Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles
Former royal aide says TV presenter would greet young female assistants at St James's Palace by 'rubbing lips up their arms'
Robert Booth The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2012
A former senior royal aide has revealed that Jimmy Savile's behaviour when he visited Prince Charles's official home at St James' Palace was a cause for "concern and suspicion".
Dickie Arbiter, who handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales while spokesman for the Queen between 1988 and 2000, said the suspected paedophile TV presenter used to rub his lips up the arms of Prince Charles's young female assistants as a greeting.
Savile is understood to have visited Prince Charles's official London residence several times in the late 1980s when he was acting as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana. A spokesman for the Prince of Wales confirmed the prince and Savile formed a relationship in the late 1970s after coming together through their work with wheelchair sports charities. Charles led tributes to Savile when he died a year ago.
"He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves," Arbiter said of Savile. "If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James's Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work."
Arbiter did not raise his concerns formally and there is no suggestion Savile committed any crimes while on royal premises or when he was with Prince Charles on numerous occasions from the 1970s onwards. But the concern over his behaviour expressed by a senior aide will raise questions over how Savile, who is now under investigation in relation to child abuse involving 300 potential victims, managed to develop such a long-standing relationship with the heir to the throne....
Charles reportedly sent him a box of cigars and a pair of gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday with a note that read: "Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that."
Savile used to boast of his royal connections, made sure to be photographed with Charles on numerous occasions and ingratiated himself once telling the Daily Mail the prince was "the nicest man you will ever meet".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/29/jimmy-savile-behaviour-prince-charles
Child abuse causes damage to the brain Monday, October 29, 2012
Neurologists have discovered that the way children are treated in their early years can have a remarkable impact on their brain development.
These two images are brain scans of two three-year-old children. The brain on the left is much bigger and contains fewer dark "fuzzy" areas and less spots, reports the UK's Telegraph.
The brain on the right is less developed in some fundamental areas, and neurologists say that child will become an adult who is less intelligent, less empathetic and more likely to be unemployed or get involved in drugs and crime than the other child.
While first glance might have people assuming a serious accident or illness must be responsible for the huge discrepancies, the truth is that the child on the right was neglected and abused by its mother, while the child on the left was raised in a loving, supportive home.
Professor Allan Schore, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) told the The Telegraph that babies rely on a strong bond with their mothers for healthy brain development in their first two years.
"The development of cerebral circuits depends on it," he said.
And with 80 per cent of brain cells grown in the first two years of life –– problems in that development can affect people for life.
Dr Marc Seal, a research scientist at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, is doing similar research.
"If you deprive a child of affection and social contact and basic food, they will be stunted physically –– their brains will be smaller and so will their bodies," he said.
"It becomes a cycle and people don't achieve their potential."
http://health.msn.co.nz/healthnews/8555843/child-abuse-causes-damage-to-the-brain
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Savile 'boasted of under-age sex' during BBC meeting, Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim
- Jimmy Savile 'boasted of under-age sex' during BBC meeting
- Jimmy Savile: Children in Need had ban - Sir Roger Jones
- Jimmy Savile: the BBC emails
- Jimmy Savile: Agencies could have spotted 'pattern of behaviour' police chief admits
- Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim
Jimmy Savile 'boasted of under-age sex' during BBC meeting
During a meeting with Jimmy Savile, a Radio 1 researcher says the late DJ boasted that he'd "had three 14-year-old girls" in his trailer that morning.
12 Oct 2012
Richard Pearson was a 21-year-old working at Radio 1 and meeting with a senior producer in BBC Broadcasting House's restaurant when he says Jimmy Savile joined them and claimed "not particularly quietly" that he'd just "had" three underage girls in his trailer.
"And when he said 'had' he didn't mean they'd come to criticised his curtains, he meant he'd had sex with them." Mr Pearson said.
He went onto claim that Savile openly said having sex with the girls "kept him young".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9605734/Jimmy-Savile-boasted-of-under-age-sex-during-BBC-meeting.html
29 October 2012
Jimmy Savile: Children in Need had ban - Sir Roger Jones
A former BBC governor for Wales and Children in Need chairman says he had suspicions about Jimmy Savile more than a decade ago and would not allow him any involvement with the charity.
Sir Roger Jones heard of rumours from London staff, and the charity decided not to allow Savile "anywhere near" it.
He said he did not tell management because he did not have evidence Savile abused children while a BBC employee.
Police believe Savile may have abused as many as 300 people over 40 years.
Sir Roger's comments come on the day the investigation into the BBC's child protection and whistle-blowing policies begins.
He was a member of the board of governors between 1997 and 2002, and said he would have stepped down from his Children in Need role if Savile had become involved with the charity....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20120302
Jimmy Savile: Agencies could have spotted 'pattern of behaviour' police chief admits
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has admitted to being shocked by the scale and extent of the Jimmy Savile allegations.
By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent
29 Oct 2012
Bernard Hogan-Howe also suggested more could have been done when complaints were originally made to spot patterns of behaviour that could have led to the entertainer being stopped.
The Commissioner said it was possible that the authorities including the police and the BBC had relied too much on Savile's reputation when considering whether to dig deeper.
Mr Hogan-Howe told reporters: "You might have thought that people would at least have talked about it and intervened.
"It does look as if from time to time people have been concerned, they've made the start to intervene, but probably then they've relied a little bit too much on his reputation and his word that he did nothing.
"If you accept all the public accounts of the activity then it's possibly spanned 50 years which is a huge amount of time....
Four police forces were contacted by seven potential victims while Savile was alive. Surrey, Sussex and Jersey all found that there was not enough evidence to proceed.
Two potential victims came forward to Scotland Yard – one of whom claimed she had been abused in the 1970s but did not want to pursue a criminal investigation.
Officers are trying to find the original file relating to a second claim made by a woman who claimed she was assaulted in the 1980s, possibly in a caravan outside BBC premises in west London....
So far around 300 potential victims have been identified, with Met officers following more than 400 lines of inquiry.
Meanwhile it has emerged that the Savile scandal has led to a surge in the number of people reporting child sex abuse allegations to the authorities.
Peter Davies, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), said the exposure had encouraged victims unconnected to Savile to come forward and unburden themselves....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9641117/Jimmy-Savile-Agencies-could-have-spotted-pattern-of-behaviour-police-chief-admits.html
Jimmy Savile: the BBC emails
Emails between senior members of BBC staff give insight into whether the corporation scrapped its Jimmy Savile Newsnight investigation after coming "under pressure" from managers.
22 Oct 2012
.... 2 DEC Head of news Helen Boaden tells George Entwistle at an awards lunch that if the Newsnight programme goes ahead he might have to change the Christmas schedules, which include a handful of Savile tribute programmes.
7 DEC Email, Meirion Jones to Peter Rippon. He insists "the story is strong enough" and the danger of not running it is "substantial damage to BBC reputation".
9 DEC The Crown Prosecution Service tells Newsnight it did not investigate Savile because of lack of evidence. Rippon axes Newsnight item on Savile.
2 OCT 2012 Blog, Peter Rippon, BBC News website. Mr Rippon says on his blog that all the women spoken to by Newsnight had gone to the police already and that no new information had been uncovered by the investigation. Both points are denied by Meirion Jones in the Panorama programme.
5 OCT 2012 Email, George Entwistle to all BBC staff: "The BBC Newsnight programme investigated Surrey Police's inquiry into Jimmy Savile towards the end of 2011."
5 OCT Email, Meirion Jones to George Entwistle: "George – one note – the investigation was into whether Jimmy Savile was a paedophile – I know because it was my investigation. We didn't know that Surrey police had investigated Jimmy Savile – no one did – that was what we found when we investigated and interviewed his victims."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9624784/Jimmy-Savile-the-BBC-emails.html
Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim Reuters October 29, 2012
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard recounted his own sexual abuse by coaches he trusted, telling a Penn State audience Monday he hoped to encourage other victims to report abuse to police.
Leonard spoke at a sold-out conference on child sex abuse hosted by Penn State weeks after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, 68, was sentenced to prison for 30 to 60 years for sexually assaulting 10 boys he befriended through his charity for at-risk youth.
Leonard, 56, who retired after winning world boxing titles in five different weight classes, said as a youth he was sexually assaulted by men he trusted as his boxing coaches.
"Trust is a very sacred thing, especially for young people, kids, or a young boxer, so I trusted these people, these individuals who impacted my life," said Leonard said. "They told me everything I wanted to hear, and more."
The former champion said he used drugs and alcohol to "numb" his shame of being a victim of child sexual abuse.
"I beat myself up for years," said Leonard as the two-day conference got underway with Hurricane Sandy quickly approaching Pennsylvania.
Now Leonard said he wants to step into the spotlight as a leader in the fight against child sex abuse in the hopes it will help other victims find the courage to report crimes to police.
"I'm going to be the poster child. I don't care," Leonard said to applause.
"I will be that leader. I will stand right there and say, ‘Yes, something must be done now. Not later, now,'" Leonard said....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/chi-sugar-ray-leonard-child-sex-abuse-victim-20121029,0,3918081.story
- Jimmy Savile: Children in Need had ban - Sir Roger Jones
- Jimmy Savile: the BBC emails
- Jimmy Savile: Agencies could have spotted 'pattern of behaviour' police chief admits
- Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim
Jimmy Savile 'boasted of under-age sex' during BBC meeting
During a meeting with Jimmy Savile, a Radio 1 researcher says the late DJ boasted that he'd "had three 14-year-old girls" in his trailer that morning.
12 Oct 2012
Richard Pearson was a 21-year-old working at Radio 1 and meeting with a senior producer in BBC Broadcasting House's restaurant when he says Jimmy Savile joined them and claimed "not particularly quietly" that he'd just "had" three underage girls in his trailer.
"And when he said 'had' he didn't mean they'd come to criticised his curtains, he meant he'd had sex with them." Mr Pearson said.
