The Jimmy Savile situation - Another Jimmy In Cuffs. Who Next, Jimmy Hill?

[Dino]

Sorry if I killed the thread with Private Eye jokes... but things are getting even more serious. (And for the attention of the UKIP deputy chairman who was on Question Time last night and wanted Jimmy stripped of his knighthood... yeah... that tends to happen automatically when he died!)

Child and sex abuse claims against a dozen TV stars were yesterday described as a “landmark” inquiry by police probing Jimmy Savile.

As detectives were set to start making arrests, Commander Peter Spindler revealed 300 victims have contacted his team since an ITV show exposed Savile as a sex predator three weeks ago.

Around 130 of these have been spoken to so far and 114 assault claims made.

Mr Spindler said: “I have no doubt that we are in watershed moment for child abuse investigation and this will be a landmark investigation.

“I want to praise the courage of the 300 or so who have come forward.”

The celebrities named by victims – some huge household names – are set to be quizzed over serious sex assault allegations within days.

Other suspects who have been named are believed to include former BBC staff.

While the majority of calls fielded by police are about Savile, some relate to individuals who are believed to have been complicit in the TV star’s abuse, or carried out abuse themselves.

But Mr Spindler declined to say where these people worked or if they had links to the NHS, BBC or other institutions with which Savile was involved.

Revealing an “arrest strategy” had been drawn up by his 30-strong team of officers, he said: “There is Savile but there are also others and if those others are living we can now look at them.

"We are dealing with a major crime investigation here.

Twisted: Savile escaped justice while he was alive
PA

“There’s Savile on his own, and that’s the vast majority of what we’re being told about, there’s Savile and others.

"And it’s the others, if they’re living, we can look at them. Then there is a third category which is ‘others’.”

A source added: “It is now to be determined how seriously these claims should be taken.”

It yesterday emerged Savile was once investigated for a sex attack on BBC premises as far back as the 80s.

A retired police officer has come forward to reveal that he carried out an inquiry after an assault in the star’s caravan in the car park at TV Centre in West London – but there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

The woman reported the attack at Hammersmith police station. It is not clear if the BBC was made aware of it.

It is also not known if Savile was ever questioned over the allegation.

Mr Spindler said that officers were trying to find the file on the case but had so far been unsuccessful.

Questions were being asked last night about the extent that authorities failed to link a series of complaints which could have stopped Savile carrying out further assaults on young girls.

At least seven women reported attacks by the presenter before his death last year.

Mr Spindler said another woman came forward to the Met in 2003 to report that Savile had touched her *inappropriately in the 70s.

She did not want to press charges but wanted police to know in case it fitted in with any other pattern, he said.

It is not clear why these allegations were not flagged up to Surrey police when they informed all forces they were investigating Savile in 2007 over four new sex allegations.

Detectives from over five forces were aware of claims before 2011 – including two attacks on girls at a school and one at Stoke Mandeville hospital – but they did not result in an arrest.

Sally Freeman, a spokeswoman for Women Against Rape, said: “It’s appalling that he was never even arrested despite all these separate allegations.”

Scotland Yard is following more than 400 lines of inquiry linked to the victims, of whom all except two are women.

Mr Spindler said he was aware of a “key individuals” who have not yet spoken to the police, adding: “If there’s anybody out there who is still sitting waiting, wondering whether to speak out we want to assure them they are no longer a part of what one of the victims’ groups called the ‘unbelievables’.”

Officers are trying to contact victims as quickly as possible – but for some it is the first time they have come forward.

The NSPCC has had 439 calls about sexual abuse in the past three weeks, a 60% rise on what they would normally receive. Two out of five have been referred to social services and police.

Mr Spindler said Savile was “undoubtedly” one of the most prolific sex offenders of recent history and believes the weight of evidence against the late DJ was overwhelming.

He said: “We have to believe what they are saying because they are all saying the same thing independently.”

He added Savile had been protected because “children or young people had not felt empowered to speak out”.

Earlier Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said the “tsunami of filth” that has emerged over Savile’s child abuse had caused terrible damage to the BBC.

He said the governing body’s priority was to “get to the bottom of what’s happened” for the sake of victims.

He said: “Our main concern has to be for the victims of abuse and worse who have been marooned for years, trying to tell their stories and not being believed, including, it seems, by the BBC, and to deal with the terrible damage to the BBC.”

