Janner star witness in child sex inquiry lied about abuse by his care home boss
A FORMER children’s home resident who is the principal source of accusations that the late politician Greville Janner was a paedophile made bogus claims that he was sexually abused by a woman at the care home where he lived.
A Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed that in 1991 Janner’s accuser, now middle-aged, made false allegations against Barbara Fitt, the head of the Station Road home in Leicester – at the same time he first told police he had been abused by the Labour MP. Mrs Fitt was exonerated later that year but died suddenly aged 44, months after she was formally cleared by a panel of social services managers. Her widower, Raymond, 79, told this newspaper the ‘lies’ had a ‘devastating impact’ on her.
He said: ‘I can’t say this business was the reason she passed on. She was ill. But it was awful for her to go through that. They were false claims, and they upset her terribly.’
Disclosure of the false claims against Mrs Fitt are certain to have a dramatic impact on the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse under New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard, which will hear evidence on the Janner case next year.
The inquiry’s counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, last week insisted that in due course, it would make ‘findings of fact’ in the cases it considers – a prospect which the Janner family has called fundamentally unfair.
Legal experts last night said the fact that the accuser – whom this newspaper will call Tony – made bogus sexual allegations against Mrs Fitt at the same time as he first accused Janner might have played an important part in the initial decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to charge the MP and peer as a child abuser.
Lord Janner, who had advanced dementia, died in December.
Doubts about Tony’s reliability are especially significant because, although 33 people have now claimed Janner abused them, for many years he was the only accuser. They suggest that the decision not to charge Janner was not an ‘Establishment cover-up’, as some have claimed, but a determination on ordinary legal grounds.
Top criminal law specialist Andrew Hall QC, a former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: ‘If you are dealing with someone who has made allegations which have been thoroughly investigated and shown to be baseless, that has to be taken into account when the decision is made whether to charge someone else on the basis of his evidence – especially in a case where he is likely to be the only material witness, and his credibility is therefore critical.’
He said he was sure the CPS must have considered Tony’s false claims against Mrs Fitt when it decided not to prosecute Janner – a decision for which for which it has been savagely criticised, most recently in a report by the retired High Court judge, Sir Richard Henriques.
Many of Janner’s alleged victims are suing his estate for compensation.
The Mail on Sunday investigation also reveals that:
Tony had a history of ‘highly sexualised’ inappropriate behaviour in care before he met Janner, and was moved from the home run by Mrs Fitt after he assaulted a six-year-old girl;
As an adult, in 2001 he was convicted of multiple offences of sexual assault against underage boys, jailed
‘As the only witness, his credibility is critical’
for four years and placed on the Sex Offender Register for ten years;
Sir Richard knew about Tony’s claims against Mrs Fitt, telling this newspaper that if the CPS was aware of them ‘they plainly should have figured’ in the decision to charge, or not charge, Janner. But Sir Richard did not mention this, nor Tony’s sex offending record, in his report;
Some of those now claiming that
Janner abused them were among 400 former children’s home residents interviewed by police in 1990 and 1991 as part of an inquiry into sex abuse by social services boss Frank Beck, who was convicted and jailed for life. None except Tony mentioned abuse by Janner at the time.
Tony is the son of a teenage girl and a father who had a long crimi- nal record. Social services sources say he was taken into care as an infant. He showed signs of emotional disturbance throughout his childhood. He was fostered but spent most of his formative years in children’s homes, and arrived at the Station Road home in the Leicester suburb of Wigston in the early 1970s. Mrs Fitt was the social worker in charge and is remembered as a large, jolly lady who treated her staff and child residents firmly, but with kindness. She was married to Raymond, who worked for the local council waste department, for more than 25 years. They had a foster son but no children of their own. Soon after Tony started living at Station Road, he met Greville Janner, then the Labour MP for Leicester West. Janner was a skilled amateur magician, and is said to have taken Tony under his wing after demonstrating tricks at his school. He invited Tony to visit him at the House of Commons and at his family home in London. Sometimes Tony stayed in a suite Janner rented at a Leicester Holiday Inn while on constituency business. According to sources close to social services at the time, the relationship broke down at the end of 1974 after Mrs Fitt twice found ‘substantial’ quantities of cash that Tony had stolen from Janner and the Labour Party office. After the second theft, Janner wrote to Mrs Fitt saying that though he had tried his utmost, he could no longer mentor Tony or have him at his home.
