Greville Janner, the Labour peer who died on Saturday, is now beyond justice, at least of the earthly kind. Nor will his victims get their day in court, probably not even the trial of the facts they were promised earlier this year after Lord Janner was declared incapable, because of severe dementia, of defending himself, although the final decision rests with the high court, which first authorised the highly unusual procedure. The high court is now shut until the second week of the new year, something that is all of a piece with what are at best shockingly lethargic processes that have marred every aspect of this attempt to bring Lord Janner to trial on multiple charges of child sex abuse.
It is now nearly 25 years since a prosecution could first have been brought, after investigations into allegations made in court against Lord Janner when he was still an MP. But they were vigorously denounced by colleagues in the Commons as the unfounded rantings of a convicted offender. In 2002, a second chance to bring charges was missed; like the first, that was long before his illness rendered him incapable of standing trial. That is a travesty. But now it is too late for any hearing in front of a judge. Instead, the victims should give evidence to Justice Lowell Goddard’s independent inquiry into child sex abuse. It is for her, not a court, to bear witness to the victims’ stories, to unpick the history and finally to learn the lessons of what has every appearance of being an unforgivable failure of vulnerable people by those who should have protected them.
