‘Serious and inexcusable failings’ by police investigating Lord Janner abuse
CHILD sexual abuse allegations against Lord Janner of Braunstone were not properly investigated, an inquiry said yesterday as it concluded police made “serious and inexcusable” failings.
The former Labour MP for Leicester died in 2015 months after being charged with a string of indecent assault and buggery charges relating to nine separate complainants.
Despite the absence of any successful criminal or civil proceedings, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has spent several years investigating how allegations against Lord Janner – always denied by his family – were handled by the authorities.
It released an excoriating report which said the complainants were “let down” by the police, prosecutors and local authorities over several decades.
IICSA found that senior officers in two different investigations by Leicestershire Police – Operation Magnolia in 2000 and Operation Dauntless in 2006 – appeared reluctant to pursue allegations against the Labour grandee.
Investigators “did not look beyond the often troubled backgrounds” of the alleged victims, who said they were abused in children’s homes in the county between the early 1960s and the late 1980s, according to the report.
Lord Janner’s family have always insisted the allegations were false and previously suggested IICSA risked becoming a “kangaroo court” by pressing ahead with its investigation into the institutional response. Yesterday, Daniel Janner QC, Lord Janner’s son, spoke on behalf of the family: “Our late father’s innocence is unchallenged in this report. It offers no proof whatsoever of guilt. He was, himself, the victim of institutional failings because he was denied the ability (in court) while of sound mind, prior to his dementia, to defend himself and challenge the false allegations.
“The fact all the civil claims made against his estate were withdrawn or discontinued speaks for itself.” The inquiry, which said it was not investigating the “truth or otherwise of the allegations”, said it had examined allegations made against the late peer by 33 complainants.
All the complainants were said to have been between eight and 16 at the time of the alleged incidents, with much of their evidence to the inquiry given in closed hearings to protect their identity.
Operation Magnolia was “insufficient and seemingly involved a deliberate decision by Leicestershire Police to withhold key witness statements from the Crown Prosecution Service”. Whatever the reason, the failure to pass on these statements was serious and inexcusable,” IICSA concluded.
In Dauntless, the senior investigating officer, Christopher Thomas, and the CPS reviewing lawyer, Roger Rock, were “reluctant” to progress the investigation, according to IICSA.
It concludes that their decisions were “unsound and strategically flawed”. Leicestershire Council was also found to have had a “sorry record of failures in relation to the sexual abuse of children in its care in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s”.