And Paul Gambaccini, you are toad. If you knew of the rumours but didn't really act on them or report them, that means you're just as bad! Esther Rantzen as well. But I'm not on Rupert Murdoch's side going "Yeah! Shame on the BBC! We should only trust Sky from now on!" because I don't think it just happened at the BBC. And if the police ever raided Rupert's office and seized his encrypted box of secrets, they'd find similar stuff about his own employees.
Obviously, Savile was the highest on the list of abuse. But even if one person only abused one child, that child would have had their life changed for the rest of their lives. So there would be as much damage in that one child as Jimmy's "total".
I'm 100% certain nobody from Doctor Who will be questioned. (I don't even know why I've left that sentence in) But I'm surprised this thread hasn't had more replies.

[SiHart]

It's quite stunning really. It's difficult to know what to say about it because the scale of the thing has grown so hugely over the last few weeks. I'm not sure anyone has quite fallen from grace this quickly before- When the thread started I was so sceptical about the whole matter and now I can't believe how deep it all goes. It's very difficult to take in.

Our local papers are full of it, as we're so close to Broadmoor, where he had close ties. The stories are starting to come out about local people he took to the flat the hospital gave him to stay in... it's all very horrible.

[SiHart]

PS I have moved this to News and Sport as it's possibly more appropriate here now, since it's extremely unlikely his shows will ever be on TV again...

[Dino]

PS I have moved this to News and Sport as it's possibly more appropriate here now, since it's extremely unlikely his shows will ever be on TV again...

It's thrown the BBC Four repeats of Top Of The Pops in chaos. And I'm not too happy that the police have announced in advance about arrests they are going to make. Whatever happened to "Tittle tattle lost the battle!"?
And thanks for moving this thread to the News section.

[Si Hunt]

A few random thoughts:

- Never before have we had to so spectacularly rewrite memories of our childhoods. Six months ago this man was a national instutution. Suddenly we have to look at it all differently. It's incredible, and hugely horrible.

- Something about the "trial by..." nature of this disturbs me. Trial by... what? No formal investigation has yet concluded, there's been no trial and yet, astoundingly, official people are apologising for him. I dunno. If 300 people come forward to you then have to include, without a formal investigation or "trial" (or whatever it is when he's dead), that he was a wrong 'un? It is bad that part of me wonders if we should wait until some sort of official verdict before apologising to anyone or making statements of fact? At least then we'd know the extent of what happened. I won't be surprised if it IS bad, but at the moment anyone who he ever touched is coming forward and reporting an abuse.

- I do think this 'erasing of history' thing is ridiculous. Okay, so we have to revise our opinions but why should we suddenly pretend he never existed? Gary Glitter occasionally sneaks onto the radio at Christmas and, you know what, we COPE! We think "Oh there is Gary Glitter" and we know what he's done. But - shoot me - that doesn't suddenly make that a bad record when it was good before. I don't see why we can't ever show Top of the Pops again just because of what he's done. Maybe, being an intelligent species and all - we could manage to watch it, enjoy the music, and just acknowledge that the guy presenting it was an evil man (if that's what it turns out etc.). We don't refuse to show news photographs of Myra Hindley or film reels of Adolf Hitler do we?

- Likewise, even if he turns out to have done the vilest things, am I wrong for wondering why the good things he did, such as raising millions for charity, can't still be acknowledged? Do we have such a simplistic worldview that someone either has to be Good or Evil? Can't we just accept that he was a vile man who did good things too? I guess what I'm saying is why do we have to pretend someone never existed, rather than just accept this person, who previously we all thought did loads of good things, did lots of evil things as well? There, fact. We don't have to take TV shows off the TV or never mention him again. We might not want to, but either should be acceptable.

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

I agree with you totally Si.

There seems to be just too many accusations now for me to think it's all made up, but equally I'm not convinced that all the accusations are correct. I'm also not certain as to whether, when they're talking of his time at the BBC, they are referring to his behaviour with his Jim'll Fix It audience, or his Top of the Pops one. I would say that most of the people going on Jim'll Fix It would be children, but surely at least some of the Top of the Pops crowd would be legal adults - so I think that at the very least, the label of paedophile that's being applied should be established by some kind of investigation before being taken as cast iron fact, which it seems to be now.

And yes, though we might not like it, he certainly did a lot of good when he was alive, both directly and indirectly by lending his name to good causes. Not to belittle the issue, but it's like the character in A Town Called Mercy - this would be a lot easier if he were one thing or the other. But he clearly wasn't.

