Star comment: Truth must be told on child abuse allegations

Now the issue has been brought to centre stage. The Government has been forced to take it seriously and act. And it is. And it has acted.

The way things look to the man and woman in the street at the moment is that years ago a whistleblower came forward to try to protect victims.

The response was to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. It is an impression strengthened by the fact that the dossier outlining the concerns has disappeared along with scores of potentially relevant documents.

This does not necessarily mean that there was a cover-up. We are talking about documents from a long time ago. It is though a vanishing act that would surely not have happened if the documents were considered of serious import and merited immediate action.

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to leave no stone unturned in seeking the truth about widespread allegations of a paedophile ring loosely connected with the Establishment back in the 1980s. The independent inquiry being established could be ramped up to a full public inquiry.

There is plenty to consider. When these matters first arose, were they dealt with appropriately and professionally? Or was there, as many will be inclined to believe, a cover-up in which the Establishment was seeking to look after its own?

If it is found that the allegations were not credible, then it would have been reasonable not to pursue them. The impression that is coming over, though, is that there was insufficient curiosity and no relentless and remorseless desire to get to the bottom of things – rather a casual desire for the whole affair to go away, and be filed quietly away and forgotten, which is exactly what happened.

According to the chief executive of Barnardo's, Javed Khan, there is much greater awareness of, and much less tolerance of child abuse now than there was 20 to 30 years ago.

That is a tough charge to make against the 1980s generation – that it tolerated child abuse and turned a blind eye.

For the sake of public confidence we need to get to the truth. If there was an institutional failure to protect victims coupled with the connivance of the Establishment in child abuse, it will be one of the greatest scandals of modern times.