Victims & Perpetrators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uMgcRUYBs

Copy of an address given to the FACT (Falsely Accused Carers & Teachers - & other professionals) Summer Conference 2019 by Daniel Janner QC.

Thank you very much for inviting me. It is a privilege to address you. I admire the work of FACT [Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers & other professionals] https://factuk.org/ and I am proud to be a member. I have followed your example and established a new pressure group.'

FAIR' Falsely accused Individuals for Reform.

FAIR's work is different from yours. It is a pressure group for law reform. It does not and cannot offer support to individual cases. So I hope we will be able to work together in tandem.

I am a defence QC. But over the last 7 years with my late father’s case, I have learnt far more than the preceding 30 years at the Bar. Because my family have been at the receiving end.

His case like that of other prominent people has hit the headlines. But there are many comparisons with less well known cases, up and down the country. The story of my father’s case and others, like Sir Edward Heath, Harvey Proctor, Paul Gambaccini and other prominent figures, must be told. As Sir Richard Henriques wrote in his report on Operation Midland. “prominent people…are more vulnerable to false complaints than others…They are vulnerable to compensation seekers, attention seekers, and those with mental health problems. The internet provides the information and detail to support a false allegation.

Entertainers are particularly vulnerable to false allegations meeting, as they do, literally thousands of attention seeking fans who provoke a degree of familiarity which may be exaggerated or misconstrued in their recollection many years later. Deceased persons are particularly vulnerable as allegations cannot be answered.”

Daniel Janner QC

A highly experienced Criminal Silk dedicated to fighting for justice for those he represents. Daniel has a wide-ranging Q C's practice with a successful track record - leading in many high-profile, complex, sensitive sexual abuse and rape cases. From the 1991 onward, allegations of sexual abuse publicly emerged relating to Daniel's father, Lord Greville Janner QC, which were always strenuously denied. How his father was treated by the police and the media during the 24 years before his death in 2015, led Daniel’s to found the pressure group FAIR.

My father was a successful barrister before he was elected as MP for Leicester West in 1970. He was happily married for over 40 years. And had three children. He became an effective, high profile back bencher. He was also kind and generous, to young and old, male and female. He took the deprived under his wing. This stemmed from his army days as a war crimes investigator. He worked in the kinderheim at the Bergan-Belsen concentration camp. His role was the rehabilitation and mentoring of gravely damaged child survivors of the holocaust.

This experience haunted him for the rest of his life. It accounted for his attitude throughout his life to underprivileged children from broken homes.His role was the rehabilitation and mentoring of gravely damaged child survivors of the holocaust. This experience haunted him for the rest of his life. It accounted for his attitude throughout his life to underprivileged children from broken homes. We met many such children over the years.

One such person who I will call Mike, as he retains the protection of anonymity. In 1975, Mike was then aged about 15. My sisters and I recall him. He was in care in Leicester. As a family all of us looked after him for a few months. But when he repeatedly stole from us, we had to say goodbye. No more was thought about him for the next 16 years...

Until 1991...

In 1991 a Leicester Care home manager called Frank Beck was charged with horrendous sexual offences. He was tried; convicted and received three life sentences. Beck’s defence at trial was that he was not the abuser, but Janner was. Beck relied on his star witness Mike. But their lies were exposed in the prosecution's cross-examination.

Mike and Beck were disbelieved by the jury.

The jury were right because important things have since emerged about Mike.

Firstly, we now know that he himself was an abuser of children when in the care of Beck. So, Beck blackmailed him into giving evidence for him.

Secondly, Mike was not only dishonest, but in 2002 was himself convicted of abusing a boy and received 4 years sentence of imprisonment.

Thirdly, shortly after Beck’s conviction, my father later received a letter from Beck’s former cell mate. His name was Norman Newell. It is significant. He wrote a statement to the police. He was on remand with Beck in prison. And I quote only part of it:

“He told me he was going to drag all the top people in. I asked him what he meant and he said he’d got one of the kids to say that Greville Janner had taken him to Scotland and buggered him. I told him that it was dangerous bringing politics into it and asked if it was true. He said no, but it would throw the light off him.”

After the Beck trial, my father made a statement in the House of Commons during which he said:

“I have been able to ride out the agony on this ordeal in good heart. But it has not been easy. As a Member of Parliament, I am now well placed to fight back. That would not have applied to any of our constituents or to any other citizens placed by law in this impossible and unjust situation.”

As far as we were concerned that was that. The end of an ugly chapter. In 1997, my father was made a Peer.

20th December 2013 The Police Came Again!