This suggestion that there's a lot more people involved is chilling though, if true. And yet it seems almost unbelievable that it could have been so widespread for so long without ever a hint of it reaching the media before. I do worry that there's some degree of 'retcon' in there, and to be brutally frank there is a difference between sleeping with a celebrity and regretting it in the morning, and being abused - I hope the investigation is only interested in genuine cases of the latter, and not turning into a witch-hunt based on the former.

[Matthew T]

People do seem to forget that a "paedophile" is someone with a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, not 15-16 year olds.

Things WERE different then - look at songs that were deemed so acceptable that they reached number 1 in the charts in the 50s and 60s, "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" "She Was Only Sixteen" "Little Children". It wasn't looke upon then as it is now.

Not that I'm trying to excuse the behaviour of what seems by all accounts to be nothing more than a grubby, dirty old man exploiting his fame/position, but there are 2 sides to every story, and not every 15 year old is a sweet innocent virgin, I know I wasn't!

[Rob McCow]

The allegations are sickening. However, that article is a massive pile of crap.

He said: “We have to believe what they are saying because they are all saying the same thing independently.”

Yes, how could anyone in the UK possibly know that, over the past few weeks, Sir Jimmy Saville had been accused of sexual abuse?

He added Savile had been protected because “children or young people had not felt empowered to speak out”.

But... if he's been doing this since the 1970's, then most of the people are now around 30-40?!?! People don't stay children forever!

A source added: “It is now to be determined how seriously these claims should be taken.”

Well done 'A Source' for that vital gem of new information! *slow clapping*

Twisted: Savile escaped justice while he was alive

So, he's been proven guilty by a court of law, has he? The inquiry is complete and the judge has made his decision? What's that? No?
Immoral: Newspaper jumps to conclusions.

“If there’s anybody out there who is still sitting waiting, wondering whether to speak out we want to assure them they are no longer a part of what one of the victims’ groups called the ‘unbelievables’.”

No. NOOO!!
Now they're dragging EMF into it! Is nothing sacred?!

Oh and Lord Patten - you are a buffoon.

Earlier Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said the “tsunami of filth” that has emerged over Savile’s child abuse had caused terrible damage to the BBC.

Is a corporation responsible for the private behaviour of every single one of it's employees? But Sir Jimmy Savile also has an OBE - surely this goes right the way up to the Queen!!!!

He said the governing body’s priority was to “get to the bottom of what’s happened” for the sake of victims.

Tee hee he said bottom.

[MinaHarker]

I have to diagree with all the people saying "they had 40 years to report it". I am very very close to someone who took twenty years to admit to her therapist that she had been abused. She is a bright, intelligent woman with lots going for her, but the stigma and shame is so great. Another woman I know was groomed and abused while suffering severe mental illness - she reported it in confidence before, some years later, having the strength to go to the police. The police could do very little, despite 7 other women who didn't know each other coming forward to say the same thing - and she became a pariah at the place where the abuse occurred and was cut off from everyone there by the Big Boss. The man in question got off scott-free. She wishes she hadn't bothered.

It could well be that the victims only felt safe enough to come forward after his death, and with the support of others. If you spent years hiding this terrible secret, it is much easier to talk about when others are talking about it too and being listened to.

Besides, the indications are that some of the victims did report it - and nothing was done.

[Si Hunt]

http://m.digitalspy.co.uk/media/news...rker-side.html

His family were proud of him then watched in horror as the allegations unfolded and then decided to remove his headstone.

Yet the other day, they said that they'd always known and it was two members only who wanted the headstone, the others thought it was inappropriate given what he was like.

Everyone is trying to distance themselves from being sucked into the maelstrom. Poor Freddie Starr.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

Just to second what Mina said, it is more common than not for cases of abuse to take a long time to surface. The victim may not even realise it is abuse until much later, or may be led to believe that no-one would believe them if they did report it, or told to expect some hideous repercussions for doing so. In long term abuse they can be literally conditioned into thinking this is all they deserve in life and they're lucky to get even that attention. Abusers themselves don't wander round with 'I am a paedophile/rapist/wife-beater' written on their heads, and to all but the victim often appear to be the last person you would expect to be capable of such things. This does lead to a likelihood of not being believed if they do report it, and that can make the victim feel even worse. Added to that is the near impossibility of proving that kind of abuse. How do you prove that someone groped you? It leaves no marks for anyone to see as evidence. It's the victim's word against the accused's. And the longer the victim remains silent the harder it gets to prove, and so they keep it inside.

