Fresh bid to hush-up sex abuse report

A WELSH county council is so concerned to prevent a report into Britain's biggest child abuse scandal becoming public that it has told the authors they must return their own copies.

Clwyd council is withholding the report - the contents of which are known to the Independent on Sunday - even though its key recommendation is that there should be a public inquiry.

The Jillings report concerns a decade of abuse in children's homes, in which it is thought between 100 and 200 children were sexually molested, of whom at least a dozen are now dead.

The report attacks all the agencies that failed to stop the scandal, from the county council and the Welsh Office to North Wales police.

One reason a judicial inquiry is needed, it says, is that only such a body could investigate rumours that public figures were involved.

The authors, John Jillings, Jane Tunstall and Gerrilyn Smith, have been asked by the county solicitor, Andrew Loveridge, to hand in their copies.

This is the 14th report into the affair, and none has yet been published.

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