Claire Adams@claire_adams694
SECTION 5: FINAL ASSESSMENT
Having completed my review of the report, I have reached a number of conclusions.
The report contains survivor testimony, whistleblower testimony, references to court cases, convictions, official inquiries, and examples of genuine institutional failure. Those issues deserve to be investigated and victims deserve to be heard.
However, my review was not intended to determine whether child sexual exploitation exists. That has already been established through countless prosecutions, inquiries, and victim testimony over many years.
My review was intended to assess the report itself.
Throughout that review, I was unable to locate published Terms of Reference, a methodology, participant numbers, participant demographics, inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria, verification procedures, evidential standards, or the datasets underpinning a number of the report’s demographic conclusions.
I was also struck by the language used throughout the report. From the Foreword onwards, the report adopts a highly emotive and persuasive tone. Readers are presented with political, cultural, and demographic conclusions, yet I have been unable to locate the transparent evidential framework that would allow many of those conclusions to be independently scrutinised.
A report should not ask readers to trust its conclusions.
It should provide the evidence, methodology, and transparency necessary for readers to reach those conclusions themselves.
My overall assessment is that the report raises important issues and contains potentially valuable testimony. However, significant questions remain regarding governance, methodology, transparency, evidential standards, and the presentation of demographic conclusions.
In its current form, I do not believe the report meets the standard of transparency that would normally be expected of a document seeking to make such far-reaching conclusions.
Review concluded.