"Statements given by the two children against Lord Janner were locked away in a drawer at Market Harborough Police Station"

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What with being a carer and one thing and another, I am finding it harder to be all over the day's news. 

So only today am I blogging about the Independent Inquiry Into  Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report on institutional responses to allegations of abuse against Greville Janner.

In his report on its publication, which appeared under a headline referring to "cheapskate botched and useless investigations", David Hencke wrote:

The national press and the BBC have rightly highlighted the failures of the police and the council to adequately investigate claims by survivors yet again in cases of historic child sexual abuse.

However it is in the mind blowing detail of the report that exposes how incompetent the police and council were in handling the investigations. It reveals a picture of quarrelling under resourced police officers, hiding of key evidence, and a difference of approach to investigations into a VIP figure, Lord Janner, from other less prominent people.

I was struck by the report's revelation that one of several re-examinations of the treatment of the accusation against Janner, in Hencke's words, found that:

The statements given by the two children against Lord Janner were locked away in a drawer at Market Harborough Police Station.

Those who sought complete openness about what was going on in Leicestershire's children's homes in the 1970s will have been disappointed in the IICSA's publication of its findings on Lord Janner.

The report begins by telling us:

In maintaining and upholding the complainants’ legal right to anonymity, this report is necessarily limited in what can be said publicly. The contents of this report do not therefore reflect the totality of the evidence we heard or include all our conclusions, which are set out in full in a longer report which we are not able to publish.

There may well be good reasons for taking those approach. But I have not forgotten that the press had to go to court in 1991 to be allowed to report the trial of  Frank Beck, who was found guilty of the most serious abuse of children in the homes he ran in the county.

Is Leicestershire right to be proud it has no children's homes?

You can read the opening statement made on behalf of Leicestershire County Council to the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse strand on Lord Janner on the IICSA website.

That is remarkable in itself, as the great majority of the proceedings in this strand have taken place in private.

If you do read it you will find that Alex Verdan QC listed this among the "key points" he asked the inquiry to note:

there are no longer any LCC-run care homes in Leicestershire. The last home closed in April 2018. The small number of residential placements are sourced through external providers after a rigorous commissioning process.

Listening to the live webcast, I was struck by the tone of voice in which he said it - as though it were self-evidently good news.

I wonder. 

Discussing the way the history of psychiatry in America is written, David J. Rothman once said:

It was apparent and unmistakable that the reforms of one generation became the scandals of the next. Historians had explored their materials with a curious myopia. First they applauded the reformers who designed the system, then they applauded the reformers who exposed the system, and then they applauded the reformers who designed a new system – and the circle moved round on itself.

There is a danger that this cycle will also operate in the treatment of children in public care. Whether because of the scandals of recent decades or because they are seen as too expensive, council-run children's homes are disappearing and care is increasingly being provided by the private sector.

Already there are signs that this is where the new scandals will occur. Martin Barrow tweets daily about the worrying things revealed by Ofsted inspections of this mutli-million pound industry whose rise taken place with remarkably little public debate.

I hope Leicestershire does choose its external providers after a "rigorous commissioning process," but I wonder if a better response to its shameful history would be to run good children's homes rather than give up the attempt altogether.

IICSA Janner hearings cast new light on abuse in Leicestershire children's homes

Abuse was rife in Leicestershire children's homes in the 1970s, but the powers that be have never been keen on public exposure of what went on.

The press had to go to court to be allowed to report the trial of Frank Beck, and the subsequent inquiry was conducted entirely in private.

A copy of the report of that inquiry was to be found on the county council website (as the result of a freedom of information request), but it seems to have disappeared.

But you can find a searchable copy of the report elsewhere on the web.

Because of this record of secrecy, there was a certain degree of cynicism expressed when it emerged that the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse would take most of its evidence on Lord Janner in private.

However, some evidence has been heard in public and something of interest has emerged.

BBC News reports:

On Monday, the inquiry heard that Ratcliffe Road children's home in Leicester burned all its records when a paedophile ex-employee was arrested.

Former senior policeman Mick Creedon, who ran the investigation, said he was "haunted" knowing runaways were sent to the home, described as a "hell-hole" and sexually abused.

That seems to me more significant than the stuff about Tony Blair and the honours system that leads the story.

Creedon also gave evidence about the investigation of possible offences by Lord Janner:

He also described being "disappointed" when refused permission to arrest MP Greville Janner.

