Ipsos Political Monitor - Majority are not confident that the public inquiries into historical child abuse allegations will find out the truth

New polling from Ipsos shows that just over half of the British public (56%) are not confident the recently announced public inquiries into allegations of child abuse will find out the truth. One in six (17%) are not at all confident, with 39% not very confident; 35% are fairly confident and just 6% are very confident that the inquiries will find out the truth. The most frequent reason cited by those lacking confidence in the inquiries is that the establishment will use their power to cover up the findings; just under half (46%) expressed concerns about such a cover up. Other main factors undermining confidence in the inquiries are concerns the alleged acts happened too long ago (24%), that they won’t be able to find the evidence (23%), and a lack of confidence in the people running the inquiry (23%) – it should be noted that fieldwork was prior to the resignation of Lady Butler-Sloss from heading up one of the inquiries. There is widespread support for investigations into allegations of child abuse that happened many years ago, however. Nine in ten (90%) agree that child abuse is such a serious crime that the police should be investigating the allegations, even if they happened a long time ago, with 5% disagreeing.

Similarly, when given the opposing point of view that police should be concentrating on current crimes rather than investigating allegations of historical child abuse, only 28% think they should be concentrating on current crimes, with 61% disagreeing. The vast majority of Britons believe that child abuse was covered up by the establishment in the 1970s and 1980s, with just under nine in ten (87%) thinking so and just 4% disagreeing. A yet greater proportion (92%) think that child abuse is taken more seriously now than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, with 3% disagreeing. Despite this, half of Britons (50%) think that the establishment and people in positions of power would try to cover up incidents of child abuse if it happened now, with 39% disagreeing. Gideon Skinner, Head of Political Research at Ipsos said:

“Two things stand out clearly from this poll: The high distrust in the establishment of the time – trust which has still not fully recovered - and a strong conviction among the public that child abuse is so serious that these allegations have to be investigated.”

Downloads: Download the survey topline (PDF) Download the computer tables (PDF) Download the charts (PDF) Technical note: Ipsos interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 18+ across Great Britain. Interviews were conducted by telephone 12^th – 15^th July 2014.  Data are weighted to match the profile of the population.