Questions Raised Over Dementia Claim By Alleged Paedophile Lord Janner

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Questions Raised Over Dementia Claim By Alleged Paedophile Lord Janner

It has come to light that Lord Janner signed a letter on April 9th saying he wanted to remain a peer  just the week before he was ruled unfit to face child sex charges

The fact the Labour peer was able to sign the statement has cast doubts on the decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to charge him with 22 child sex offences due to the “severity” of his dementia.

Questions Raised Over Dementia Claim By Alleged Paedophile Lord Janner

Accusations that the peer is being protected by the Establishment are starting to grow after it emerged at least 19 men with dementia have been convicted of child sex offences since 2010 including 10 in the past year.

The MailOnline report;

Abuse campaigners last night angrily questioned why the suspected paedophile was able to remain in the House of Lords if he was too frail to be brought before court.

The Crown Prosecution Service has faced widespread criticism since announcing last week that Janner would escape prosecution over child sex allegations because he has Alzheimer’s disease.

But now it has emerged that the peer was apparently well enough to sign his name in an April 9 note to Lords authorities.

The former Labour MP, 86, claimed more than £100,000 in parliamentary expenses and allowances in the four years after he was diagnosed with dementia in 2009. He has not attended the Lords since detectives raided his North London home in December 2013. Last October he took a formal leave of absence from Parliament, allowing him to resume his duties after giving three months’ notice.

New rules which came into effect last May provide a way for peers to retire permanently while keeping their titles and certain perks. But Janner requested an extension of his leave of absence instead of offering to stand down in the letter sent to a senior Lords official 12 days ago.

A House of Lords spokesman confirmed the alleged paedophile signed the note himself, but could not confirm whether the handwriting below the signature was his.

Simon Danczuk, the Labour politician who exposed the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith’s horrific abuse of boys, said it was not right for Janner to stay in the Lords yet avoid court.

‘If you are putting yourself forward to remain a legislator, then surely you are fit enough to be tested before the law,’ he said.

‘If he has got a leave of absence from the Lords, that implies that he may get well. Why isn’t he retiring? It makes a mockery of it all. He is bringing the House of Lords into disrepute almost single-handedly.’

Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, added: ‘He couldn’t have signed this letter if he was non compos mentis.

‘But if he isn’t compos mentis, there’s no way he should be anywhere near our legislature. How can they say he’s not fit to stand trial for the most serious of crimes when he himself has argued that age should not be a barrier to prosecuting Nazi war criminals?

‘It stinks of the Establishment covering up and ensuring he doesn’t have to take the stand in public. This is a cover-up, there can be no question about it.’

Janner’s alleged victims have accused him of preying on boys at care homes around his former Leicester West constituency.

He was suspended by Labour after the CPS ruled last Thursday that there was enough evidence to charge him with 22 sexual offences against children dating from 1969 to 1988. But Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders said he would not be prosecuted because his deteriorating dementia means there could be no criminal conviction.

Notable is the fact that Janner himself criticised the Old Bailey jury system for allowing an 86-year-old man with dementia to escape being questioned in 1997 over Nazi atrocities that had taken place in 1941 and 1942.

 

 

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