The home was "immediately closed down" when they arrested a prime suspect, and a senior worker at the home "immediately burned all the files".

Mr Creedon said several people he spoke to for the investigation had killed themselves, and three former residents eventually said they were also abused by Lord Janner.

Mr Creedon told the inquiry he was refused permission to arrest the politician in the 1990s and instead of arresting the MP he was invited to Leicestershire Police's headquarters to be interviewed.

However, his home was not searched and he answered "no comment" to questions, so the case was dropped.

Mr Creedon denied going too easy on Lord Janner and said one account that questions were sent in advance "categorically didn't happen".

"I still think there was a justifiable case for his arrest," he said.

IICSA evidence on Lord Janner to be heard mainly in private

The hearings for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse's strand on the treatment of allegations against Lord Janner opened this morning.

They will investigate the the actions of police, prosecutors, Leicestershire County Council and the Labour Party.

Most of the inquiry's hearing are livestreamed on its website, but most of those for the Janner strand will be held in private. The Guardian says some journalists are being allowed to watch proceedings, but will be restricted in what they can report.

The inquiry is not designed to rule on Lord Janner's guilt or innocence, but I am reminded of the way that the press had to go to court in 1991 to win the right to report the trial of Frank Beck, who was convicted of abusing children in several county council homes in Leicestershire.

Hearings on Lord Janner put back until February 2020

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The Leicester Mercury reported earlier this month that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will not now hold its public hearing into child sexual abuse allegations against the former Leicester MP Greville Janner until 2020.

This, says the IICSA, is because new lines of inquiry have emerged in the Independent Police Complaints Commission's investigation of Leicestershire Police's response to the allegations against Janner.

When the hearings do take place, the IICSA website reveals that they will investigate the allegations of Lord Janner and then, if it finds some or all of them to be well founded, consider:

• the adequacy and propriety of law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial decisions relating to allegations falling within paragraph 1 above, including whether any public authority hindered or prevented the effective investigation and/or prosecution of allegations of child sexual abuse by Lord Janner;
• the extent to which Leicestershire County Council was aware of the allegations of abuse and the adequacy of its response;
• the extent to which the Labour Party, government departments, and/or the security and intelligence agencies were aware of the allegations of abuse and, if so, the adequacy of their response;
• the extent to which any other public or private institution may have failed in its duty to protect children from sexual abuse;
• whether the Kirkwood inquiry was conducted adequately and whether the mission of any mention of Lord Janner in the Kirkwood report was appropriate.

In light of those investigations the Inquiry will publish a report setting out its findings and recommendations to improve child protection and safeguarding in England and Wales.

The IICSA is being largely ignored by the media, even though it has already led to the resignation of one council leader, but I suspect the hearings on Lord Janner will attract renewed attention.

The allegations against Greville Janner have been known for years

There has been a concerted attempt to make us think the allegations that Greville Janner abused children emerged only recently and from an apparently unreliable source.

The truth, as this BBC East Midlands report makes clear, is that they were first made public in the proceedings against Frank Beck in 1991 and were circulating locally before that.

Now read two journalists' memories of Greville Janner and the trial of Frank Beck.

Abuse of Trust: Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children’s Homes Scandal by Mark D'Arcy and Paul Gosling

Abuse of Trust: Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children’s Homes Scandal
Mark D'Arcy and Paul Gosling
Canbury Press, 2016

In 1991 Frank Beck was sentenced to five life-terms for sexual and physical assaults against more than one hundred children in his care while he worked for Leicestershire County Council. He was sentenced to a further 24 years on 17 charges of abuse, including rape.

Mark D’Arcy (now the BBC’s political correspondent) and Paul Gosling published the first edition of this book in 1998. Now it has been reissued with a significant extra chapter.

It begins:

Throughout the Frank Beck trail there was a shadow in the court – a man named by the defence and who much private speculation centred around. That was Greville Janner MP. Just as Janner was an elusive figure in the Beck trial, so, for legal reasons, he was only mentioned, almost in passing, in the original version of Abuse of Trust. Now more can be reported – and very much more is known.

They go on to detail the growing allegations against Janner. The first emerged during Beck’s trial: by the time his failing health put paid to a prosecution in 2015, 30 witnesses had accused him, of whom 12, regarded as the strongest potential witnesses, would have given evidence in court.