He went onto claim that Savile openly said having sex with the girls "kept him young".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9605734/Jimmy-Savile-boasted-of-under-age-sex-during-BBC-meeting.html
29 October 2012
Jimmy Savile: Children in Need had ban - Sir Roger Jones
A former BBC governor for Wales and Children in Need chairman says he had suspicions about Jimmy Savile more than a decade ago and would not allow him any involvement with the charity.
Sir Roger Jones heard of rumours from London staff, and the charity decided not to allow Savile "anywhere near" it.
He said he did not tell management because he did not have evidence Savile abused children while a BBC employee.
Police believe Savile may have abused as many as 300 people over 40 years.
Sir Roger's comments come on the day the investigation into the BBC's child protection and whistle-blowing policies begins.
He was a member of the board of governors between 1997 and 2002, and said he would have stepped down from his Children in Need role if Savile had become involved with the charity....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20120302
Jimmy Savile: Agencies could have spotted 'pattern of behaviour' police chief admits
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has admitted to being shocked by the scale and extent of the Jimmy Savile allegations.
By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent
29 Oct 2012
Bernard Hogan-Howe also suggested more could have been done when complaints were originally made to spot patterns of behaviour that could have led to the entertainer being stopped.
The Commissioner said it was possible that the authorities including the police and the BBC had relied too much on Savile's reputation when considering whether to dig deeper.
Mr Hogan-Howe told reporters: "You might have thought that people would at least have talked about it and intervened.
"It does look as if from time to time people have been concerned, they've made the start to intervene, but probably then they've relied a little bit too much on his reputation and his word that he did nothing.
"If you accept all the public accounts of the activity then it's possibly spanned 50 years which is a huge amount of time....
Four police forces were contacted by seven potential victims while Savile was alive. Surrey, Sussex and Jersey all found that there was not enough evidence to proceed.
Two potential victims came forward to Scotland Yard – one of whom claimed she had been abused in the 1970s but did not want to pursue a criminal investigation.
Officers are trying to find the original file relating to a second claim made by a woman who claimed she was assaulted in the 1980s, possibly in a caravan outside BBC premises in west London....
So far around 300 potential victims have been identified, with Met officers following more than 400 lines of inquiry.
Meanwhile it has emerged that the Savile scandal has led to a surge in the number of people reporting child sex abuse allegations to the authorities.
Peter Davies, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), said the exposure had encouraged victims unconnected to Savile to come forward and unburden themselves....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9641117/Jimmy-Savile-Agencies-could-have-spotted-pattern-of-behaviour-police-chief-admits.html
Jimmy Savile: the BBC emails
Emails between senior members of BBC staff give insight into whether the corporation scrapped its Jimmy Savile Newsnight investigation after coming "under pressure" from managers.
22 Oct 2012
.... 2 DEC Head of news Helen Boaden tells George Entwistle at an awards lunch that if the Newsnight programme goes ahead he might have to change the Christmas schedules, which include a handful of Savile tribute programmes.
7 DEC Email, Meirion Jones to Peter Rippon. He insists "the story is strong enough" and the danger of not running it is "substantial damage to BBC reputation".
9 DEC The Crown Prosecution Service tells Newsnight it did not investigate Savile because of lack of evidence. Rippon axes Newsnight item on Savile.
2 OCT 2012 Blog, Peter Rippon, BBC News website. Mr Rippon says on his blog that all the women spoken to by Newsnight had gone to the police already and that no new information had been uncovered by the investigation. Both points are denied by Meirion Jones in the Panorama programme.
5 OCT 2012 Email, George Entwistle to all BBC staff: "The BBC Newsnight programme investigated Surrey Police's inquiry into Jimmy Savile towards the end of 2011."
5 OCT Email, Meirion Jones to George Entwistle: "George – one note – the investigation was into whether Jimmy Savile was a paedophile – I know because it was my investigation. We didn't know that Surrey police had investigated Jimmy Savile – no one did – that was what we found when we investigated and interviewed his victims."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9624784/Jimmy-Savile-the-BBC-emails.html
Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim Reuters October 29, 2012
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard recounted his own sexual abuse by coaches he trusted, telling a Penn State audience Monday he hoped to encourage other victims to report abuse to police.
Leonard spoke at a sold-out conference on child sex abuse hosted by Penn State weeks after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, 68, was sentenced to prison for 30 to 60 years for sexually assaulting 10 boys he befriended through his charity for at-risk youth.
Leonard, 56, who retired after winning world boxing titles in five different weight classes, said as a youth he was sexually assaulted by men he trusted as his boxing coaches.
"Trust is a very sacred thing, especially for young people, kids, or a young boxer, so I trusted these people, these individuals who impacted my life," said Leonard said. "They told me everything I wanted to hear, and more."
The former champion said he used drugs and alcohol to "numb" his shame of being a victim of child sexual abuse.
"I beat myself up for years," said Leonard as the two-day conference got underway with Hurricane Sandy quickly approaching Pennsylvania.
Now Leonard said he wants to step into the spotlight as a leader in the fight against child sex abuse in the hopes it will help other victims find the courage to report crimes to police.
"I'm going to be the poster child. I don't care," Leonard said to applause.
"I will be that leader. I will stand right there and say, ‘Yes, something must be done now. Not later, now,'" Leonard said....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/chi-sugar-ray-leonard-child-sex-abuse-victim-20121029,0,3918081.story
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Garry Glitter - Savile probe, 22 Personalities: A Ritual Abuse Survival Story
Former UK pop star Gary Glitter held in Savile probe
Alessandra Rizzo October 28, 2012
LONDON (Reuters) - British police arrested convicted sex offender and former pop star Gary Glitter on Sunday as part of an investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by the late BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, media said.
Glitter was released on bail some 10 hours later. But the arrest - the first to be reported in the case - widened a scandal that has already damaged the reputation of the publicly-funded BBC and the legacy of Savile, a former DJ who was one of the broadcaster's top show hosts and a prolific charity fundraiser....
Glitter was held by police for about 10 hours. He was seen leaving a police station in central London and, minutes later, return to his apartment, where he dodged questions by scores of waiting reporters and cameramen.
Police later said the man was "bailed to return to the police station in mid-December 2012, pending further inquiries"....
Glitter served two months was jail in Britain in 1999 for possession of child pornography. He then moved to Cambodia, but was deported in 2002 due to suspected sex offences.
In 2006, a Vietnamese court convicted him of committing obscene acts with two girls aged 10 and 11 and sentenced him to four years in jail. On his release he returned to Britain.
Allegations that Savile sexually abused young girls for decades first emerged in an expose on the British TV channel ITV. Since then, police say some 300 victims had come forward.
Victims' allegations broadcast by ITV include claims from one woman that she had seen Glitter having sex with an underage girl in Savile's BBC dressing room while Savile abused another girl. Glitter has denied the claim, according to the BBC....http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-rt-us-britain-savilebre89q06g-20121027,0,7295122.story
22 Personalities: A Ritual Abuse Survival Story
10/26/12 Kimberly Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – It's something out of a nightmare - satanic rituals and human sacrifices, but this nightmare is real for Jenny Hill....
Jenny's story of satanic ritual abuse is documented in Judy Byington's new book “Twenty Two Faces.”
Byington explained, "She had been sexually abused and ritually abused as a very young child so she had these multiple personalities that anytime she got into a stressful situation they would take over her mind and body."
Jenny’s first alter personality was born at the age of 4. That's when jenny says her father, a devout Mormon, began doing the unthinkable.
Hill said, "He told me he loved me over my mother. There's your secret."
It was just a couple of years later when the satanic ritual abuse began and that created more personalities to help her deal with the sexual abuse and torture.
Byington explained, "It's like she knows she's being abused but she can't feel the abuse because these alters are holding the pain."
Jenny didn't remember the abuse; all she knew is that she would lose time until one day she woke up in a Utah psychiatric hospital confused. http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/22-Personalities-A-Ritual-Abuse-Survival-Story/t1p2neiN0k2LEdutF2O1Bg.cspx
Alessandra Rizzo October 28, 2012
LONDON (Reuters) - British police arrested convicted sex offender and former pop star Gary Glitter on Sunday as part of an investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by the late BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, media said.
Glitter was released on bail some 10 hours later. But the arrest - the first to be reported in the case - widened a scandal that has already damaged the reputation of the publicly-funded BBC and the legacy of Savile, a former DJ who was one of the broadcaster's top show hosts and a prolific charity fundraiser....
Glitter was held by police for about 10 hours. He was seen leaving a police station in central London and, minutes later, return to his apartment, where he dodged questions by scores of waiting reporters and cameramen.
Police later said the man was "bailed to return to the police station in mid-December 2012, pending further inquiries"....
Glitter served two months was jail in Britain in 1999 for possession of child pornography. He then moved to Cambodia, but was deported in 2002 due to suspected sex offences.
In 2006, a Vietnamese court convicted him of committing obscene acts with two girls aged 10 and 11 and sentenced him to four years in jail. On his release he returned to Britain.
Allegations that Savile sexually abused young girls for decades first emerged in an expose on the British TV channel ITV. Since then, police say some 300 victims had come forward.
Victims' allegations broadcast by ITV include claims from one woman that she had seen Glitter having sex with an underage girl in Savile's BBC dressing room while Savile abused another girl. Glitter has denied the claim, according to the BBC....http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-rt-us-britain-savilebre89q06g-20121027,0,7295122.story
22 Personalities: A Ritual Abuse Survival Story
10/26/12 Kimberly Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – It's something out of a nightmare - satanic rituals and human sacrifices, but this nightmare is real for Jenny Hill....
Jenny's story of satanic ritual abuse is documented in Judy Byington's new book “Twenty Two Faces.”
Byington explained, "She had been sexually abused and ritually abused as a very young child so she had these multiple personalities that anytime she got into a stressful situation they would take over her mind and body."
