The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry strides into inaction...



Credit for the photo to https://holliegreigjustice.wordpress.com/

Both Robert Green and David Scott appeared on UK Column News today 2 October 2015. They had put themselves forward to be panel members of the Scottish Inquiry into historical child  abuse but had been turned down. That did not surprise them because they have both campaigned for an inquiry into the Hollie Greig case about which the Scottish establishment remains silent:


Speaking of the Child Abuse Inquiry in Scotland, David Scott said:

"After ten months of waiting we have finally got a start  - or what is claimed to be a start -  to the national Child Abuse Inquiry in Scotland. That was 1st October, that was the big day and on that day nothing happened. There was an email that came round announcing that this Inquiry had started but it then transpired that started didn`t mean very much because the panel had not yet been appointed. [Actually this non-starter of an inquiry had only happened after FIFTEEN YEARS of campaigning by survivors of abuse in Scotland.]

Said David Scott: "So the Inquiry has not yet started to consider how it might proceed with the Inquiry. So after ten months in Scotland, there has been precisely zero real progress."

Brian Gerrish looked at a document describing the work of historical child abuse and mentioned one particular paragraph:

"The Hisorical Child Abuse Inquiry will seek to raise public awareness of the abuse of children in care; provide an opportunity for public acknowledgement of their suffering and serve as a forum for validation of their experience. " "I think I`m going to say I`m very confused," said Brian Gerrish, "because what this seems to be doing is saying we are going to make this a sort of spectator sport where we are all going to recognise that thousands of children have been abused; we`re going to acknowledge they have been abused and then we have validated their experiences. There is nothing here about bringing the perpetrators of child abuse to justice and putting them in prison. "

David Scott then went deeper into the Terms of Reference for the Inquiry. He pointed out that it only covers children who have been abused in the care of the state whilst they were in residential care. According to him that rules out abuse suffered by children, for instance, in schools when they were resident with their families. So it rules out the likes of the abuse suffered by Hollie Greig. As far as David Scott is concerned, that has been done deliberately because he knows there are flows of emails going towards the Scottish Government concerned about the Hollie Greig case which the Scottish Government does not want to acknowledge.

 Podcast here. There is confusion over the dates, but the day had been full of gremlins. https://soundcloud.com/ukcolumn/uk-column-news-podcast-2nd-october-2015

Hope to report more over the weekend, but interrupted due to gremlins on my computer.