Campaigners are outraged by the decision made by the Crown Prosecution Service not to put Lord Greville Janner on trial for historic sex abuse allegations.
The director of public prosecutions, announced that it is not in the public interest to put Lord Greville Janner of Braunstone, QC, on trial, meaning that he will escape charges for the second time over alleged historic child sex crimes. The CPS say that the severity of his dementia makes him unfit to stand trial.
The abuse allegations relate to residents in Leicestershire children’s homes between 1970 and the 1980s.
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MP for Leicester West at the time, it is alleged that Lord Janner befriended the manager of a children’s care home to allow him access to children so he could “perpetrate serious sexual offences on children,” the CPS said.
Police condemned the CPS decision as “wrong”, and the Labour Party has suspended the 86-year-old Labour peer.
The Telegraph reports: Crown Prosecution Service lawyers have spent nine months studying evidence gathered by Leicestershire police’s Operation Enamel and detectives have interviewed more than 20 men who claim they were abused by Lord Janner in their youth.
On Wednesday night police officers visited the alleged victims to inform them of the decision not to proceed to trial, The Times reported.
Lord Janner, 86, the former MP for Leicester West, denied the allegations against him when they first surfaced two decades ago.
He has not been interviewed by detectives because of poor health but police obtained warrants to search his home in Hampstead, north London and his office in the House of Lords.
He was previously investigated in the early 1990s but detectives on the case were told by senior officers that they must not arrest the MP or search his property.
Ms Saunder’s decision has angered campaigners who believe a trial would be in the public interest.
The National Association for People abused in Childhood said last night that the CPS decigion was a “step backwards for justice”.
Pete Saunders, a spokesman, told The Times: “There is enough evidence to proceed with this case and that Alison Saunders can say it is not in the public interest is an outrage.
“I am not saying it is in the public interest to send a very old man to prison, but surely it is in the public interest to expose the evidence and give victims the chance to be heard.
“The message here is that if you are old or important you can still get away with it”.
Niamh Harris
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