【经济学人】还虐童案一个真相|2016.10.22|总第712期

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翻译 | 栏目六第一组

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Public inquiries

公开调查

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The child-abuse inquiry is not going well. What makes for a successful one?

虐童调查进展不顺，如何才能成功？

Oct 22nd 2016 | From the print edition

2016年10月22日|摘自印刷版

M社 应急备用 微信公众号： 英语微风尚

TO LOSE one inquiry chairman may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness. If the ongoing inquiry into whether the British establishment overlooked decades of child abuse were not so serious, it would have become a farce. In recent days Lowell Goddard, the New Zealand judge appointed as the investigation’s third chairman, has been accused of racism and misconduct. (Justice Goddard, who stood down in August, strenuously denies the allegations.) The problems highlight how inquiries have changed and what challenges they pose.

如果说失去一位调查委员会主席是运气不好，那么失去三位就有些用心不够了。英国政府机构究竟有没有对数十年来的虐童事件采取视若无睹的态度？对此正在进行的调查如果不够严肃，那么早就是一场闹剧了。最近，调查委员会第三任主席，新西兰法官洛厄尔·戈达德被指控有种族歧视和渎职行为（八月份已经下台的他竭力否认相关指控）。这些问题促使人们开始认真思考调查此前经历了怎样的变革以及这些变革给调查带来了哪些挑战。

Britain is keen on public inquiries. That is partly because of its political set-up. The government sits in Parliament, so people are reluctant to entrust MPs with the job of investigating problems in which state institutions are implicated. Canada, with its similar system of government, is also enamoured of them, says Kent Roach of the University of Toronto. America, whose executive and legislature are separate, tends to hand over such matters to congressional committees.

英国热衷于公开调查的部分原因在于其政治体制。由于政府从议会中产生，因此对于涉及政府机构的调查，人们不愿意委托给国会议员。多伦多大学的Kent Roach说：加拿大与英国政体相似，也喜欢公开调查。而美国因为执法和立法分离，通常会把此类问题交给国会委员会。

Rules laid down in 1921 governed how inquiries were run until 2005, when a new act was introduced. That was in part inspired by the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday, the British army’s massacre of 13 civil-rights marchers in Northern Ireland in 1972. It marked a turning point. Though widely regarded as a success, the cost—around £195m ($240m)—was prohibitive. The government introduced the 2005 act in part so that the expense of future investigations could be limited. Inquiries became narrower in their scope. Lord Hutton’s scrutiny of the death of David Kelly, a government weapons-scientist, cost a mere £2.5m and heard evidence for just 22 days. The child-abuse inquiry breaks with that trend. The budget for 2015-16 alone was £17.9m. Theresa May, who initiated the investigation as home secretary, has ordered an interim report by the end of 2018, but the inquiry has no end date.

2005年新的调查法案出台前，调查的组织方式一直由1921年的法律规定。出台新法案的部分原因是萨维尔领导的“血色星期天”（1972年，英国军队杀害了13名参加北爱尔兰游行示威活动的民权人士）调查。虽然调查结果被广泛认可，但高达1.95亿欧元（2.4亿美元）的成本令政府难以承受。基于限制今后调查花费的考虑，政府提出了新法案。调查规模也随之缩小。赫顿勋爵负责的武器科学家大卫·凯利死亡事件的调查花费250万欧元，听取证词用时22天。虐童调查打破了这一趋势，单单2015—2016年度的预算就达1790万欧元。日前，担任内政部长时发起该调查的首相特蕾莎·梅，要求调查委员会在2018年年底前提交调查中期报告，但没有规定调查的最终结束日期。

Its vast remit has prompted criticism. It will examine instances of child abuse dating back to 1970 in institutions in England and Wales as wide-ranging as the army, churches, the police, Parliament, schools and health services. But the subject of such investigations does not necessarily determine their length or cost. The Saville inquiry focused on events that took place over a matter of minutes. The investigation took 12 years. Meanwhile the hearings for an inquiry into child abuse in Jersey, examining wrongdoing as far back as the second world war, took two years (it has yet to publish its report).

调查牵涉范围之广深受诟病。审查内容涵盖英格兰、威尔士政府以及军队、教堂、警局、国会、学校和医疗服务部门等机构1970年以来的虐童案例。然而，调查对象不一定是调查耗时和成本的决定因素。萨维尔花费12年，调查的仅仅是发生在几分钟内的事情。泽西虐童调查听证用时仅2年，却审查了二战以来的违法行为（调查报告尚未公布）。