It also emerged that Janner was not telling the truth when told the Kirkwood inquiry into Beck’s crimes that he had never met him.

The allegations against Janner have been widely reported over the past couple of years, but in many ways this book’s reappearance is most welcome because it reminds us of Frank Beck’s crimes.

As I once blogged, the secrecy with which officialdom sought to surround first his trial and then the Kirkwood inquiry was extraordinary. The Beck trial was the first of several involving widespread abuse in children’s homes, so any historian of that episode will want to read it.

I have also read that Kirkwood’s report is now hard to obtain, though there was a copy in the library at the University of Leicester in the days when I haunted it. My strongest memory from reading it is the squalor in which the children lived and the low quality of the people, Beck included, who controlled there lives.

I can add today that my distinct impression when Beck was arrested was that no one was terribly surprised.

Later I worked with a woman who had hung out with a group of friends when she was a teenager. She said that the boys had all heard stories about the children’s homes Beck ran.

Unless we learn the lessons of cases like this, we shall go on being surprised by child abuse.

You can buy Abuse of Trust from Amazon UK or direct from Canbury Press.

Author of book on Leicestershire children's homes scandal will be in Leicester on Saturday

Paul Gosling, co-author of a book on Frank Beck and the Leicestershire children's home scandal, will be signing copies of the new edition at Waterstone's in Leicester on Saturday.

The Canbury Press website says he will also be available to talk to journalists and readers:

He will discuss why Beck got away with his behaviour for so long despite complaints from children and concerns to the council from co-workers. He will also broach the multiple allegations faced by [Greville] Janner, an MP in the city for 27 years.

Paul Gosling was a Labour councillor in Leicester between 1987 and 1991. His co-author, Mark D'Arcy, is the BBC's parliamentary correspondent,

I did buy a copy of the first edition of their book when it came out in 1998, but it no longer seems to be on my shelves.

Fortunately, I have just been offered a review copy of Abuse of Trust: Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children's Home Scandal so I hope to write about it here soon.

Leicestershire sets aside £2m for the Greville Janner abuse inquiry

From the Leicester Mercury:

Leicestershire County Council has set aside £2 million to cover the cost of assisting the inquiry into Greville Janner's alleged sexual abuse of boys in its care. 

The authority ran the children's homes in the city and county, where the former Labour politician allegedly met, groomed and sexually assaulted boys. 

It believes the £2 million will cover the cost of legal representation and digging out documents and other relevant material from its past. 

It said the cash would also would cover the cost of supporting the welfare of alleged abuse victims. 

The council will give an account of its actions to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, (IICSA) later this year.

The inquiry may cast more light on the actions of the county council in the case of Frank Beck, with whose offences the allegations against Janner are intertwined.

Greville Janner was allowed to lie about the Kirkwood Inquiry

Lord Janner 'misled inquiry' over link with abuser Frank Beck

So runs the headline on a story on BBC News. I suppose it is a polite way of saying he lied to the Kirkwood Inquiry, which we already knew.

What is more remarkable, as revealed by documents from inquiry the BBC has obtained via a Freedom of Information request, is that Janner was permitted to lie about the inquiry:

The 1992 documents released to the BBC also reveal that, following his questioning by the inquiry, Lord Janner asked chairman Andrew Kirkwood if he could tell the media waiting outside that he had not been asked about allegations of child abuse against him. 

Andrew Kirkwood replied: "Of course, Mr Janner." 

Lord Janner left the hearing and told a BBC camera crew: "I have the chairman's permission to tell you that there was questioning about the social services and their operation, and none whatever concerning the allegations made against me." 

The documents show this was not true, and the revelation that the real substance of the inquiry's questioning was withheld from the media will further fuel allegations of a cover-up.

Indeed it will. As I blogged last year, the authorities were remarkably keen that the public should know as little as possible about Frank Beck's offences and the inquiry into them afterwards.

Press cutting from Spotlight on Abuse.

Report on the handling of allegations against Greville Janner

The independent inquiry into the handling of allegations made against Greville Janner which was commissioned last year by the Director of Public Prosecutions issued its report today.

That inquiry was conducted by the retired High Court Judge Sir Richard Henriques.

You can download the full report from the Crown Prosecution Service website, and the Guardian has a summary of his its findings:

The report found:

• The decision not to charge Janner in 1991 was wrong because there was enough evidence against him to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for offences of indecent assault and buggery. In addition, the police investigation was inadequate and no charging decision should have been taken by the CPS until the police had undertaken further inquiries. 

