Workshy child abuse probe chief Dame Lowell Goddard gets to keep free flat

THE £360,000-a-year judge who quit Britain’s child abuse inquiry will keep her £2,000-a-week grace and favour home.

Dame Lowell Goddard, 67, who quit on Thursday, could also get a £90,000 pay-off.

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She was appointed in April 2015 after first Baroness Butler-Sloss quit a week into the job and then Dame Fiona Woolf left after little over a month.

Yet she heard no evidence into claims of abuse from the Church, Westminster and the judiciary.

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She also spent more than 44 days in Australia and New Zealand on “inquiry business”.

Yet in that time she had just two meetings with officials from Australia’s Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse during 2015 and 2016.

As well as her pay, her £110,000 rent on a flat and her bills and driver were covered by taxpayers.

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The New Zealander and her husband also got four return flights home a year.

The 44 days away were on top of 30 days’ annual leave.

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Phil Johnson, of the Ministers & Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group, said last night: “That is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“There are questions to be asked about what she was doing.”

Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said her exit was “disappointing” and has asked her to face MPs’ questions.

The Home Office said she could live in the flat until she could make “alternative arrangements”.