Jenny’s first alter personality was born at the age of 4. That's when jenny says her father, a devout Mormon, began doing the unthinkable.
Hill said, "He told me he loved me over my mother. There's your secret."
It was just a couple of years later when the satanic ritual abuse began and that created more personalities to help her deal with the sexual abuse and torture.
Byington explained, "It's like she knows she's being abused but she can't feel the abuse because these alters are holding the pain."
Jenny didn't remember the abuse; all she knew is that she would lose time until one day she woke up in a Utah psychiatric hospital confused. http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/22-Personalities-A-Ritual-Abuse-Survival-Story/t1p2neiN0k2LEdutF2O1Bg.cspx
BBC in a spin as sex scandal escalates - Jimmy Savile
BBC in a spin as sex scandal escalates
October 27, 2012
A long list of blunders over its treatment of molester Jimmy Savile is haunting the broadcaster, writes Jane Wheatley.
He was the biggest television star in Britain, courted by prime ministers, princes and the Pope. And now the millions of people who had watched, laughed at and grew up with the late Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE, KCSG, are trying to come to terms with the fact that he had been sexually abusing underage girls for 50 years. It was shocking, people agreed, and yet somehow not surprising: when you watch old clips of him fondling star-struck children, it all seems so obvious - and shameful. Why hadn't they realised?
More to the point, why did the BBC fail to investigate the rumours that we now know were rife in the '60s and '70s: that their golden goose, kingpin of top-rating shows Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It , was entertaining young girls from studio audiences in his dressing room and at post-show parties, delivered to him by program assistants. Or that when he was out on the road running for charity he took young fans to bed in his campervan.
And after Savile's death last year, why was an investigation into his predatory activities by the BBC's flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, suddenly dropped - to be followed a month later by two fulsome tribute programs? And why did the BBC file away incendiary evidence gathered by Newsnight producer Meirion Jones and reporter Liz Mackean, only to see the same material used by its arch competitor, ITV, in a report screened a year later, which delivered compelling testimonies from more of Savile's alleged victims....
The allegations are bad enough: that Savile not only cherry picked young fans for sexual favours, but targeted the most vulnerable - in hospitals, at Broadmoor secure psychiatric institution and at Duncroft, an approved school for emotionally disturbed girls. As a celebrity volunteer and fund-raiser he was often given his own flat or dressing room where he took his ''victims''. "The younger the better," was Savile's motto, according to his biographer, Dan Davies.
But Savile was not particularly secretive about his activities - staff at those institutions now seem, at some level anyway, to have known what he was up to. So why did nobody do anything?
One by one, Savile's former BBC colleagues and producers were hauled out of retirement as Panorama presenter Shelley Jofre asked that question.
As a young reporter, Martin Young joined Savile on a charity run and found him lying on the bed in his campervan with a teenage girl.
"I thought he was a pervert," Young told Jofre. Did he think about reporting it? "No, it never crossed my mind, and I take my share of blame for that."
Reporter Bob Langley saw girls - "12, 13, possibly 14, definitely not 15" - coming out of the campervan. "[Savile] indicated to me in a nudge-nudge sort of way that he had just had sex with one of them … Should I have reported it? What would have happened? He would have said it was a joke and that would be the end of it."
On one show Savile brought his friend Gary Glitter - later a convicted paedophile - onto the set, where they both sat cuddling young girls. "I'm giving girls away here," Savile chortled. "We've got them from everywhere, we've even got some from Broadmoor." He was routinely filmed in clinches. "The BBC bought into Savile's sexually suggestive style big time," Jofre said....
http://www.smh.com.au/world/bbc-in-a-spin-as-sex-scandal-escalates-20121026-28axg.html
October 27, 2012
A long list of blunders over its treatment of molester Jimmy Savile is haunting the broadcaster, writes Jane Wheatley.
He was the biggest television star in Britain, courted by prime ministers, princes and the Pope. And now the millions of people who had watched, laughed at and grew up with the late Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE, KCSG, are trying to come to terms with the fact that he had been sexually abusing underage girls for 50 years. It was shocking, people agreed, and yet somehow not surprising: when you watch old clips of him fondling star-struck children, it all seems so obvious - and shameful. Why hadn't they realised?
More to the point, why did the BBC fail to investigate the rumours that we now know were rife in the '60s and '70s: that their golden goose, kingpin of top-rating shows Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It , was entertaining young girls from studio audiences in his dressing room and at post-show parties, delivered to him by program assistants. Or that when he was out on the road running for charity he took young fans to bed in his campervan.
And after Savile's death last year, why was an investigation into his predatory activities by the BBC's flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, suddenly dropped - to be followed a month later by two fulsome tribute programs? And why did the BBC file away incendiary evidence gathered by Newsnight producer Meirion Jones and reporter Liz Mackean, only to see the same material used by its arch competitor, ITV, in a report screened a year later, which delivered compelling testimonies from more of Savile's alleged victims....
The allegations are bad enough: that Savile not only cherry picked young fans for sexual favours, but targeted the most vulnerable - in hospitals, at Broadmoor secure psychiatric institution and at Duncroft, an approved school for emotionally disturbed girls. As a celebrity volunteer and fund-raiser he was often given his own flat or dressing room where he took his ''victims''. "The younger the better," was Savile's motto, according to his biographer, Dan Davies.
But Savile was not particularly secretive about his activities - staff at those institutions now seem, at some level anyway, to have known what he was up to. So why did nobody do anything?
One by one, Savile's former BBC colleagues and producers were hauled out of retirement as Panorama presenter Shelley Jofre asked that question.
As a young reporter, Martin Young joined Savile on a charity run and found him lying on the bed in his campervan with a teenage girl.
"I thought he was a pervert," Young told Jofre. Did he think about reporting it? "No, it never crossed my mind, and I take my share of blame for that."
Reporter Bob Langley saw girls - "12, 13, possibly 14, definitely not 15" - coming out of the campervan. "[Savile] indicated to me in a nudge-nudge sort of way that he had just had sex with one of them … Should I have reported it? What would have happened? He would have said it was a joke and that would be the end of it."
On one show Savile brought his friend Gary Glitter - later a convicted paedophile - onto the set, where they both sat cuddling young girls. "I'm giving girls away here," Savile chortled. "We've got them from everywhere, we've even got some from Broadmoor." He was routinely filmed in clinches. "The BBC bought into Savile's sexually suggestive style big time," Jofre said....
http://www.smh.com.au/world/bbc-in-a-spin-as-sex-scandal-escalates-20121026-28axg.html
Friday, October 26, 2012
Jimmy Savile BBC Scandal: paedophile network, free pass, 300 complaints, Newsnight investigation halted, public abuse
- Met Police investigating Savile prepare to examine files into historic claims a Downing Street aide had links to a paedophile network
- Jimmy Savile scandal: the evil we do in giving celebrities a free pass
The cult of celebrity abetted Savile in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it
- Jimmy Savile: police heard seven sexual assault complaints before he died
- Jimmy Savile: Newsnight investigation halted two days after BBC Christmas schedule announced
Newsnight’s editor stopped his journalists’ investigation into paedophilia allegations against Jimmy Savile just two days after the BBC published its Christmas schedule, which included tribute programmes to the late presenter.
- Jimmy Savile 'grabbed woman's chest in front of MPs and journalists'
Jimmy Savile wrote nearly four decades ago of how he grabbed a young woman’s chest at a House of Commons reception in front of MPs, Ministers and several hundred journalists.
- Who Was Jimmy Savile?
- Millions watched as Jimmy Savile molested me on TV
I told BBC boss but he snapped ‘get lost’
A TERRIFIED teenage girl was molested on camera by Jimmy Savile during Top Of The Pops — then told to “get lost” by a BBC boss when she complained.
Met Police investigating Savile prepare to examine files into historic claims a Downing Street aide had links to a paedophile network
Labour MP Tom Watson alleged intelligence links child sex offenders to ex-Number 10 aide
Claimed police may hold evidence and urged David Cameron to investigate
PM says he's 'not sure which former prime minister Watson is referring to'
By Daily Mail Reporter 24 October 2012
Scotland Yard is preparing to examine claims a powerful paedophile network may have had links to Downing Street and a former prime minister.
Labour MP Tom Watson shocked the Commons yesterday by alleging there was ‘clear intelligence’ linking a former Number 10 aide with a notorious group of sex offenders.
He has compiled a dossier allegations for the Metropolitan Police, which is currently dealing with hundreds of allegations of abuse against Jimmy Savile.
Scotland Yard today said the number of the broadcaster's victims was 'fast approaching' 300, with 400 separate lines of inquiry.
Meanwhile 160 people alone have complained of abuse to the NSPCC since the scale of Savile's paedophilia was revealed.
But the scandal was widened yesterday when Mr Watson suggested a Number 10 insider was named in files connected to the conviction of a child porn smuggler in the early 1990s....
Mr Watson said there was a trail between the evidence used to convict a child abuser called Peter Righton in 1992, and No 10.
He told the Commons: ‘The evidence used to convict paedophile Peter Righton, if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring.
‘One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former prime minister who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222459/Jimmy-Savile-rumours-Met-police-look-claims-Downing-Street-aide-links-paedophile-network.html
Jimmy Savile scandal: the evil we do in giving celebrities a free pass
The cult of celebrity abetted Savile in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it
Deborah Orr The Guardian, Friday 26 October 2012
....Part of the reason Savile and others were able to prey on young people with impunity was that their word was always considered more valuable than those of their victims. The point when sympathy for Peter Rippon, the man who halted the Newsnight investigation into Savile's crimes, evaporated was when it emerged that he'd dismissed the collaborative testimony of four of Savile's victims as "just the women", adding for good measure that, 40 years ago, 14 years old was "not too young" to be a girl in a special school, manipulated and bribed into sexually servicing a powerful man. How appalling.