If Jimmy Savile did indeed abuse young people in the ways he is accused of, then his status as a major celebrity would have been a great factor in whether or not anyone who accused him of such things was believed, since who would ever believe a man with links to children's charities and a TV show like Jim'll Fix It to be an abuser? He did project a generally benevolent, if eccentric, image of himself. Hell, for that matter, how many parents don't believe their children over trivial matters anyway? Phrases like 'attention-seeking' come to mind.

But, for any victim, finding out they were not alone and that someone else is standing up to the abuser can give them the courage to come forward. A flood of accusations in the wake of the initial one or two is just the kind of pattern you would expect in a case of a long term serial abuser, whether that comes six months, six years or six decades after the event. Even before it was the biggest headline in the country, the dramatic increase in the number of people coming forward to say 'me too' is too high to be dismissed as attention-seeking, bandwagon-jumping-on or anything else. Yes, there may be a few of those in the mix, but there is a moral responsibility to take these things seriously.

[Perry Vale]

Nothing to say about Saville really, most people I know have suspected him since that Louis Theroux programme....but the knives out for the BBC I do find rather disturbing, and it's no surprise what quarters they're coming from.

I did catch a few minutes of the Panorama show the other night (and saw the ITV one), and the thing that really struck me from this affair is the mind-numbing number of people who knew, or had serious reason to. I wouldn't be surprised if it's as many as 5,000 people. Add up all the victims, people at BBC and Radio, Police, charities, the press....the list just seems to be endless.

A little off-topic, has anyone interviewed Louis Theroux since these things came out?

[Rob McCow]

There's a dozen contradictory things about it that make it so bewildering.

He was a benevolent hero of charities who abused young teenagers and the disabled.
Hundreds of people who were abused come forward only now. Sorry if I am being insensitive, the issue for me is not that it takes a long time to come to terms with abuse or even realise that it's happened, I totally accept that this can be the case - the issue is that there are hundreds of people affected. I even could accept the majority of cases taking years to come forward, but for every single one to take that long is staggering.

It's incomprehensible that this was never investigated until now. It's unreal and unbelievable.

And I cannot stand the press coverage, totally disgusting.

[Alex]

There were seven people who made complaints to the police over the years, but no charges were ever brought against Savile. And who knows how many people tried to talk to the police whose cases weren't recorded?

There's also been several BBC employees who apparently made complaints to their superiors as well, only for these to be ignored.

I'm with Mina and Jason on this one. Despite my comments in my first post, considering what we've learnt over the last month it's all absolutely appalling, and I can't see how anyone could consider the possibility that he is completely innocent (not that I'm saying anyone here thinks that).

He said: “We have to believe what they are saying because they are all saying the same thing independently.”

Apparently this relates to a very specific fetish that Savile had, which wasn't made public and so it's pretty damning evidence that so many people reported it independently.

One of the weirdest things are passages in Savile's own autobiography, which no one took much notice of at the time:

In today’s Times story about the allegations surrounding Jimmy Savile, David Sanderson highlighted some quotes from As It Happens, Savile’s 1974 autobiography, that nobody else seems to have picked up on. It’s strange that they haven’t, because they are startling:

[Savile] writes of an incident at the Mecca Locarno ballroom in Leeds, where he worked as a DJ during the 1950s, when a female police officer came in with a photograph of “an attractive girl who had run away from a remand home”.

Savile writes: “‘Ah,’ says I all serious, ‘if she comes in I’ll bring her back tomorrow but I’ll keep her all night first as my reward’.” He then writes that the girl did go into the club and “agreed that I hand her over if she could stay at the dance, [and] come home with me”. He wrote that he did then hand her over to the “lady of the law…[who] was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was well known that were I to go I would probably take half the station with me”.

I repeat, this is Savile’s autobiography. It wasn’t winkled out of him by a cunning interviewer; he didn’t let it slip when he was pissed. It wasn’t a post-modern joke.

Rather, these are words he wrote in a book, which were read by a publisher, and presumably by lawyers, and by reviewers, and by readers. One of his alleged victims even claims he gave her a copy of it, after abusing her, with the inscription “No Escape!”.

What can these words possibly mean, except for what they seem to mean? How can nobody have noticed?

Right now, many are presumably wondering how his behaviour can have been concealed for so long. But it wasn’t concealed. It was right out there, in plain view, and nobody wanted to see. I’m not sure what the lesson of all this is, but if there is one, it’s horribly bleak.

http://timesopinion.tumblr.com/post/...y-jimmy-savile

There are plenty of other dubious tales in it as well...

[Jason Thompson]

He was a benevolent hero of charities who abused young teenagers and the disabled.

