Child Abuse Victim Accuses UK’s CPS Of Shielding Lord Janner

A 50-year-old man who claimed that Labour peer Lord Greville Janner had abused him as a child has now accused the Crown Prosecution Service, or the CPS, of shielding him. He says his allegations were ignored by the police in 2007 and that he was subjected to sexual torture as a child in the '70s and '80s by Janner at a working men's club in Leicestershire.

The victim by the name of John says that when he went to the cops eight years ago, he was not taken seriously. "They didn't take my details. Afterwards I did make a bit of a stink but they never followed it up. It was the old culture — pass the buck," he told the BBC. He was just nine or ten years old at the time of the incident.

Because of the labour peer’s dementia, the CPS in its latest probe decided not to press charges against him. This is despite the fact that he is an alleged serial offender and over twelve people have accused him in the past of the same. These accusations come from the residents in Leicestershire’s children’s homes in the 1970s and '80s.

John expresses alarm and shock due to the protection being meted out to Lord Janner, who was first accused of abuse way back in 1991. Though it was said that the alleged victim was a boy in his early teens, the CPS decided to keep mum. Then again in 2002 and 2006-07, a probe was initiated when there were new allegations, but still the case got dropped. John said, "I can't form relationships. I can't form trust with anybody. I can't be in a room alone with anybody unless I've got an escape route."

A retired high court judge has been entrusted to review the case even as the alleged culprit’s family came to his rescue and stated that the peer was completely innocent and was being maligned. Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, or DPP, in defence of her decision of not prosecuting Janner, said, "The one thing I don't want (is) to discourage people from coming forward — this was a very case-specific decision." She said that Lord Janner's dementia was so severe that he could "play no part in a trial."

But backing the review calls is former chairman of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz, who said that victims must precede the offenders.

The writer can be emailed at ritambanati@yahoo.com.