On 20th December 2013 [my father's] London flat was searched by 18 Leicester police officers who turned up without any warning at 7.00 am. He was 85 years old suffering from very serious dementia. He was near to death. My mother had died 10 years previously and he was living alone with a full-time carer. He was very frightened. He was obviously far too ill to be interviewed – so unable to refute Mike’s allegations and fresh allegations by his fellow collaborators and erstwhile care home friends.

The police advertised the search, trawling for others to come forward in order to provide corroboration to the unsustainable without weight of numbers. That didn't put the police off. On the contrary, following the very same pattern in the Sir Cliff Richard and Heath cases, the police advertised the search, trawling for others to come forward in order to provide corroboration to the unsustainable without weight of numbers. The accused becoming in Sir Cliff’s graphic words: “live bait.”

The allegations came thick and fast. There was no assessment of the claims or sifting.

They included the following: Rape at the Carlton club. Yes, the Carlton club. He was a Labour MP.

An allegation of rape by a woman who later issued proceedings for damages from the security of Newark Mental Institution - locked facility.

An allegation of rape and torture over an entire weekend in a London hotel.

The police failed to ask us for his passport. Had they done so, they would have seen that he was in Australia that weekend. An allegation by a man who claimed my father always abused him in the presence of another politician. That politician is still alive and is a former cabinet minister. I will not name him.

These allegations of rape and torture were of course wholly out of character. My father was man of exemplary impeccable character of the highest repute; very high profile, very much in the public eye, in Leicester where all the allegations stem from.

To show how insane the investigation had become, in June 2014 the Leicester police telephoned me to ask if I had been sexually abused by my father. I told them I had not and they could save themselves the train fare. Yet they insisted on sending down a specialist team to ask the same question.

Finally, in 2015 the then DPP Alison Saunders announced that he was too ill to be tried. That was no surprise. What was a surprise was her mishandling of the statement she then put out. Essentially, she claimed the evidence was strong against him. Yet she plainly had failed to examine critical exculpatory material, which ultimately led to the collapse of all the civil claims.

The Media and civil solicitors

The press then had a field day claiming the rape of justice. This was fuelled by the civil solicitors. In flooded the civil letters before action. The solicitors needed the DPP’s decision to be overturned. They wanted facts to be found by a jury– the procedure following a finding of incapacity: findings of fact although not amounting to a conviction, persuasive before a judge in a subsequent civil trial.

So, the solicitors put in an application for a victim’s review of the decision. And with the weight of the press behind them, the decision was overturned. This led to the sad spectacle in August 2015 of my father being dragged to Westminster Magistrates court, doubly incontinent, weeks from death. The request for a video link to his home was turned down. The accused became, in Sir Cliff Richard’s words, “live bait” and the allegations came quick and fast.

No doubt to the extreme annoyance of the civil solicitors, and the false accusers, my father inconveniently died on 19th December 2015.

That was a few weeks before the fact-finding exercise in the Crown Court was to have taken place. That did not end the civil claims. Those continued against the Estate. 9 issued High Court Claims. 33 letters before action. All banking on a settlement; confident that the limitation period would be a hurdle which could be overcome. By now we had that clear exculpatory evidence:

1. None complained against my father when in care, although they complained against others.

2. Not a single word against my father in any social service file of any claimant.

3. Clear evidence of collusion and manufacturing of false claims.

4. Some plainly pure fantasy.

5. None, other than Mike, came forward in 1991 during the Beck trial to claim abuse by my father but waited until the prospect of easy civil pickings came along decades later.

6. All had a track record of convictions for serious dishonesty; and in many cases drugs and violence.

All the claims issued were dropped and the remaining claims fell like dominoes.

For my family there was at last some justice.

However, we still had IICSA – the beleaguered Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, previously known as the Goddard inquiry.

The inquiry was set up in the wake of the hysteria whipped up by Tom Watson MP and others. It centred on the lurid allegations of Nick and concentrated on Leon Brittan. Goddard was a New Zealand judge and the Inquiry’s third chairman. She had decided in 2015 that my father’s case merited a whole strand. The only individual with a strand to himself. The others being institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and Westminster. The inquiry was set up by Parliament to deal with institutional failings.

He was many things; but so far as I am aware, he was not an institution.

He could not answer back from the grave, allegations being made in public without the benefit of cross-examination. But Goddard’s successor, Jay still refused drop the strand – despite the civil proceedings collapsing. And we [then faced] a three week Kafkaesque hearing starting on 3rd February. Inevitable character assassination which discredits the work of the inquiry and genuine allegations and victims. Lord Campbell-Savours, no personal friend of my father, has repeatedly described the strand in the Lords, as an affront to justice which hints of Antisemitism.

Implications:

Finally, what wider implications does my father’s and other such cases have?

