Janner: Sex abuse case scrapped over a lack of evidence
PROSECUTORS investigating an allegation that Lord Janner abused a teenage boy in Scotland yesterday said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ for criminal charges.
Detectives were also looking at whether the late Labour peer had used his political influence to engineer a cover-up of the claims.
But the Crown Office said there was a ‘lack of corroboration’ for the sexual assault claim and – following Janner’s death after the probe was launched – there would be ‘no criminal proceedings’.
The decision comes after a UK Government inquiry recently heard that Janner allegedly abused more than 30 children over 33 years and even took some of them to the Houses of Parliament.
Last night Alan Draper of In Care Abuse Survivors Scotland (INCAS), which led calls for the creation of Scotland’s ongoing inquiry into historical child abuse, said the allegations should be examined.
He added: ‘Given the widespread con-
‘Achieve some justice after waiting so long’
cern about some members of the judiciary in Scotland, as well as the police and fiscal services, it is absolutely essential that this particular survivor [Janner’s alleged victim] seeks “core participation” status to enable this matter to be investigated by the Scottish inquiry and to enable it to be probed in considerable detail.’
The Mail revealed last year that one of Janner’s alleged victims claimed the MP took him to Scotland in the 1970s, where he says he was subjected to assaults.
He made a report at an Edinburgh police station in 1991. Police Scotland combed through archived files last year and found documents relating to the case.
But a Crown Office spokesman said prosecutors had now decided there was no prospect of criminal proceedings because of a lack of corroboration and Janner’s death aged 87 in December last year.
The Mail revealed last year that senior personnel running the Scottish judicial and prosecution service at the time the complaint was made against Janner were key figures in the so-called ‘magic circle’ scandal of the early 1990s.
It centred around claims that top Scots judges, sheriffs and advocates had been compromised by gay liaisons. But this is now believed to have been a smokescreen for a paedophile ring operating in the heart of Edinburgh’s legal establishment involving senior legal figures, including former solicitor general Sir Nicholas Fairbairn – claims which are still under police investigation.
It is claimed that Fairbairn took part in abuse alongside his friend, the late Robert Henderson, QC.
Henderson has been accused by his daughter Susie of abusing her alongside Fairbairn, who she says raped her when she was aged four.
It is now believed that Henderson engineered the allegations of the ‘magic circle’ and that he was part of a network of powerful abusers.
It emerged in January that the criminal case against Janner in England had been dropped, angering victims.
The peer and former Labour MP in Leicester for 27 years, had been accused of a string of other child sex offences south of the Border. A ‘trial of the facts’ had been initially scheduled for April this year, but was later scrapped.
The police probe north of the Border continued and Scottish police submitted a report to the Crown Office earlier this year.
At the first hearing of a landmark UK inquiry into historical child sex abuse in March, Ben Emmerson, QC, said more than 30 adults had given statements to police alleging that they were abused by Janner.
He said the peer committed the ‘full range’ of sexual offences against the boys from 1955 to 1988 at children’s homes, hotels and his family home.
Seventeen of the alleged victims have been given ‘core participant status’ at the inquiry and their evidence will be finally made public.
The UK Government inquiry has pledged to make ‘findings of fact’ over the claims. The hearings in the Janner strand of the inquiry are expected to begin in September.
Last night Liz Dux, from Slater and Gordon, which represents a number of Janner’s alleged victims, said: ‘My clients … are now looking to the Goddard Inquiry to give their evidence and finally achieve some justice after waiting so long.’
Janner’s family have issued a statement insisting he was ‘entirely innocent of any wrong-doing’.