JANNER: NYE Vindicated Again

JANNER: NYE Vindicated Again

by TIM HICKS 

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Introduction

Long-term NYE readers will know that as well as covering local news, we occasionally foray out into national stories.

Our coverage of the Greville Janner scandal (more properly Greville Ewan Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone, QC [11 July 1928 – 19 December 2015]) is one of these cases.

The NYE team assessed this impartially on the basis of the evidence available at the time. We concluded that – as with the Peter Jaconelli and Jimmy Savile scandal in Scarborough and Whitby- Janner had escaped prosecution for multiple offences of child sex abuse because he was protected by the police. To help keep this issue alive, whenever we covered child sex abuse cases, we made reference to Janner. Some of the NYE coverage is below:

• Lord Janner: Another establishment rapist protected by the police
• Lord Janner: Up-date
• Lord Janner: Leicestershire Police refers itself to the IPCC

Eventually the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) (now the Independent Office of Police Conduct – or IOPC) started an investigation into Leicestershire Police’s handling of its investigation into Lord Janner. IOPC statement here.

Update on the IOPC Janner investigation

The IOPC has sent an update to the Independent Investigation into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). According to this BBC article, the IOPC is investigating the following matters of concern:

• In the early 1990s, before a formal investigation into Lord Janner commenced, police records indicate “a number of references to a relationship, including a sexual relationship, between Lord Janner and a child”, but there is no evidence the claims were looked into.
  

• Once an investigation did begin, lines of inquiry “appear from the evidence not to have been carried out” and “there is an indication that senior officers may have influenced decisions regarding the inquiries being carried out”.
  

• In 2001-2002 “allegations made by former children’s home residents appear from the evidence available not to have been investigated or recorded” and “documented results of investigative actions regarding Lord Janner appear to contain information that could be interpreted as misleading and/or inaccurate.”

 As you can see from the NYE’s coverage above. This entirely reflects the concerns the NYE expressed in our coverage in 2015 and 2016.

Comment

It is nice for the NYE to be vindicated again. Not for reasons of mutual backslapping or self aggrandisement, but because it gives our readers confidence in the quality of the NYE’s investigative journalism.

Leicestershire Police declined to comment on the report. Lord Janner’s family continue to assert his innocence of the allegations of child abuse and assert that the report should never have been released.

Interestingly, the NYE‘s investigation into Assistant Chief Constable Sue Cross’s investigation into the Peter Jaconelli scandal also found that “lines of inquiry “appear from the evidence not to have been carried out”. Cross did not bother investigating any of the witnesses and exonerated North Yorkshire Police from any responsibility for its failure to arrest Savile and Jaconelli. It was only when members of the NYE team appeared on the BBC Inside Out programme that the witnesses were interviewed and a shocking picture of rape and child abuse was revealed.

• NYE investigation here
• BBC Inside Out programme here
• NYP statement here
• NYP Spokesperson admitting that NYP had failed to investigate Saville and Jaconelli here

The NYE will continue to update our readers on this story.

The IOPC hopes to produce a final report by the end of June.