Such behaviour is utterly reprehensible, whatever age a preyed-upon person is. For under-16s, then as now, it is immoral and illegal. The age and gender of the people who complained about Savile was viewed, even last November, as somehow a mitigation of his behaviour, when those, along with his celebrity, were actually details that abetted him in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it.
These "household names" still have that advantage. And they've been tipped off that any day now, their advantage can be played once again. Britain's obsession with celebrity is beginning to look not just silly, but extremely dark, even evil.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/27/jimmy-savile-celebrities-free-pass
Jimmy Savile: police heard seven sexual assault complaints before he died
Scotland Yard team investigating Jimmy Savile abuse claims say Operation Yewtree now being treated as major incident
Sandra Laville, crime correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 25 October 2012
At least seven alleged victims of Jimmy Savile made complaints of sexual assault against him to police while the TV presenter was still alive, according to the Scotland Yard team investigating the abuse scandal.
Officers said Operation Yewtree had been contacted by around 300 alleged victims and is being treated as a major incident. "We are dealing with a major criminal investigation. This is a watershed moment for child abuse investigations and Yewtree will be landmark investigation," said Commander Peter Spindler
As police prepare to make a number of arrests of individuals who allegedly sexually assaulted children with Savile or alone, Scotland Yard revealed that a criminal inquiry was mounted into an alleged indecent assault of a girl on BBC premises in Shepherd's Bush more than 30 years ago.
The complaint, which was investigated by a Scotland Yard officer, was one of at least seven allegations of sexual assault made to police while Savile was alive. None of the complaints led to him being prosecuted.....
A boy from the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey is also known to have told police that he was assaulted by the celebrity.
Spindler said the number of victims who had now come forward over the last three weeks alleging sexual assaults by the late TV celebrity and other living individuals was around the 300 mark. "It is quite staggering the numbers of women – and they are predominantly women – who have come forward," Spindler said.
Detectives have recorded 114 alleged crimes of sexual assault and serious sexual assault, mostly relating to Savile but also to other individuals from a number of different institutions. Officers are using the Holmes computer database, normally use in homicide inquiries.
Of the 300 alleged victims, the majority had made complaints about Savile but a number of allegations related to living individuals, Spindler said....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/25/jimmy-savile-sexual-assault-complaints-alive
Jimmy Savile: Newsnight investigation halted two days after BBC Christmas schedule announced
Newsnight’s editor stopped his journalists’ investigation into paedophilia allegations against Jimmy Savile just two days after the BBC published its Christmas schedule, which included tribute programmes to the late presenter.
By Sam Marsden 26 Oct 2012
Peter Rippon expressed enthusiasm about the project on November 25 last year and even talked about plans to broadcast it, but less than a week later he changed the parameters of the story and then halted the editing of the film.
In between, on November 29, the BBC had announced its final schedule of Christmas shows, including two TV tributes to Savile.
Critics have suggested that the decision to axe the Newsnight investigation into the star’s sexual abuse of under-age girls was taken to avoid embarrassing the Corporation, which has since been badly damaged by the scandal....
Meanwhile, it emerged on Friday that Savile gave a television interview six years ago in which he insisted without being prompted, “I don’t do underage sex”.
The eccentric star said he “never loved” the children he worked with on Jim’ll Fix It but claimed he “respected them” and “wasn’t yucky to them”.
Asked whether he would have liked to have become a father, Savile said: "I think all children should be eaten at birth."....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9637079/Jimmy-Savile-Newsnight-investigation-halted-two-days-after-BBC-Christmas-schedule-announced.html
Jimmy Savile 'grabbed woman's chest in front of MPs and journalists'
Jimmy Savile wrote nearly four decades ago of how he grabbed a young woman’s chest at a House of Commons reception in front of MPs, Ministers and several hundred journalists.
by Sam Marsden, and Tom Rowley 26 Oct 2012
The late DJ and TV personality used his 1974 autobiography to give a lurid account of the incident, which he said was an attempt by him to put out a lit match that had accidentally flown down the female guest’s top.
Savile described in humorous terms how the woman screamed when he touched her, drawing the attention of the other party-goers and prompting one MP to shout, “Good Lord, he’s got her by the t**s!”.
He insisted that the matter was “eventually sorted out” despite being “as usual vastly misunderstood” by those present.
The episode may have been as innocent as Savile claimed, but it appears to provide another example of the presenter getting away with inappropriate behaviour in public because of his eccentric reputation....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9636879/Jimmy-Savile-grabbed-womans-chest-in-front-of-MPs-and-journalists.html
Who Was Jimmy Savile? By ROBERT MACKEY October 26, 2012
....As the Reuters media critic Jack Shafer explained, “Since the ITV program aired, Scotland Yard and other police forces have opened criminal investigations of the allegation; the BBC has commenced its own internal investigation; members of Parliament are threatening to lay siege to BBC Television Centre; newspapers are ripping the BBC for allegedly abetting Savile,” and the man who ran the BBC at the time has been forced to issue a statement denying that he exerted any pressure on the editor of “Newsnight” to kill the story.
The sudden deterioration in Mr. Savile’s reputation led to large swathes of the BBC’s own programming being devoted this month to self-analysis and soul-searching, and led some veteran newspaper journalists to ask why no one, including London’s notoriously intrusive tabloid press, had managed to substantiate the allegations before the entertainer passed away last year at the age of 84.
In a recent episode of the topical comedy show “Have I Got News For You,” the Irish comedian Graham Linehan observed, after watching an archival clip of Mr. Savile joking a decade ago about having sex with “anybody I can lay my hands on,” that “he was very good at hiding in plain sight with that kind of comment, wasn’t he? Apparently his biography is full of, basically him admitting that he did all of this. And so, he created a smokescreen comprised of the truth.”
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/who-was-jimmy-savile/
Millions watched as Jimmy Savile molested me on TV
I told BBC boss but he snapped ‘get lost’
A TERRIFIED teenage girl was molested on camera by Jimmy Savile during Top Of The Pops — then told to “get lost” by a BBC boss when she complained.
Exclusive By NICK PARKER October 27, 2012
A video clip has preserved the shocking moment when the laughing pervert put his hand up horrified Sylvia Edwards’ skirt — as 20 million viewers watched the live show.
Blonde Sylvia, 19, can be seen shrieking and struggling to escape while creepy Savile smirks: “I tell you something, a fella could get used to this, as it ’appens, he really could get used to it.”
Speaking for the first time about the ordeal, Sylvia told The Sun: “I felt his fingers go towards my bottom. It was disgusting.” Afterwards she ran straight to a BBC floor manager and told him what Savile had done. To her horror, he said: “Get lost — it’s just Jimmy messing about.”
The assault at BBC TV Centre in West London on November 25, 1976, left Sylvia with mental scars — and is the first video evidence of Savile’s sex abuse.....
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4612576/Millions-watched-as-Jimmy-Savile-molested-me-on-tv.html
- Jimmy Savile scandal: the evil we do in giving celebrities a free pass
The cult of celebrity abetted Savile in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it
- Jimmy Savile: police heard seven sexual assault complaints before he died
- Jimmy Savile: Newsnight investigation halted two days after BBC Christmas schedule announced
Newsnight’s editor stopped his journalists’ investigation into paedophilia allegations against Jimmy Savile just two days after the BBC published its Christmas schedule, which included tribute programmes to the late presenter.
- Jimmy Savile 'grabbed woman's chest in front of MPs and journalists'
Jimmy Savile wrote nearly four decades ago of how he grabbed a young woman’s chest at a House of Commons reception in front of MPs, Ministers and several hundred journalists.
- Who Was Jimmy Savile?
- Millions watched as Jimmy Savile molested me on TV
I told BBC boss but he snapped ‘get lost’
A TERRIFIED teenage girl was molested on camera by Jimmy Savile during Top Of The Pops — then told to “get lost” by a BBC boss when she complained.
Met Police investigating Savile prepare to examine files into historic claims a Downing Street aide had links to a paedophile network
Labour MP Tom Watson alleged intelligence links child sex offenders to ex-Number 10 aide
Claimed police may hold evidence and urged David Cameron to investigate
PM says he's 'not sure which former prime minister Watson is referring to'
By Daily Mail Reporter 24 October 2012
Scotland Yard is preparing to examine claims a powerful paedophile network may have had links to Downing Street and a former prime minister.
Labour MP Tom Watson shocked the Commons yesterday by alleging there was ‘clear intelligence’ linking a former Number 10 aide with a notorious group of sex offenders.
He has compiled a dossier allegations for the Metropolitan Police, which is currently dealing with hundreds of allegations of abuse against Jimmy Savile.
Scotland Yard today said the number of the broadcaster's victims was 'fast approaching' 300, with 400 separate lines of inquiry.
Meanwhile 160 people alone have complained of abuse to the NSPCC since the scale of Savile's paedophilia was revealed.
But the scandal was widened yesterday when Mr Watson suggested a Number 10 insider was named in files connected to the conviction of a child porn smuggler in the early 1990s....
Mr Watson said there was a trail between the evidence used to convict a child abuser called Peter Righton in 1992, and No 10.
He told the Commons: ‘The evidence used to convict paedophile Peter Righton, if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring.
‘One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former prime minister who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222459/Jimmy-Savile-rumours-Met-police-look-claims-Downing-Street-aide-links-paedophile-network.html
Jimmy Savile scandal: the evil we do in giving celebrities a free pass
The cult of celebrity abetted Savile in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it
Deborah Orr The Guardian, Friday 26 October 2012
....Part of the reason Savile and others were able to prey on young people with impunity was that their word was always considered more valuable than those of their victims. The point when sympathy for Peter Rippon, the man who halted the Newsnight investigation into Savile's crimes, evaporated was when it emerged that he'd dismissed the collaborative testimony of four of Savile's victims as "just the women", adding for good measure that, 40 years ago, 14 years old was "not too young" to be a girl in a special school, manipulated and bribed into sexually servicing a powerful man. How appalling.
