‘I’m not a victim. I’m a target’

Allegations span more than five decades

Rosa Silverman meets one woman who fell prey to Jimmy Savile

1955

The earliest allegation of Savile’s sexual abuse is recorded by the police, said to have taken place in Manchester.

1965

First recorded report of Savile’s abuse while at the BBC.

1966

The beginning of the decade in which Savile’s reported offending peaked, coinciding with the height of his popularity.

1970s

Savile commits a string of alleged assaults at Duncroft school for ‘emotionally disturbed’ girls, which he visited regularly.

1971

An offence is alleged to have been committed by Savile against a patient at Great Ormond Street in this year, though a 2014 report for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS

Foundation Trust found no evidence of this. Great Ormond Street is not the only hospital at which he is alleged to have committed abuse; others include Leeds General Infirmary and Stoke Mandeville (left).

1973

In an incident recorded in Dame Janet Smith’s 2016 review, a boy, 10, and a girl, 12, are taken to his Top of the Pops dressing room. He allegedly raped the boy and assaulted the girl.

1976

A young woman in the crowd at Top of the Pops complains that Savile put his hand under her bottom during a recording. She is told that’s ‘just Jimmy Savile mucking about’.

1978

A woman who was a girl in 1978 would later report that Savile had stroked her leg and made a comment about the stockings under her skirt at Wheatfields Hospice, Leeds.

2006

The last reported incident of Savile’s abuse at the BBC occurred in 2006. He is said to have abused a girl at the final recording of Top of the Pops.