Jimmy Savile, the man who ‘groomed the nation’
Britain’s public prosecutor is promising to reinvestigate thousands of sexual assault cases now that the extent of the entertainer’s crimes has been revealed, write and
FROM THE 10-year-old boy who was assaulted after he met BBC television presenter Jimmy Savile outside a hotel to ask for an autograph, to the many children abused in their schools after writing to Jim’ll Fix It, the kids’ programme Savile presented, the victims of one of Britain’s most prolific, manipulative and deceitful paedophiles had one thing in common: their absolute vulnerability.
Over six decades, some had made pathetic attempts to protect themselves – like the girls at Duncroft Approved School, who created a codeword, ‘‘ beef biryani’’, as an alert that they were being assaulted.
Others were too young or too ill to know what was happening. The 8-year-old boy who was sexually touched, Savile’s youngest victim; the 12- year- old who fulfilled a dream by going on Top of the Pops, only to be groped by Savile during a break in filming; and the dying teenager at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital whose relative saw what happened but felt unable to speak out.
Savile’s offending began when he was 29, before he became a BBC star, and continued into his 83rd year, when he shoved his hand up the skirt of a middle-aged woman on a train from Leeds to London.
The list of victims numbers more than 450, and includes 28 boys and girls under the age of 10, 38 aged between 10 and 13, and 34 children and young people whom he raped.
Savile exploited his access to every kind of institution in British society, carrying out at least 57 sexual assaults on children in 14 hospitals, abusing young people in numerous schools across the country and, at the BBC, assaulting young people at least 33 times in TV and radio studios between 1959 and 2006, when the last recorded allegation took place, at the recording of the final Top of the Pops. Many of the children who were assaulted at their schools had written to him, inviting him to come and see them.
‘‘Much as he could just turn up at hospitals and be allowed in, he went to a number of schools because children have written to him on Jim’ll Fix It,’’ said Detective Superintendent David Gray, the officer who spent the past three months examining the perversions of a powerful celebrity whose modus operandi was that of the classic child abuser.
‘‘He was a celebrity, and therefore he could turn up on his own and be asked in. He could do anything he wanted to, really.’’
The key to Savile’s unchecked lifetime of sexual offending was his ability to con his way into the hearts of the nation, blatantly threatening those who dared to challenge him, and leaving in his wake hundreds of damaged but crucially silent children and young people.
‘‘ He didn’t have to threaten them not to say anything,’’ Gray said. ‘‘He did what he wanted to do, then he discarded them and moved on, and they were too frightened to say anything.
‘‘The opportunity he had by virtue of his celebrity status and the ability he had to turn up anywhere and be allowed in gave him extraordinary access to children.’’
But the release of three separate reports yesterday – from the London Metropolitan police ( known as the Met) and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and Surrey police – has shed light on what Commander Peter Spindler, of Scotland Yard, labelled a sordid tale of a larger-than-life figure who had ‘‘ groomed the nation’’.
What leaps out is the extraordinary missed opportunities police and the CPS had to prosecute Savile in 2009, when the voices of four of his victims raised themselves to a whisper. That whisper should have built into a loud, robust shout, alerting police forces like the Met, which received an assault complaint about Savile in 2003; Thames Valley, where Savile was abusing dozens Mandeville; and West his home force.
The first victim to come forward to Surrey police, in 2007, was Ms B, a woman in her 40s who had attended Duncroft school as a girl. She described how Savile would at Stoke Yorkshire,
He did what he wanted to do, then he discarded them and moved on, and they were too frightened to say anything. Detective Superintendent David Gray
make ‘‘ advances’’. The thought he was ‘‘ creepy’’ would try to avoid him.
She told police he had sexually assaulted another girl, Ms C, in the TV room at the school.
In her report, Alison Levitt QC, the CPS lawyer who reviewed the failings of police and prosecutors, said: ‘‘They sat in rows on chairs which had backs but no arms. Ms B described how she was sitting next to Ms C, and that Jimmy Savile was on Ms C’s right-hand side. As usual, the lights were off whilst they watched television. Suddenly she heard Ms C say, ‘Ooh, beef biryani’; she looked to her right and saw Jimmy Savile take Ms C’s hand and put it over his crotch area.’’ Ms B said other girls were targeted in similar ways.
Surrey detectives tracked down Ms C – who independently described the same incident, saying girls and Savile put her hand on his groin, moved it around and made himself ‘‘aroused’’. But it took months to take a formal statement, and she was never told that allegations about Savile were being made by other women.
Separately, another woman, Ms A, contacted Sussex police in 2008 to describe how she was indecently assaulted by Savile in 1970, when she was in her early 20s. She had invited him to stay at her mother’s bed and breakfast.
The CPS report says: ‘‘ One Saturday in about 1970 at about lunchtime, a chauffeur driving a large Rolls- Royce arrived unannounced at her house to take her to see Jimmy Savile . . . She and Jimmy Savile ended up in his caravan . . . He started saying things to her such as, ‘You are lovely; I’d like to lock you up in a cupboard and you’d be with me all the time’, and that he could get her a job on Top of the Pops.
‘‘She was then pushed down on to the bed, ending up on her back; he was lying next to her and started to touch her breasts over her clothes. He asked if she was on the pill and she replied, ‘No, I don’t do that sort of thing’. He then called her something like a ‘little dolly bird’, and took hold of one of her hands and placed it on his groin. His penis was erect; he moved her hand up and down until she pulled her hand away.’’
The woman wrote to the Sun in 2007 because she was angry that Savile was being held in such high regard. The tabloid encouraged her to go to the police, and she decided to report the incident.
But Sussex police failed to build a case against Savile. Instead, they effectively scared the woman off, Levitt’s report concludes.
‘‘[The officer] had left her in no doubt as to how difficult it would be for a prosecution to take place, because Jimmy Savile was a ‘big celebrity’ . . . it would all take place in a ‘big court in London’, and his lawyers would make ‘mincemeat’ of her . . . she also got the clear impression from the police that she would be publicly branded a liar.’’
Ms A was never told that other women had made allegations to the police, was not offered special measures to give evidence in court, and was not told that she would, by law, remain anonymous.
On October 1, 2009, Savile was interviewed by Surrey police about four allegations, including the Sussex case. But the force’s own review into the investigation said: ‘‘ Savile was dictating not only where the interview would take place but also who would be present, in order to maintain an element of control on his behalf.’’
During the interview, Savile threatened the policewomen.
‘‘If this [the allegations] does not disappear, then my policy will swing into action,’’ he said. ‘‘If I was going to sue anyone, we would not go to a local court, we would go to the Old Bailey [the central criminal court in London].
‘‘I have no kinky carryings-on. But because I take everything seriously, I’ve alerted my legal team that they may be doing business – and if we do, you ladies [the two female officers] will finish up at the Old Bailey as well, because we will be wanting you there as witnesses.’’
Surrey police had details of four women who gave credible accounts of assaults by Savile, including the Sussex case. But 10 days after the interview, the CPS reviewing lawyer ruled that a prosecution should not take place.
Levitt said this was wrong. ‘‘The allegations were both serious and credible; the prosecutor should have recognised this and sought to build a prosecution . . . had police and prosecutors taken a different approach, a prosecution might have been possible.’’
It is too late for Savile’s victims to see justice in the courts. But Peter Watt, of the NSPCC, said the lasting change necessary to avoid more people becoming victims in future was for children to be listened to and given a voice, and for that voice to be acted on.