The cynic in me would point out that his charity work got him a free pass to access young people, as well as providing a great public image which would make it less and less likely that anyone would believe he was an abuser.

I even could accept the majority of cases taking years to come forward, but for every single one to take that long is staggering.

But it wasn't every single one, was it? One of the things that has come up repeatedly in the press coverage is that several accusations have been made during his lifetime and not followed up. That's part of the investigation now: why were those things not followed up and charges brought?

It's incomprehensible that this was never investigated until now. It's unreal and unbelievable.

It was investigated. it just never became public knowledge and never led anywhere. His popularity and his image as a charity worker would have been a great shield for his actions, if the accusations are true. As I said before, the kind of abuse he is accused of leaves no marks, no physical evidence. It's an accusation that cannot be proved except by weight of evidence. One victim often cannot provide enough evidence needed to pin the accuser down, especially in the face of disbelief engendered by Savile's public image.

And I cannot stand the press coverage, totally disgusting.

I agree that, as usual, the tabloid media have assumed guilt and run with it. It's their usual non-objective reporting. But what else can we expect from an industry that has hacked phones, publishes naked royals, plasters people's faces all over their front pages when they are merely accused of a crime, then puts a tiny article buried in the middle of the paper when they are found innocent.

The one that makes me most uncomfortable is actually on the Yahoo! site. When I log into my mail and get the 'what's new' page the top news headline has a little picture next to it. In all the cases where that headline is about Jimmy Savile they have a cropped picture of his face that just shows his eyes leering out of the screen.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Blimey - I'd barely heard any of this on my side of the world.

[Anthony Williams]

And so the arrests related to this case begin... with Gary Glitter. Anyone surprised?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20114378

[Si Hunt]

Rick Parfitt, from rock band Status Quo, said he too was unsurprised by the Savile allegations.

"A lot of us, like everybody else, we all kind of knew. We were all kind of suspicious of Jimmy Savile. We all felt 'there's something not right there'," he told The Daily Telegraph.

"But we didn’t know what, and it was kind of in the back of our minds. But you could never quite suss him out. We did so many Top of the Pops, so many Jim’ll Fix Its."

Nice to know another person "sort of knew" and did nothing about it. It certainly did stop them promoting themselves on his shows.

Si.

[MinaHarker]

This article is very good: http://www.newstatesman.com/media/br...-saviles-lambs

[Rob McCow]

I agree Mina, excellent comments.

[Larry]

Nice to know another person "sort of knew" and did nothing about it. It certainly did stop them promoting themselves on his shows.

Si.

does make you wonder if all these people genuinly had doubts about Savile or if they are just jumping onto the band wagon to get a bit of cheap publicity. One thing is for sure IMO all these people now claiming to have had doubts about savile must shoulder some of the blame for allowing him to get away with it for so long.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

So... since it seems you can say anything you like about the dead without it being proved in a court of law or anything, how long will it be before the Michael Jackson situation rears its head again? After all, exactly the same sort of "everyone thinking he was a bit wrong" gossip followed him about all his life, arguably much more apparent than with Jimmy Savile, and he was even charged twice (if memory serves). At the moment nobody's thinking about him and his music is still widely played everywhere, but it seems all it would take is a few accusers to come out again and a documentary to be made and before you know it we'll be digging him up and burning him too.

[Si Hunt]

Difference is that Jackson proved in court that he was innocent, there was no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever and many of the kids who were present at his neverland sleepovers (now adults and including famous names) have clarified how innocent they were. People could just never accept the fact that an eccentric adult could enjoy the company of children without there being anything underhand in it.

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Difference is that Jackson proved in court that he was innocent, there was no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever and many of the kids who were present at his neverland sleepovers (now adults and including famous names) have clarified how innocent they were. People could just never accept the fact that an eccentric adult could enjoy the company of children without there being anything underhand in it.

Si.

That seems to be all that most of these BBC and other celebs, who are quoted as saying they "knew" about Savile, actually had to go on as well.

[Si Hunt]

But these two cases are completely different. An open call was put out to anyone that had been abused by Jackson; he was thoroughly investigated. He even stood trial, yet nobody with any credibility whatsoever could be located with claims of wrongdoing.

Hardly the same as JS, who managed to cover up his crimes while he was alive. Jackson was innocent, or surely someone, somewhere would have come forward when his trial happened. When JS's allegations blew up, 300 people came forward. What does it tell us that when the Jackson allegations were made, not a single other accusation was made aside from by the proven fraudster iniating the court case in which he was easily proven innocent?

Si.