Such behaviour is utterly reprehensible, whatever age a preyed-upon person is. For under-16s, then as now, it is immoral and illegal. The age and gender of the people who complained about Savile was viewed, even last November, as somehow a mitigation of his behaviour, when those, along with his celebrity, were actually details that abetted him in both his exploitation and his ability to get away with it.
These "household names" still have that advantage. And they've been tipped off that any day now, their advantage can be played once again. Britain's obsession with celebrity is beginning to look not just silly, but extremely dark, even evil.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/27/jimmy-savile-celebrities-free-pass
Jimmy Savile: police heard seven sexual assault complaints before he died
Scotland Yard team investigating Jimmy Savile abuse claims say Operation Yewtree now being treated as major incident
Sandra Laville, crime correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 25 October 2012
At least seven alleged victims of Jimmy Savile made complaints of sexual assault against him to police while the TV presenter was still alive, according to the Scotland Yard team investigating the abuse scandal.
Officers said Operation Yewtree had been contacted by around 300 alleged victims and is being treated as a major incident. "We are dealing with a major criminal investigation. This is a watershed moment for child abuse investigations and Yewtree will be landmark investigation," said Commander Peter Spindler
As police prepare to make a number of arrests of individuals who allegedly sexually assaulted children with Savile or alone, Scotland Yard revealed that a criminal inquiry was mounted into an alleged indecent assault of a girl on BBC premises in Shepherd's Bush more than 30 years ago.
The complaint, which was investigated by a Scotland Yard officer, was one of at least seven allegations of sexual assault made to police while Savile was alive. None of the complaints led to him being prosecuted.....
A boy from the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey is also known to have told police that he was assaulted by the celebrity.
Spindler said the number of victims who had now come forward over the last three weeks alleging sexual assaults by the late TV celebrity and other living individuals was around the 300 mark. "It is quite staggering the numbers of women – and they are predominantly women – who have come forward," Spindler said.
Detectives have recorded 114 alleged crimes of sexual assault and serious sexual assault, mostly relating to Savile but also to other individuals from a number of different institutions. Officers are using the Holmes computer database, normally use in homicide inquiries.
Of the 300 alleged victims, the majority had made complaints about Savile but a number of allegations related to living individuals, Spindler said....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/25/jimmy-savile-sexual-assault-complaints-alive
Jimmy Savile: Newsnight investigation halted two days after BBC Christmas schedule announced
Newsnight’s editor stopped his journalists’ investigation into paedophilia allegations against Jimmy Savile just two days after the BBC published its Christmas schedule, which included tribute programmes to the late presenter.
By Sam Marsden 26 Oct 2012
Peter Rippon expressed enthusiasm about the project on November 25 last year and even talked about plans to broadcast it, but less than a week later he changed the parameters of the story and then halted the editing of the film.
In between, on November 29, the BBC had announced its final schedule of Christmas shows, including two TV tributes to Savile.
Critics have suggested that the decision to axe the Newsnight investigation into the star’s sexual abuse of under-age girls was taken to avoid embarrassing the Corporation, which has since been badly damaged by the scandal....
Meanwhile, it emerged on Friday that Savile gave a television interview six years ago in which he insisted without being prompted, “I don’t do underage sex”.
The eccentric star said he “never loved” the children he worked with on Jim’ll Fix It but claimed he “respected them” and “wasn’t yucky to them”.
Asked whether he would have liked to have become a father, Savile said: "I think all children should be eaten at birth."....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9637079/Jimmy-Savile-Newsnight-investigation-halted-two-days-after-BBC-Christmas-schedule-announced.html
Jimmy Savile 'grabbed woman's chest in front of MPs and journalists'
Jimmy Savile wrote nearly four decades ago of how he grabbed a young woman’s chest at a House of Commons reception in front of MPs, Ministers and several hundred journalists.
by Sam Marsden, and Tom Rowley 26 Oct 2012
The late DJ and TV personality used his 1974 autobiography to give a lurid account of the incident, which he said was an attempt by him to put out a lit match that had accidentally flown down the female guest’s top.
Savile described in humorous terms how the woman screamed when he touched her, drawing the attention of the other party-goers and prompting one MP to shout, “Good Lord, he’s got her by the t**s!”.
He insisted that the matter was “eventually sorted out” despite being “as usual vastly misunderstood” by those present.
The episode may have been as innocent as Savile claimed, but it appears to provide another example of the presenter getting away with inappropriate behaviour in public because of his eccentric reputation....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9636879/Jimmy-Savile-grabbed-womans-chest-in-front-of-MPs-and-journalists.html
Who Was Jimmy Savile? By ROBERT MACKEY October 26, 2012
....As the Reuters media critic Jack Shafer explained, “Since the ITV program aired, Scotland Yard and other police forces have opened criminal investigations of the allegation; the BBC has commenced its own internal investigation; members of Parliament are threatening to lay siege to BBC Television Centre; newspapers are ripping the BBC for allegedly abetting Savile,” and the man who ran the BBC at the time has been forced to issue a statement denying that he exerted any pressure on the editor of “Newsnight” to kill the story.
The sudden deterioration in Mr. Savile’s reputation led to large swathes of the BBC’s own programming being devoted this month to self-analysis and soul-searching, and led some veteran newspaper journalists to ask why no one, including London’s notoriously intrusive tabloid press, had managed to substantiate the allegations before the entertainer passed away last year at the age of 84.
In a recent episode of the topical comedy show “Have I Got News For You,” the Irish comedian Graham Linehan observed, after watching an archival clip of Mr. Savile joking a decade ago about having sex with “anybody I can lay my hands on,” that “he was very good at hiding in plain sight with that kind of comment, wasn’t he? Apparently his biography is full of, basically him admitting that he did all of this. And so, he created a smokescreen comprised of the truth.”
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/who-was-jimmy-savile/
Millions watched as Jimmy Savile molested me on TV
I told BBC boss but he snapped ‘get lost’
A TERRIFIED teenage girl was molested on camera by Jimmy Savile during Top Of The Pops — then told to “get lost” by a BBC boss when she complained.
Exclusive By NICK PARKER October 27, 2012
A video clip has preserved the shocking moment when the laughing pervert put his hand up horrified Sylvia Edwards’ skirt — as 20 million viewers watched the live show.
Blonde Sylvia, 19, can be seen shrieking and struggling to escape while creepy Savile smirks: “I tell you something, a fella could get used to this, as it ’appens, he really could get used to it.”
Speaking for the first time about the ordeal, Sylvia told The Sun: “I felt his fingers go towards my bottom. It was disgusting.” Afterwards she ran straight to a BBC floor manager and told him what Savile had done. To her horror, he said: “Get lost — it’s just Jimmy messing about.”
The assault at BBC TV Centre in West London on November 25, 1976, left Sylvia with mental scars — and is the first video evidence of Savile’s sex abuse.....
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4612576/Millions-watched-as-Jimmy-Savile-molested-me-on-tv.html
Thursday, October 25, 2012
New York Times Dragged Into BBC Sex Abuse Scandal Through New CEO Mark Thompson
New York Times Dragged Into BBC Sex Abuse Scandal Through New CEO Mark Thompson
AP By RAPHAEL SATTER 10/24/2012
LONDON (AP) — The child abuse scandal that has enveloped one of Britain's most respected news organizations is now hitting one of America's, as the incoming president of The New York Times is on the defensive about his final days as head of the BBC.
Mark Thompson was in charge of the BBC in late 2011 when the broadcaster shelved what would have been a bombshell investigation alleging that the late Jimmy Savile, one of its biggest stars, was a serial sex offender.
The BBC scandal has horrified Britain with revelations that Savile, a popular children's television presenter, cajoled and coerced vulnerable teens into having sex with him in his car, in his camper van, and even in dingy dressing rooms on BBC premises. He is also alleged to have sexually assaulted disabled children at hospitals that he helped by raising charity funds.
Police say there could be more than 200 victims, leading one child protection charity to say that Savile could rank among Britain's most prolific child sex predators.
In a sign of how the scandal may spread, the BBC said Tuesday it was looking into claims of sexual abuse and harassment against nine other current and former employees and contributors....
The controversy over Saville was compounded when it emerged that an investigation into his misdeeds by the BBC's own "Newsnight" program was shelved last year only weeks before the broadcaster aired a glowing holiday tribute show to Savile.
Now journalists and lawmakers are asking whether BBC bosses canned the "Newsnight" show to protect their star, a prodigious charity fundraiser who was widely eulogized following his death last year at age 84.
The corporation denies a cover-up, although "Newsnight" editor Peter Rippon recently stepped down as the BBC's internal investigation got under way. After weeks of standing by Rippon, the BBC has said his explanation about why the Savile show was not broadcast was incomplete and inaccurate....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/new-york-times-mark-thompson-jimmy-savile_n_2007906.html
Survivorship Webinar: Trauma Treatment by Judy Byington author of 22 Faces
Saturday, November 17
12:00 noon Pacific Time
Presenter: Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret.
Topic: Trauma Treatment
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret presents a historical perspective on the growth of the Dissociate Identity Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress diagnoses, showing underlying causes using her twenty year research with over fifty ritually abused victims while writing the biography "Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities."
Byington tracks the ever-present phenomenon of denial as to recognition of dissociation; explains birth of alter personalities within a traumatized child's developing brain in order to cope with ongoing trauma; shows how alternative thinking patterns function to protect the core personality and encourages survivors and practitioners to re-evaluate their treatment modalities to better confront, cope and heal from trauma so as to lead more productive lives.
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret, has dedicated her life to humanizing and raising public awareness about the little-known effects of ritual abuse and mind-control programming that tragically cause formation of multiple personalities in children. The CEO of the Trauma Research Center; retired therapist; Supervisor, Alberta Canada Mental Health and Director, Provo Utah Family Counseling Center is Author of the newly-released biography, Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities (Tate Publishing: Oklahoma).
REGISTRATION
Registration closes Thursday evening November 15th , 2012
To reserve a space in the webinar, e-mail shamai@survivorship.org and give this information:
1. Your name
2. The webinar you wish to attend: "Trauma Treatment"
3. Amount and method of payment (check, PayPal, money order)
4. Your preferred e-mail address (so we can send you instructions)
5. The name you will be using for the webinar. (This does not have to be your real name or your message board screen name.)
You will receive a confirmation email immediately and an invitation link and instructions after the registration closes
COST
Webinars are on a sliding scale from $50.00 to full scholarship (while we offer full scholarships for webinars please consider paying whatever you are able to. Even $5 will help to cover the cost of the webinar provider). Please remember to factor in the cost of the telephone call if you don’t have a computer headset. The PayPal button is near the bottom of the page at http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html
If you wish to pay by check please send it to: Survivorship, Family Justice Center, 470 27th Street, Oakland, CA 94612.
PAST WEBINARS
Survivorship members may listen to past webinars in the members’ section.
We strive to present all webinars in our archives, and sometimes, for technical reasons, we are unable to.
For information on joining Survivorship, go to http://www.survivorship.org/about/membership.html
Complete details on all our webinars are at http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html
12:00 noon Pacific Time
Presenter: Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret.
Topic: Trauma Treatment
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret presents a historical perspective on the growth of the Dissociate Identity Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress diagnoses, showing underlying causes using her twenty year research with over fifty ritually abused victims while writing the biography "Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities."
Byington tracks the ever-present phenomenon of denial as to recognition of dissociation; explains birth of alter personalities within a traumatized child's developing brain in order to cope with ongoing trauma; shows how alternative thinking patterns function to protect the core personality and encourages survivors and practitioners to re-evaluate their treatment modalities to better confront, cope and heal from trauma so as to lead more productive lives.
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret, has dedicated her life to humanizing and raising public awareness about the little-known effects of ritual abuse and mind-control programming that tragically cause formation of multiple personalities in children. The CEO of the Trauma Research Center; retired therapist; Supervisor, Alberta Canada Mental Health and Director, Provo Utah Family Counseling Center is Author of the newly-released biography, Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities (Tate Publishing: Oklahoma).
REGISTRATION
Registration closes Thursday evening November 15th , 2012
To reserve a space in the webinar, e-mail shamai@survivorship.org and give this information:
1. Your name
2. The webinar you wish to attend: "Trauma Treatment"
3. Amount and method of payment (check, PayPal, money order)
4. Your preferred e-mail address (so we can send you instructions)
5. The name you will be using for the webinar. (This does not have to be your real name or your message board screen name.)
You will receive a confirmation email immediately and an invitation link and instructions after the registration closes
COST
Webinars are on a sliding scale from $50.00 to full scholarship (while we offer full scholarships for webinars please consider paying whatever you are able to. Even $5 will help to cover the cost of the webinar provider). Please remember to factor in the cost of the telephone call if you don’t have a computer headset. The PayPal button is near the bottom of the page at http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html
If you wish to pay by check please send it to: Survivorship, Family Justice Center, 470 27th Street, Oakland, CA 94612.
PAST WEBINARS
Survivorship members may listen to past webinars in the members’ section.
We strive to present all webinars in our archives, and sometimes, for technical reasons, we are unable to.
For information on joining Survivorship, go to http://www.survivorship.org/about/membership.html
Complete details on all our webinars are at http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Boy Scouts and Catholic Church were inclined to silence on abuse
Boy Scouts and Catholic Church were inclined to silence on abuse: James Gill
By James Gill, NOLA.com The Times-Picayune
October 24, 2012
After Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe was found to be a child molester in 1974, then-Lafayette Bishop Gerard Frey decided a change was in order. So the next year, Gauthe was assigned extra duties. He became chaplain of the diocesan Boy Scouts. Any pedophile would have whooped, and Gauthe took full advantage....
Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide. Gauthe was the first to be unmasked in the endless succession of predatory priests who enjoyed years of episcopal protection. After Gauthe pleaded guilty in 1985, and was sentenced to 20 years in the state pen, Rev. Kenneth Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, said: "We don't want to give the impression that it's a rampant problem for the church, because it's not."
Then, New Orleans journalist Jason Berry, who covered the case, wrote a book predicting years of turmoil and multimillion-dollar court judgments against the church....
In 1976, four adult Scout leaders were arrested in New Orleans for running a troop where underprivileged boys were recruited for sexual exploitation. It was the movement's first high-profile sex scandal in America. "Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide."
The Scout leaders -- Raymond Woodall, Richard Stanley Halvorsen, Harry Cramer and Lewis Sialle -- were all sentenced to prison in 1977. At the same time parents of Gauthe's victims found out what he was up to, and filed complaints with diocesan officials. Frey, in what we were soon to discover was the standard response of the church throughout the country, merely moved Gauthe to another parish, where he continued his unholy ministry until he was suspended in 1983 after aggrieved parents filed a lawsuit....
He (Gauthe) had no known connection, however, with New Orleans Troop 137, which hit the national headlines while he was preying on the youth of Lafayette. What was known at the time as the "Boy Scout sex case," netted 17 arrests, and Troop 137 was identified at the trial of its leaders as "the nucleus of a nationwide sex and pornography ring, with boys recruited into the troop sent to other states for the pleasure of men there." Troop leaders would recruit underprivileged boys and ply them with gifts so they could be prepared for sleepovers and naked pool parties.
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/10/scouts_and_church_were_incline.html
By James Gill, NOLA.com The Times-Picayune
October 24, 2012
After Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe was found to be a child molester in 1974, then-Lafayette Bishop Gerard Frey decided a change was in order. So the next year, Gauthe was assigned extra duties. He became chaplain of the diocesan Boy Scouts. Any pedophile would have whooped, and Gauthe took full advantage....
Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide. Gauthe was the first to be unmasked in the endless succession of predatory priests who enjoyed years of episcopal protection. After Gauthe pleaded guilty in 1985, and was sentenced to 20 years in the state pen, Rev. Kenneth Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, said: "We don't want to give the impression that it's a rampant problem for the church, because it's not."
Then, New Orleans journalist Jason Berry, who covered the case, wrote a book predicting years of turmoil and multimillion-dollar court judgments against the church....
In 1976, four adult Scout leaders were arrested in New Orleans for running a troop where underprivileged boys were recruited for sexual exploitation. It was the movement's first high-profile sex scandal in America. "Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide."
The Scout leaders -- Raymond Woodall, Richard Stanley Halvorsen, Harry Cramer and Lewis Sialle -- were all sentenced to prison in 1977. At the same time parents of Gauthe's victims found out what he was up to, and filed complaints with diocesan officials. Frey, in what we were soon to discover was the standard response of the church throughout the country, merely moved Gauthe to another parish, where he continued his unholy ministry until he was suspended in 1983 after aggrieved parents filed a lawsuit....
He (Gauthe) had no known connection, however, with New Orleans Troop 137, which hit the national headlines while he was preying on the youth of Lafayette. What was known at the time as the "Boy Scout sex case," netted 17 arrests, and Troop 137 was identified at the trial of its leaders as "the nucleus of a nationwide sex and pornography ring, with boys recruited into the troop sent to other states for the pleasure of men there." Troop leaders would recruit underprivileged boys and ply them with gifts so they could be prepared for sleepovers and naked pool parties.
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/10/scouts_and_church_were_incline.html
Monday, October 22, 2012
CKLN-FM Mind Control Series, How our brains work to erase bad memories
CKLN-FM Mind Control Series - Table of Contents
includes:
- Mind Control Survivors' Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings
- Interview with Valerie Wolf, Claudia Mullen and Chris deNicola Ebner
- Lecture by Dr. Alan Scheflin - History of Mind Control
- Claudia Mullen - Presentation to the Believe the Children Conference, Interview
- Lecture by Therapist Valerie Wolf, M.S.W.: Assessment and Treatment of Survivors of Sadistic Abuse
- Interview with Valerie Wolf, M.S.W., therapist to trauma and mind control survivors
- Interview with Dr. Stephen Kent, sociologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, on Cults and Ritual Abuse
- Making up for Lost Time Conference, Thunder Bay - Lynne Moss-Sharman Interview - ACHES-MC contact, ritual abuse victim
- Presentation by Professor Alan Scheflin - Risk Management in Dissociative Disorder and Trauma Therapy
- Ritual Abuse Panel -- Toronto psychotherapist Gail Fisher-Taylor and Caryn Stardancer, California-based advocate for survivors and publisher of "Survivorship".
http://www.randomcollection.info/mcf/radio/ckln-hm.htm
How our brains work to erase bad memories - Got a bad memory? The brain has a unique way of helping you forget. By Meghan Holohan October 19, 2012
....Researchers found that we use two different ways -- suppression or substitution -- to avoid thinking of uncomfortable or unhappy memories.
“We assume that, in everyday life, healthy people will use a mixture of both mechanisms to prevent an unwanted memory from coming to mind,” says Roland Benoit, a scientist at the Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at University of Cambridge, via email. “We did not know whether the processes of direct suppression and thought substitution can be isolated, and which, if any of them, would actually cause forgetting.”
Roland and his co-author, Michael Anderson, asked 36 adults to participate in a memory exercise where half suppressed memories and the other half substituted new memories. The researchers hoped to understand how we voluntarily forget and how it affects general memory. The subjects were tested during magnetic resonance imaging procedures, or MRIs, allowing the researchers to observe how the brain works during suppression and substitution.
While both processes cause forgetting, a different region of the brain controls each one. When people suppress memories, the dorsal prefrontal cortex inhibits activation in the hippocampus, which plays an important role in retaining memories.
“It thus effectively breaks the remembering process. This, in turn, disrupts the memory representations that would be necessary for recalling the unwanted memory later on,” Benoit explains....
