‘Vindication’ and relief for Janner family
THE FAMILY of the late Lord Janner have called on the Jewish community to stop “airbrushing” him out of history after six men pursuing civil suits alleging child sexual abuse dropped their cases.
Daniel Janner, the peer’s son, said: “Now it’s time for the community, particularly the institutions which our father founded, to stop pretending that he didn’t exist”.
The Holocaust Educational Trust— which Lord Janner helped establish — and the Board of Deputies, of which the peer had been president, should now acknowledge his contribution, Mr Janner said.
“It is both wrong and hurtful. Now that the civil cases have been dropped and the truth has emerged, I will expect the community to acknowledge proudly the founder of their organisations.
“My father co-founded the Holocaust Educational Trust. The organisation was designed in part to combat antisemitism and racism, and yet the very organisation that should be standing and fighting for him, appreciating the antisemitism which has been stirred Lord Janner (left). The fight to clear his name has been led by his children, Laura, Daniel and Marion
up by this and because of this, has seen fit to remain silent. “The
HET has a lecture in the name of Merlyn Rees, my father’s co-founder, but it has totally airbrushed my father out altogether.”
Mr Janner also called on the Board and the Commonwealth Jewish Coun-
cil, which the peer co-founded, to hold “a proper memorial service”.
The latest development in the case had been entirely unexpected, the family said.
The peer’s younger daughter, Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, senior rabbi of the Movement for Reform Judaism, said her immediate reaction was: “Tears. Many, many tears. It was a total shock, we had no idea it was in the pipeline”.
The move, she said, had prompted feelings of “immense relief and intense gratitude”, a response she said she shared with her brother Daniel, a QC, and sister Marion, a mental health campaigner.
Rabbi Janner-Klausner said the sibllings had become strongly united in the face of the allegations against the peer.
“We are so lucky to have had him as our father and we three became a formidable team, fighting for him. We do feel that he bequeathed the three of us the skills to fight this,” she said.
The rabbi added that she had been treated with “love and affection” by many in the community during their ordeal.
But she added that it was “time to reset the clock as though Dad had just died. He was a great man and what happened was a terrible blood libel. ”
Three other men had already withdrawn their compensation claims in March.
Thirty-three separate allegations of historical child sexual abuse dating back to the 1960s had been made against the Labour peer.
The Janner family have insisted their father was “entirely innocent of any wrongdoing”.
Planned criminal proceeding were dropped in December 2015 when Lord Janner died, aged 87, after a battle against severe dementia.
The allegations against him remain as a separate strand of the national child abuse inquiry, now under its fourth chair, Baroness Jay.
The Janner siblings are seeking an urgent meeting with her in an effort to get Lord Janner removed from the inquiry.
Rabbi Janner-Klausner said they had attempted to see Baroness Jay in January, but were “treated like dirt”.
Now she is angry at the reason given by Richard Scorer, one of the lawyers for the claimants, as to why the claims have been dropped.
Mr Scorer said: “Our clients have now received categorical assurances from Baroness Jay, that she will hear the allegations of abuse by the late Lord Janner as part of her wide-reaching inquiry, and that the actions of the various agencies involved will be scrutinised in detail.
“As a result, our clients will focus their efforts on working with the inquiry to discover the truth of what really happened rather than continue to fight the civil cases against Janner’s estate, which are at risk of being ruled out of time.”
But Rabbi Janner-Klausner did not accept this explanation. She believed that the lawsuits had been dropped “because when it came to the prospect of giving evidence and being crossexamined, they couldn’t do it.”
One of the claimants had alleged sustained abuse over a period in 1987 when the former MP’s passport showed he had been in Australia at the time.
Rabbi Janner-Klausner added that if it were true that Baroness Jay had given such assurances to Mr Scorer’s clients, “then she should resign, because it makes the inquiry even more of a farce, and certainly not independent”.
Mr Janner, who has been the main spokesman in the fight by the siblings to clear their father’s name, described the family’s “immense relief and fantastic joy that he has been vindicated.
“Had there been anything [to prove the allegations] the cases would not have been dropped. These people, faced with being cross-examined, have now decided to slither back under the stones from which they came”.
He said that keeping Lord Janner as a separate strand in the inquiry was now “a witch-hunt which must surely be closed down. It has become a farce and undermines the integrity of the rest of the inquiry”.
Mr Janner said he had attended a Neve Shalom fundraising dinner recently which was addressed by his father’s great friend, Prince Hassan of Jordan. The two men jointly founded the Coexistence Trust.
“Prince Hassan greeted me with a big hug, which meant a tremendous amount to me, and the chairman, Laurence Brass, spoke warmly about Dad. We want everyone to echo this response,” Mr janner said.
An immediate effect of the cases being dropped is that Lord Janner’s estate, said to be worth around £2 million, will now be “unfrozen” and can be distributed.
But Mr Janner said this would not happen before the family made an application to the Chancery Division to approve distribution, “because we want to protect ourselves as executors of the will”.
‘So far as the family is concerned, our father has been completely vindicated,” Mr Janner said. “Truth will out.”