If dealing with police and regulatory investigations, reporting obligations and requests for disclosure arising from such allegations was not enough, schools now need to be mindful of the terms and potential impact of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (the Inquiry).
After a few false starts, the independent Inquiry now chaired by Hon. Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand High Court Judge, was finally established in March 2015. Full details of the scope and terms of reference of the Inquiry can be found at www.csa-inquiry.independent.gov.uk/.
It is a statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 and has powers to compel schools to co-operate and witnesses to give evidence.
The purpose of the Inquiry is stated to be to'consider the extent to which state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation; to consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed; to identify further action needed to address any failings identified; to consider the steps which it is necessary for state and non-state institutions to take in order to protect children from such abuse in the future; and to publish a report with recommendations.'
The Inquiry covers England and Wales only and specifically includes independent schools. It has no cut-off date and will look into historic allegations.
Regular reports will be published from 2016 and an interim report will be published at the end of 2018. The Inquiry into the education and religion sectors will be led by Prof. Malcolm Evans OBE, a human rights academic.
The Inquiry is inviting anyone who was sexually abused as a child in an institutional setting or who was sexually abused as a child and reported the abuse to a person in authority (such as a teacher) to make contact via their website as part of the Truth Project. It is therefore almost inevitable that further allegations will come to light as a result of the Inquiry.
Further, any school that has already featured in the press in relation to sexual abuse could well be approached by the Inquiry.
Goddard has also issued a 'call to arms' and urges everyone to'take a proactive stance towards the Inquiry - to review your files, records and procedures voluntarily and to take the initiative to self-report instances of institutional failure - rather than waiting for us to come and see you.'
Goddard has also issued a warning to all organisations to retain all documents which may be relevant to the Inquiry in order to ensure that no line of investigation is curtailed by the premature destruction of files or records which may later be required as evidence.
This request is incredibly wide and could cover both current and historic pupil and staff records held by schools, and relates to all information, however held pertaining directly or indirectly to 'the sexual abuse of children or to child protection and care' and includes information which relates:
Many schools will have a rolling document destruction policy, and could therefore be unwittingly destroying documents which may later be considered to be relevant to the Inquiry, particularly if they are unaware of historic allegations.
If schools do destroy relevant information, at best this could be reputationally damaging and lead to allegations of a 'cover-up' and at worst could constitute a criminal offence.
We recommend that schools: