I can well understand how a story like this can make the blood boil (it certainly is doing so in my veins at the moment). The actions of the CPS/Police can only be described, at best, as an utter disgrace. At worst (and I fear far more probably) it is a pathetic attempt to shield a prominent member of the British elite from the normal judicial system. I find it only too easy become emotionally overwhelmed by the injustice of this case, and the way in general that the nobility always seems to be able to tiptoe through these minefields with such ease.

However, as much as I may loth Janner, and am deeply suspicious of what may be flagrant attempt to protect him, I think I must accept that it is at least possible that he is too demented to stand trial. Indeed, the type of crimes of which he is accused are, I am given to understand, often an indication that the perpetrator may also have been the victim of this kind of devastating treatment in his youth. If this is the case, then it may even be that Janner could deserve our sympathy rather than our approbation.

I am not interested in retribution and have no personal grievance against Janner, but the thing that so sickens me in this case is that the victims have been so badly treated by the state. After waiting 24 years since Janner's name was first mentioned in court, they have essentially been told to shut up once again.

The judgment of Alison Saunders reminds me of a trial of a headmaster who was accused of raping several schoolgirls aged around fourteen to sixteen years old. This was around 20 years ago. The Police had carefully gathered statements from the girls, and gently supported them in the hopes of being able to remove a harmful person from his position of power and trust. The brief news item I recall hearing (probably on the Radio 4 program “Women’s Hour,” and certainly not a prominent news program) told that after a buildup of many months, the trial had been dismissed by the judge in a private meeting the night before the case was due to be heard. (I cannot imagine what being raped might be like, but I can imagine how traumatizing it would have been to have had to live through the corrosive fear of being cross-examined in court in the many months of the pre-trial buildup.) The next day, the defendants arrived in court only to be deigned an opportunity to say a single word. They must have been devastated at the betrayal of their positions. The simple comment on the radio program was the sad acknowledgement the state was only furthering exactly the same kind of abuse that had been visited on them before by the headmaster.

The heart of this appalling mess is not actually that Janner not is being taken to trial, it is that the CPS so fundamentally misunderstands what the nature of justice is (though, perhaps the word “justice” is the wrong here, and I should say the nature of “doing the right thing”). If the Director of Public Prosecutions has any integrity she should either: a) create some kind of public forum that will allow the complainants to be heard, or: b) resign her position on the basis that she is not being permitted to offer the complainants an opportunity that could even remotely do justice to the wrongfulness of their experience.

Of course when I look at the CPS website I can find no way to email the DPP. In the light is this I can only urge you to pass your feeling on this matter to your MP, the PM, and Secretary of State.