By this time, Tony was about to leave Station Road after the incident with the six-year-old girl. It was decided to move Tony to another Leicester home, in part to protect other child residents.
This home was one of several run by Frank Beck, a former soldier who was to become notorious. He was a devotee of an experimental treatment for disturbed children known as ‘regression therapy’, in which children in their teens sometimes went back to using bottles with teats and carrying soft toys as a way of ‘regressing’ them to early childhood, in the hope of overcoming their early traumas. Tony was one of those who experienced it.
In 1986, two former staff alleged Beck was a sexual abuser, and after initially protesting his innocence, he resigned. A large-scale police investigation began soon afterwards.
Beck was arrested and charged with multiple offences in April 1990. His three-month trial started in August 1991. Having been convicted and awarded five life sen- tences, Beck – who died in 1994, while preparing an appeal – is still reviled. Yet he still has supporters among those who knew and worked with him and they remain convinced he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Beck’s solicitor, Oliver D’Sa, was well-known in Leicester legal circles as a fearless lawyer who was not afraid to take on unpopular cases – such as those of gay men accused of ‘cottaging’ in public toilets. Towards the end of 1990, his firm was approached by a man who had been in Beck’s care and thought the world of him, saying that it was thanks to Beck that he had got his life back on track, finding both a job and a wife. It was Tony. He said he wanted to give evidence in Beck’s defence.
But he also made a sensational claim: that while Beck had never molested him, he had been sexually assaulted numerous times by Janner.
On January 29, 1991, Tony went to a local police station to spend the whole day being interviewed about Janner.
This was when he made his claims about Barbara Fitt.
After the interview, the police passed the allegations about Mrs Fitt – who was still running Station Road – to the social services department, along with a copy of Tony’s statement. In the summer of 1991 a panel of senior managers noted her exemplary record and decided to take no further
‘He stole large amounts of cash from Janner’
action, determining that the claims were bogus, a complete fabrication.
Mrs Fitt told the panel she thought Tony may have been seeking ‘revenge’ because she had been responsible for having him moved in 1974, after the incident with the six-year-old.
But the damage was done. She died on November 1, 1991, following a routine gallstone operation.
A few days later, Tony gave evidence at the Beck trial and made his claims about Janner public. He said nothing about Mrs Fitt.
Tony’s claims forced Janner to make an angry statement denying them in the Commons.
In 2001, Tony was convicted of three counts of sexual assault on underage boys after being caught on CCTV engaged in a sexual act in the members’ car park at Leicestershire County Council. Other charges were left on file. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and ten years on the sex offender register.
In his report on the Janner case, issued in January, Sir Richard Henriques said the CPS was ‘wrong’ not to charge the MP in 1991, arguing that there was enough evidence to provide a ‘realistic prospect of conviction’ for serious sexual offences. He said nothing about Tony’s false claims about Mrs Fitt.
Sir Richard criticised police for an ‘inefficient investigation’, and added that Tony’s claims should have been considered again in 2002 and 2007, when two others claimed Janner had sexually abused them. By then, Tony had been convicted. Last week Sir Richard told The Mail on Sunday that he was aware of the false claims against Mrs Fitt, and agreed they ‘plainly should have figured in the 1991 charging decision’, and would have been disclosed to the defence if Janner had been charged. However, he added that he believed they had, inexplicably, not been in the CPS file when it made its decision, and this was why he had not mentioned them. He was also aware of Tony’s later convictions. The CPS said it could not comment. Liz Dux, a specialist sexual abuse claim lawyer at law firm Slater and Gordon, who is Tony’s solicitor, said: ‘While the independent inquiry is under way it would be inappropriate to comment on any of the evidence. All of our clients welcome the opportunity for their credibility to be subject to judicial findings.’ The MoS investigation seems certain to strengthen the argument being made by the families of Janner and other alleged perpetrators that the Goddard inquiry process is flawed. Last night a close friend of Janner’s three children said: ‘The family is horrified that the inquiry appears to be proceeding on the assumption that Janner was guilty. ‘Lord Janner was convicted of no offence, and this is being driven by complainants. ‘It is an obscenity that it is insisting it will make findings of fact on the basis of evidence from people seeking compensation who cannot be cross examined, when Janner himself is dead and cannot answer back.’