands of youngsters, some as young as two years old, were wrenched from their families and sent to the other side of the world as part of a policy aimed at populating the British Empire with “good white stock”, the inquiry was told.
In the coming days, the chairman, Professor Alexis Jay, will hear personal testimonies about the widespread sexual abuse suffered by large numbers of the estimated 130,000 child migrants.
A case study of the “shameful history” – focusing on the post-war period until the scheme’s end in the Seventies – is being examined as part of the inquiry’s protection of children outside the United Kingdom investigation, one of 13 strands that makes up the IICSA.
Aswini Weereratne, of the Child Migrants Trust, told the inquiry that the term “sexual abuse” did not fully convey the full extent of the trauma that victims had suffered.
She added: “It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some of what was done there was of quite unacceptable depravity. Terms like sexual abuse are too weak to convey it.”
She said there was evidence that the Government and other agencies had known of the abuse but had brushed it under the carpet.
One former child migrant, David Hill, broke down as he recalled the abuse suffered by the children sent to the Fairbridge Farm school in New South Wales, Australia. Mr Hill said his research had led him to conclude that as many as 60 per cent of child migrants sent to Fairbridge Farm suffered sexual abuse during their time there.
He said: “We’ll never be able to undo the great wrong that was done to these children. But what is important to the survivors of sexual abuse is where this inquiry is satisfied with the evidence – name the villains.”