• In 2002, allegations against Janner were not supplied by the police to the CPS and so no prosecution was possible. This merits investigation by the IPCC. 

• There was sufficient evidence to prosecute Janner in 2007 for indecent assault and buggery. He should have been arrested and interviewed and his home searched.

The evidence of the first complainant against Janner, who gave evidence in the trial of Frank Beck in 1991, is particularly strong.

The Guardian says:

These allegations related to 1975 when, it was alleged, the young boy from a children’s home met Janner after the then MP performed magic tricks. 

The alleged victim, known as Complainant One, said he was quickly befriended by Janner and was sexually abused and raped repeatedly. The complainant went to a wedding with the peer’s family, it was alleged, and it was only two decades later in 2014 that a subsequent police investigation found there was film footage of Complainant One at the event. 

According to the report, the prosecuting authorities discussed the possibility of arresting and interviewing the complainant in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice.

ITV News interviewed Bernard Greaves, who was part of Beck's defence team, about the case this evening.

Chief constable was ordered not to investigate Greville Janner

A story partly behind The Times paywall this morning quoted Mick Creedon, chief constable of Derbyshire, as saying that, as a detective sergeant in 1989, he was ordered by his superiors not to investigate Greville Janner, then Labour MP for Leicester West.

The Needle has a little more of the report.

The date of 1989 may be significant. Frank Beck was not arrested until April 1990 and did not accuse Greville Janner in court until November 1991.

I should add that Mr Janner has always denied allegations of this sort when they are made against him.

Keith Vaz and Greville Janner

In view of Keith Vaz's new-found role as the scourge of secrecy on child abuse, it is interesting to be reminded of a speech he gave in the Commons in December 1991.

It was in a debate on contempt of court, which was held after the conviction of Frank Beck for serious sexual offences in Leicestershire children's homes (including two in Market Harborough).

In the course of that trial certain accusations were made against Greville Janner, who was then Labour MP for Leicester West and is now a Labour peer.

This is part of Keith Vaz's speech in that debate:

My hon. and learned Friend, too, is a brave man in what he has done, said and endured over the past weeks and months. Every one of us should be grateful to him, because, as the hon. Members for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) and for Leicestershire, North-West (Mr. Ashby) said, what has happened to my hon. and learned Friend could happen to any one of us, so we should all be aware of it. 

During the course of that terrible ordeal, I suggested to the Lord Chancellor that there should be a change in the law to provide for the protection of the innocent. The Lord Chancellor said that he would consider the idea. The Solicitor-General is here today, and I make him an offer. I came 18th in the ballot for private Members’ Bills. I know that that is not very high —and there are other subjects that I wish to raise. Nevertheless, I would happily introduce a Bill to cover the point if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would promise it a safe passage through the House. 

We should not wait for another Criminal Justice Bill. There is parliamentary time, and we should get on with the job. I foresee that many unscrupulous people in this country would be prepared to do exactly the same thing again. If it is possible to do so, I will happily give the Solicitor-General my place.

It is worth reading the whole debate, if only because it features the names of politicians who were always in the media in those days but are now quite forgotten. Ivan Lawrence. Martin Brandon-Bravo. Anthony Beaumont-Dark.

Thanks to The Needle for the link to the debate.

CPS considering evidence against Greville Janner

From BBC News:

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is considering evidence against Lord Janner as part of an inquiry into allegations of historical child abuse. 

The London home of the 85-year-old peer, who was a Labour MP in Leicester for 27 years, was searched in December. 

Police have said he has not been arrested and the BBC understands he has not even been interviewed. 

The investigation is linked to Frank Beck, who was found guilty of abusing children in the 1970s and 1980s.

Lord Janner's London home was searched by Leicestershire Police just before Christmas.

Later. The Jewish Chronicle quotes a statement from Leicestershire Police:

Leicestershire Police has been liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service over recent months, and the CPS has been advising on taking the investigation forward. 

"We have submitted the evidence gathered so far to the CPS and other enquiries are continuing. 

"“Support for victims or anyone else affected by child abuse is available 24 hours a day from the NSPCC."

Later still. The Daily Mirror says:

Police yesterday handed evidence to the CPS after interviewing a man allegedly abused as a teenager in the 1970s by Labour peer Lord Janner, now 85.