The website of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has posted online – and then removed without explanation – a “Notice of Determination” in which the Chair of the inquiry, Alexis Jay, explains her reasons for denying core participant status to an individual given the reference number “WM-A5”.
The applicant alleged that she had been abused in the 1970s by ten individuals described by Jay as persons who “are or were well known, some very well known, in the fields of politics and entertainment.” Two names are disclosed in the document: Jimmy Savile (misspelt as “Jimmy Saville”) and former Prime Minister Edward Heath. WM-A5 also alleged Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Jay found WM-A5’s claims impossible to credit. WM-A5 claimed to have been abused by Conservative politicians at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country residence, at a time when the Labour Party was in power, and to have been abused by Heath at his home in Salisbury several years before he lived there. Further, she claimed to have first made these allegations some years ago, supposedly thus proving that she was not just bandwagoning on current news reports, but her evidence for this was found to be false. She provided a range of locations, but “no explanation as to how she came to be in such disparate places”.
Presumably the document has been withdrawn by the IICSA because it contains other material that might indicate the applicant’s likely identity when compared with media reports. We thus have a situation in which someone can present themselves as being at the centre of a sensational narrative in the media, yet avoid scrutiny by resorting to anonymity when further claims are presented in another context.
This impedes putting the record straight – and holding to account journalists and others who have been involved in concocting and promoting false allegations and conspiracy theories.
UPDATE (2 September) : The Notice of Determination has since been referred by Private Eye magazine (issue 1477) and by The Sunday Times. The latter has a quote from the IICSA about the removal of the document from the inquiry website:
“We received a complaint about the notice of determination and took it down while it is addressed. It will be republished in the next few weeks.”
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