bbcA former children’s commissioner will chair the government’s inquiry into recruitment gangs.
Baroness Anne Longfield will lead the inquiry, which was derailed in October when four women resigned from its panel of survivors and two leading candidates to chair the inquiry withdrew.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Longfield had “dedicated her life to children’s rights” as she announced the appointment in the House of Commons.
The Prime Minister announced the national inquiry in June, accepting the recommendation of an audit of evidence into the nature and scale of group child sexual abuse by Baroness Louise Casey.
Longfield will be joined by panellists Zoe Billingham CBE, a former inspector at HM Constabulary, and Eleanor Kelly CBE, former chief executive of Southwark Council, to lead the inquiry.
Mahmood said Casey had recommended Longfield and the two panellists following “recent engagement with victims” and that they would meet survivors later this week.
On his appointment, Longfield said the inquiry “owes it to victims, survivors and the wider public to identify the truth, address the failings of the past and ensure that children and young people today are protected in a way that others were not.”