“By just looking at how well people forgot memories, you couldn’t tell whether they had done direct suppression or thought substitution,” Benoit says. “These mechanisms are based on different brain systems that work in opposite fashion: One (direct suppression) by ‘slamming the mental break’ to stop the remembering process and the other (thought substitution) by steering the remembering process towards a substitute memory.”
Even though people exploit both to forget those nagging, unwanted memories, actively overlooking unpleasant events can negatively impact how we remember. But Benoit notes that learning how people deal with unwanted memories helps them understand how people with traumatic memories, such as PTSD sufferers, cope with remembering.
“It is perfectly natural for people, upon encountering an unwelcome reminder, to try to put the unpleasant reminding out of mind. We all have experienced this. Intuitively, it feels as though we solved this problem.”
http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/19/14540990-how-our-brains-work-to-erase-bad-memories
includes:
- Mind Control Survivors' Testimony at the Human Radiation Experiments Hearings
- Interview with Valerie Wolf, Claudia Mullen and Chris deNicola Ebner
- Lecture by Dr. Alan Scheflin - History of Mind Control
- Claudia Mullen - Presentation to the Believe the Children Conference, Interview
- Lecture by Therapist Valerie Wolf, M.S.W.: Assessment and Treatment of Survivors of Sadistic Abuse
- Interview with Valerie Wolf, M.S.W., therapist to trauma and mind control survivors
- Interview with Dr. Stephen Kent, sociologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, on Cults and Ritual Abuse
- Making up for Lost Time Conference, Thunder Bay - Lynne Moss-Sharman Interview - ACHES-MC contact, ritual abuse victim
- Presentation by Professor Alan Scheflin - Risk Management in Dissociative Disorder and Trauma Therapy
- Ritual Abuse Panel -- Toronto psychotherapist Gail Fisher-Taylor and Caryn Stardancer, California-based advocate for survivors and publisher of "Survivorship".
http://www.randomcollection.info/mcf/radio/ckln-hm.htm
How our brains work to erase bad memories - Got a bad memory? The brain has a unique way of helping you forget. By Meghan Holohan October 19, 2012
....Researchers found that we use two different ways -- suppression or substitution -- to avoid thinking of uncomfortable or unhappy memories.
“We assume that, in everyday life, healthy people will use a mixture of both mechanisms to prevent an unwanted memory from coming to mind,” says Roland Benoit, a scientist at the Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at University of Cambridge, via email. “We did not know whether the processes of direct suppression and thought substitution can be isolated, and which, if any of them, would actually cause forgetting.”
Roland and his co-author, Michael Anderson, asked 36 adults to participate in a memory exercise where half suppressed memories and the other half substituted new memories. The researchers hoped to understand how we voluntarily forget and how it affects general memory. The subjects were tested during magnetic resonance imaging procedures, or MRIs, allowing the researchers to observe how the brain works during suppression and substitution.
While both processes cause forgetting, a different region of the brain controls each one. When people suppress memories, the dorsal prefrontal cortex inhibits activation in the hippocampus, which plays an important role in retaining memories.
“It thus effectively breaks the remembering process. This, in turn, disrupts the memory representations that would be necessary for recalling the unwanted memory later on,” Benoit explains....
“By just looking at how well people forgot memories, you couldn’t tell whether they had done direct suppression or thought substitution,” Benoit says. “These mechanisms are based on different brain systems that work in opposite fashion: One (direct suppression) by ‘slamming the mental break’ to stop the remembering process and the other (thought substitution) by steering the remembering process towards a substitute memory.”
Even though people exploit both to forget those nagging, unwanted memories, actively overlooking unpleasant events can negatively impact how we remember. But Benoit notes that learning how people deal with unwanted memories helps them understand how people with traumatic memories, such as PTSD sufferers, cope with remembering.
“It is perfectly natural for people, upon encountering an unwelcome reminder, to try to put the unpleasant reminding out of mind. We all have experienced this. Intuitively, it feels as though we solved this problem.”
http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/19/14540990-how-our-brains-work-to-erase-bad-memories
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Boy Scouts Perversion Files Document Sexual Abuse Cover-Up, Spark Public Interest
Boy Scouts Perversion Files Document Sexual Abuse Cover-Up, Spark Public Interest
by NIGEL DUARA 10/20/12
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A website with files showing the Boy Scouts of America's cover-up of decades of sexual abuse is generating interest from people wanting to know who the alleged abusers are and whether people who molested them as Scouts are in the files.
Release of the files has also prompted a debate on the Boy Scouts' Facebook page. Some people said they'd never allow their children to be involved in the organization and criticized the secrecy of the files. Others described positive experiences in the Scouts for themselves or their children, saying the organization's efforts to prevent abuse have improved significantly.
The 14,500 pages of Scout files, from 1959-1985, were posted Thursday on the website of Kelly Clark, the Portland attorney who used the files as evidence in a 2010 lawsuit he won against the Scouts.
The website got more than 200,000 hits within the first few hours of the files' posting, crashing the site.
Clark said his firm has received about four dozen emails from people about the documents. About half came from people who say they were abused when they were in the Scouts and were interested in filing lawsuits.
Some of the emails have given details about alleged abuse, Clark said.
There are also emails from people who tell of other alleged perpetrators who are not in the files....
In their own review of the files that were released on Thursday, the Scouts found that law enforcement had been involved in about two-thirds of the cases. The organization is going through the remainder to find cases where there seem to be good reasons to alert law authorities.
The Scouts have apologized for not following up. The files were created for the purpose of registering Scout leaders, Smith said, and were considered internal, confidential documents, which is why they weren't always shared with authorities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/boy-scouts-perversion-files_n_1992252.html
by NIGEL DUARA 10/20/12
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A website with files showing the Boy Scouts of America's cover-up of decades of sexual abuse is generating interest from people wanting to know who the alleged abusers are and whether people who molested them as Scouts are in the files.
Release of the files has also prompted a debate on the Boy Scouts' Facebook page. Some people said they'd never allow their children to be involved in the organization and criticized the secrecy of the files. Others described positive experiences in the Scouts for themselves or their children, saying the organization's efforts to prevent abuse have improved significantly.
The 14,500 pages of Scout files, from 1959-1985, were posted Thursday on the website of Kelly Clark, the Portland attorney who used the files as evidence in a 2010 lawsuit he won against the Scouts.
The website got more than 200,000 hits within the first few hours of the files' posting, crashing the site.
Clark said his firm has received about four dozen emails from people about the documents. About half came from people who say they were abused when they were in the Scouts and were interested in filing lawsuits.
Some of the emails have given details about alleged abuse, Clark said.
There are also emails from people who tell of other alleged perpetrators who are not in the files....
In their own review of the files that were released on Thursday, the Scouts found that law enforcement had been involved in about two-thirds of the cases. The organization is going through the remainder to find cases where there seem to be good reasons to alert law authorities.
The Scouts have apologized for not following up. The files were created for the purpose of registering Scout leaders, Smith said, and were considered internal, confidential documents, which is why they weren't always shared with authorities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/boy-scouts-perversion-files_n_1992252.html
Saturday, October 20, 2012
On Behalf of 25 Child Advocacy Organizations In Support of Boy Scout Survivors on Release of “Perversion Files” - Calling on All States to Eliminate the Statutes of Limitations Keeping Child Sex Abuse Victims Out of Court
October 18, 2012
Comment by Professor Marci A. Hamilton
on Behalf of 25 Child Advocacy Organizations In Support of Boy Scout Survivors on Release of “Perversion Files”
Calling on All States to Eliminate the Statutes of Limitations Keeping Child Sex Abuse Victims Out of Court
The Oregon Supreme Court ordered the release of the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files” in Jack Does I-VI vs. Corp. of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Corp. of the President of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Successors & The Boy Scouts of America, et. al (Or. June 14, 2012), available at http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/other/S058601%5B1%5D.pdf .
These files establish that the Boy Scouts knew about predators, but instead of protecting children by going to the authorities, they kept their identities secret and let them abuse more children. Marci Hamilton, one of the nation’s leading experts on child sex abuse in institutional settings, states, “The Boy Scout files, like the Philadelphia Grand Jury Reports on abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and the grand jury report on abuse by Jerry Sandusky, document how yet another institution has covered up child sex abuse. They kept records and knew more than anyone else in the country about the recidivism of abusers, yet, they did not go to the authorities.
They enabled perpetrators and endangered one child after another. Internal records and
investigations are never enough. Nor is sending the perpetrator away, with no notice to the authorities and the next community at risk. Sadly, the statutes of limitations for the vast majority of the Boy Scout survivors in many states likely have expired, making it difficult to prosecute or sue the perpetrators, or to bring the organization to account for endangering children. The Boy Scout's perversion files are another stark reminder to our elected representatives that laws in many states favor the organization, aid the predator, and put children at risk. Right now, there are untold numbers of hidden child predators who are preying on one child after another, because the statutes of limitations have been configured to give them that opportunity.
It is a fact that approximately 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys are sexually abused. Thus, there is an iceberg of victims across the country, including many Boy Scout victims, who have no access to justice. Under the current statute of limitations in many states--which halt criminal prosecution and civil cases long before most victims are ready to come forward -- those who caused the abuse or created the conditions for the abuse are being given a free ride.
The Boy Scouts of America is just the latest organization whose failure to report abuse led to justice denied. Now is the time for every state to look hard at its SOLs and to give child sex abuse victims a chance at justice.”....
http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/uploadedFiles/Cardozo/Profiles/hamilton02-447/PressReleaseBSA2.pdf
Comment by Professor Marci A. Hamilton
on Behalf of 25 Child Advocacy Organizations In Support of Boy Scout Survivors on Release of “Perversion Files”
Calling on All States to Eliminate the Statutes of Limitations Keeping Child Sex Abuse Victims Out of Court
The Oregon Supreme Court ordered the release of the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files” in Jack Does I-VI vs. Corp. of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Corp. of the President of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Successors & The Boy Scouts of America, et. al (Or. June 14, 2012), available at http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/other/S058601%5B1%5D.pdf .
