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Russell Specterman broke down in tears and hung up the phone when his sister called to tell him that there was going to be an independent inquiry into child sex abuse.

“I just broke down,” he tells The Independent. “I knew the pain and trauma that it would bring up in me.”

Mr Specterman, 59, had grown up in the care of Lambeth, the council which became a core case study in the Independent Inquiry (IICSA). Findings would later detail the council’s institutional failings as it “retained in its employment adults who posed a risk to children” and “failed to investigate its employees when they were suspected of child sexual abuse.”

It’s been more than a decade since IICSA was first announced after posthumous investigations into the Jimmy Savile scandal revealed widespread child abuse.

It cost a staggering £186.6 million and more than 7,000 survivors were involved in the inquiry over the course of the seven years it ran. Three different panel chairs were forced to resign before Professor Alexis Jay, already a panel member, took up the mantle in August 2016.

Panel members were paid a day rate of £565 for their participation in the inq