1. There is now a wider recognition that fraudulent civil claims are being made riding on the back of the post Savile frenzy. That opportunist fantasists do actually exist.

2. There must be change in the terminology used by the police and CPS. Complainants only become victims following convictions.

3. There has to be an end to believing all complaints are true. As Sir Richard Henriques said in his report: “Requiring an investigator to believe a complaint which may or may not be true is a recipe for injustice.” It is a policy which “perverts our system of justice.”

4. We need a law to provide for anonymity for those accused of sexual offences until charge.

That will put an end to the catastrophic consequences of early publication of a suspect’s name. It will end highly publicised searches. It will protect the reputations of all innocent suspects from the stigma of a false sexual allegation. It will provide balance given the complainant’s identity is protected.

That is what we are campaigning for in FAIR, with the help of Harvey Proctor, Paul Gambaccini, Sir Cliff Richard, Stephen Fry, academics and lawyers. Finally, these false claims can and must be fought in the name of justice and to preserve the good names of those falsely accused, dead or alive.

Daniel Janner, QC.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Daniel Janner QC by Rev. Dr. Roy Catchpole).

Petition launched by Sir Cliff Richard [FAIR] calling for

"Anonymity for those accused of sexual crimes before charge."

"To protect the reputations of all innocent suspects, whether well-known or not, from the lasting stigma of a false sexual allegation."

This Petition gained 28,462 signatures before being closed early because of a General Election. The government's Response on 23 July 2019 was: "There should in general be a right to anonymity before charge in respect of all offences but there will be exceptional circumstances where there are legitimate policing reasons for naming a suspect."

"Evidence does not suggest that false allegations are widespread. On the contrary, it is the under-reporting of crime to the police that is known to be particularly acute for sexual offences. However, when false allegations of sexual offences are made, they can have a serious adverse impact on the person accused. Wrongly and deliberately accusing someone of a sexual offence is a very serious matter. If there is evidence of this, the accuser could be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice."

However:

See the following ongoing database of false allegations of sexual abuse. My own name is among them, part of the list of mostly anonymous people. Not famous. Just witch-hunted and oppressed in a democratic society that boasts of the Rule of Law.

It may not be a very significant matter

to the Home Office, but when it happens to YOU it becomes a life-changing catastrophe. https://criticathink.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/database-of-false-accusations/

I

think this petition does not go far enough. While it may offer some protection to the rich and famous, and those whom the CPS chooses not to pursue for its own reasons, (such as 'insufficient evidence' as in Sir Cliff's case). It does nothing for me, an entirely and proven innocent man. Even though innocent, I was taken through the public trauma of being charged. I was then dragged through the courts, enduring three trials. These have wrecked my life, excluding me from my profession and bringing down upon me the undeserved judgement and condemnation of my professional body, the Church of England and the Methodist Church. This is despite having an apology from the Crown for a wrongful prosecution! Unless I agree to undergo what I consider to be in this situation an ecclesiastical trial ('risk assessment and safety agreement') implying that I may pose a sexual risk(!), there is little prospect of this changing during my lifetime.

With regard to the dangers of agreeing to an ecclesiastical risk assessment at the hands of the Church of England's National Safeguarding people, see my blog on Sister Frances Dominica.

The government's Response (continued):

"Guidance for the police on the release of suspects’ names is governed by the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice on ‘Media relations’. This Guidance was revised in 2017 following public consultation and the sections on identification of those under investigation were reinforced." "The Guidance highlights the importance of respecting suspects’ rights to privacy. It states that the police will not name those arrested, or suspected, of a crime, save in exceptional circumstances where there is a legitimate policing purpose to do so. A legitimate policing purpose may include circumstances such as a threat to life, the prevention or detection of crime, or where police have made a public warning about a wanted individual. The naming of an arrested person before they are charged must be authorised by a chief officer who must also ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service is consulted." "This approach recognises that there is a risk of unfair damage to the reputation of those persons, particularly if they are never charged. It strikes a balance between the rights of suspects to privacy and the need to prevent and investigate crime." "The College Guidance cannot and does not seek to prevent the media from relying on information from sources outside the police in order to confirm identities. Publishing names of suspects may be unlawful if it is found to be in contempt of court, in breach of a reporting restriction, defamatory or in breach of any right to privacy. Individuals who feel that they have been wrongly named can either make a complaint to the publishers’ self-regulator or take action through the courts." "Once it has been decided that there is sufficient evidence to charge a suspect with an offence, the principle of open justice requires that the defendant should be identified in the usual way, unless there is an exceptional and legitimate policing purpose for not doing so or reporting restrictions apply. A decision not to name an individual who has been charged should be taken in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service." Home Office.