Official secrecy on abuse in Leicestershire children's homes

Allegations of child abuse - which he and his family have always denied - against Lord Janner were first aired publicly during the trial of Frank Beck.

Beck, who was in charge of a number of children's homes in Leicestershire including two in Market Harborough, was imprisoned for serious sexual offences against children in 1991 and dies behind bars three years later.

But the judge did his very best to ensure that those allegations were never heard. First Mr Justice Edwin Jowitt ruled that the trial could not be reported.

This ban was lifted only after the Guardian, Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph and Press Association went to the Court of Appeal. You can read a contemporary report of this appeal from the Guardian on the Spotlight on Abuse site - I have also borrowed it as an illustration here.

Then, Mr Justice Jowitt tried a different tactic. Desiring Progress has a contemporary Press Association report that begins:

A judge intervened in the Leicestershire child sex abuse trial today to prevent names of “people in high places” being revealed.

He was unable to do so and serious allegations against Greville Janner were heard in court and reported in the press. See Spotlight on Abuse again for a contemporary report of this.

After an interlude in the Commons in which Janner was cheered by a claque led by Keith Vaz, there came the public inquiry into abuse in Leicestershire children's homes.

This was conducted by Andrew Kirkwood QC, who decided that it should hear all its evidence in private. That report became hard to find over the years, although the University of Leicester's library has always had one. Today you can find a copy on the county council website.

Local rumour had it that when Frank Beck gave his evidence to the inquiry at Gartree Prison he mentioned a number of prominent names.

I am writing this because I have a strong feeling of unfinished business from the past and also to point you to a couple of sites that have assembled contemporary reports on this and other affairs.

One reason I am against the idea of a right to be forgotten is that allowing the powerful to scour their pasts will make it harder to gather such evidence in future and harder to right wrongs that the authorities have failed to right the first time around.

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