These files establish that the Boy Scouts knew about predators, but instead of protecting children by going to the authorities, they kept their identities secret and let them abuse more children. Marci Hamilton, one of the nation’s leading experts on child sex abuse in institutional settings, states, “The Boy Scout files, like the Philadelphia Grand Jury Reports on abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and the grand jury report on abuse by Jerry Sandusky, document how yet another institution has covered up child sex abuse. They kept records and knew more than anyone else in the country about the recidivism of abusers, yet, they did not go to the authorities.
They enabled perpetrators and endangered one child after another. Internal records and
investigations are never enough. Nor is sending the perpetrator away, with no notice to the authorities and the next community at risk. Sadly, the statutes of limitations for the vast majority of the Boy Scout survivors in many states likely have expired, making it difficult to prosecute or sue the perpetrators, or to bring the organization to account for endangering children. The Boy Scout's perversion files are another stark reminder to our elected representatives that laws in many states favor the organization, aid the predator, and put children at risk. Right now, there are untold numbers of hidden child predators who are preying on one child after another, because the statutes of limitations have been configured to give them that opportunity.
It is a fact that approximately 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys are sexually abused. Thus, there is an iceberg of victims across the country, including many Boy Scout victims, who have no access to justice. Under the current statute of limitations in many states--which halt criminal prosecution and civil cases long before most victims are ready to come forward -- those who caused the abuse or created the conditions for the abuse are being given a free ride.
The Boy Scouts of America is just the latest organization whose failure to report abuse led to justice denied. Now is the time for every state to look hard at its SOLs and to give child sex abuse victims a chance at justice.”....
http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/uploadedFiles/Cardozo/Profiles/hamilton02-447/PressReleaseBSA2.pdf
Friday, October 19, 2012
Teen says Sandusky chased him in car as he ran away: ABC , Sandusky Victim 1 Steps Out of Shadows, Says Justice Took Too Long
Teen says Sandusky chased him in car as he ran away: ABC
Reuters October 19 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The 18-year-old who triggered the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky for sexually abusing him and nine other boys told ABC News the former Penn State coach once chased him down with his car as he tried to flee.
Aaron Fisher, known throughout the case as Victim 1, has revealed his identity since testifying against Sandusky at his June trial. Sandusky, 68, was convicted of 45 counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Fisher was just 11 when he met Sandusky through the former coach's charity for at-risk children, The Second Mile, in 2005 or 2006. After a year of box seats at Penn State football games and weekend trips with the coach, he was sexually abused in Sandusky's basement, leaving him confused and ashamed.
The attacks continued for years, with Sandusky misusing his position as a volunteer coach to pull the boy out of class. Fisher's attempts to flee were met with a tightened leash.
"He once followed my bus home from school," Fisher told ABC in the "20/20" interview to be broadcast in full on Friday night. "I took off running but he drove on the opposite side of the street, onto oncoming traffic to catch up with me. I ran up an alley and he went to my house and parked out front."....
When he was 15, Fisher broke down and told his mother, Dawn Daniels, and the school's principal, Karen Probst, that Sandusky was sexually abusing him. "Aaron was melting down in the office," Daniels told ABC. "I immediately told them we need to call the police." But the school principal advised her to go home and think over their next steps.
"They said that Jerry has a heart of gold and that he wouldn't do those type of things," Daniels said.
Instead, Daniels told the principal she would be calling Clinton County Children and Youth Services. School officials, legally mandated to make such reports, called too. Probst did not return calls from Reuters for comment.
It took three years, two grand juries and a lengthy search for more victims before Sandusky was arrested in November 2011, just before Fisher's 18th birthday....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-pennstate-victimbre89i0wo-20121019,0,695676.story
Sandusky Victim 1 Steps Out of Shadows, Says Justice Took Too Long
By JOSEPH RHEE, GERRY WAGSCHAL, and LINH TRAN
Oct. 19, 2012
He was known only as Victim 1 in one of the most infamous child sexual abuse cases in history. But this week, Aaron Fisher revealed his identity to the world and, in an exclusive interview with "20/20's" Chris Cuomo, told the story of those he said stood in his way as he struggled to bring now-convicted child predator Jerry Sandusky to justice: officials at his own high school....
Young Aaron came from a struggling family and didn't have a father at home. Dawn Daniels, Fisher's mother, recalled the times Sandusky took the boy away for the weekend to give her a break.
"Everybody knew who he was," said Daniels, "He's a great guy. Everybody, even my own father, said he does great things for kids."
Sandusky's reputation had preceded him and put Daniels at ease as far as allowing her son to spend so much time with Sandusky. But according to Fisher, Sandusky slowly turned from a "father figure" into something much darker.
"He'd put his hand on my leg while we were driving," Fisher said, "My family never did that, so it was kind of weird."
By the time Fisher was 12, Sandusky was sexually assaulting him. Fisher said fear, shame and confusion prevented him from seeking help and telling anyone about his tormentor....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/sandusky-victim-reveals-identity-justice-long/story?id=17511612#
Sandusky victim speaks out
October 19, 2012
Penn State victim Aaron Fisher says officials at his high school stood in the way of justice.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-viral-video-sandusky-victim-speaks-out-html,0,7063241.htmlstory
Child pornography probe leads to 21 arrests
CBC – The RCMP say a cross-country child pornography investigation has resulted in the arrest of 21 people in the Prairies, Nunavut and the N.W.T.
So far, charges have been laid against 16 of those arrested, police told reporters on Wednesday at a press conference in Regina
The charges include sexual assault, invitation to sexual touching, and distributing and possessing child pornography. Police said more charges are pending.
Det. Sgt. Darren Parisien, who led the operation for the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said hundreds of thousands of images have been found on more than 100 computers and 1,000 discs.
Parisien said most of the children in the images were under the age of 12, including a number of infants and toddlers.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/child-pornography-probe-leads-30-arrests-174829449.html
Reuters October 19 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The 18-year-old who triggered the prosecution of Jerry Sandusky for sexually abusing him and nine other boys told ABC News the former Penn State coach once chased him down with his car as he tried to flee.
Aaron Fisher, known throughout the case as Victim 1, has revealed his identity since testifying against Sandusky at his June trial. Sandusky, 68, was convicted of 45 counts of child sex abuse and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Fisher was just 11 when he met Sandusky through the former coach's charity for at-risk children, The Second Mile, in 2005 or 2006. After a year of box seats at Penn State football games and weekend trips with the coach, he was sexually abused in Sandusky's basement, leaving him confused and ashamed.
The attacks continued for years, with Sandusky misusing his position as a volunteer coach to pull the boy out of class. Fisher's attempts to flee were met with a tightened leash.
"He once followed my bus home from school," Fisher told ABC in the "20/20" interview to be broadcast in full on Friday night. "I took off running but he drove on the opposite side of the street, onto oncoming traffic to catch up with me. I ran up an alley and he went to my house and parked out front."....
When he was 15, Fisher broke down and told his mother, Dawn Daniels, and the school's principal, Karen Probst, that Sandusky was sexually abusing him. "Aaron was melting down in the office," Daniels told ABC. "I immediately told them we need to call the police." But the school principal advised her to go home and think over their next steps.
"They said that Jerry has a heart of gold and that he wouldn't do those type of things," Daniels said.
Instead, Daniels told the principal she would be calling Clinton County Children and Youth Services. School officials, legally mandated to make such reports, called too. Probst did not return calls from Reuters for comment.
It took three years, two grand juries and a lengthy search for more victims before Sandusky was arrested in November 2011, just before Fisher's 18th birthday....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-pennstate-victimbre89i0wo-20121019,0,695676.story
Sandusky Victim 1 Steps Out of Shadows, Says Justice Took Too Long
By JOSEPH RHEE, GERRY WAGSCHAL, and LINH TRAN
Oct. 19, 2012
He was known only as Victim 1 in one of the most infamous child sexual abuse cases in history. But this week, Aaron Fisher revealed his identity to the world and, in an exclusive interview with "20/20's" Chris Cuomo, told the story of those he said stood in his way as he struggled to bring now-convicted child predator Jerry Sandusky to justice: officials at his own high school....
Young Aaron came from a struggling family and didn't have a father at home. Dawn Daniels, Fisher's mother, recalled the times Sandusky took the boy away for the weekend to give her a break.
"Everybody knew who he was," said Daniels, "He's a great guy. Everybody, even my own father, said he does great things for kids."
Sandusky's reputation had preceded him and put Daniels at ease as far as allowing her son to spend so much time with Sandusky. But according to Fisher, Sandusky slowly turned from a "father figure" into something much darker.
"He'd put his hand on my leg while we were driving," Fisher said, "My family never did that, so it was kind of weird."
By the time Fisher was 12, Sandusky was sexually assaulting him. Fisher said fear, shame and confusion prevented him from seeking help and telling anyone about his tormentor....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/sandusky-victim-reveals-identity-justice-long/story?id=17511612#
Sandusky victim speaks out
October 19, 2012
Penn State victim Aaron Fisher says officials at his high school stood in the way of justice.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-viral-video-sandusky-victim-speaks-out-html,0,7063241.htmlstory
Child pornography probe leads to 21 arrests
CBC – The RCMP say a cross-country child pornography investigation has resulted in the arrest of 21 people in the Prairies, Nunavut and the N.W.T.
So far, charges have been laid against 16 of those arrested, police told reporters on Wednesday at a press conference in Regina
The charges include sexual assault, invitation to sexual touching, and distributing and possessing child pornography. Police said more charges are pending.
Det. Sgt. Darren Parisien, who led the operation for the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said hundreds of thousands of images have been found on more than 100 computers and 1,000 discs.
Parisien said most of the children in the images were under the age of 12, including a number of infants and toddlers.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/child-pornography-probe-leads-30-arrests-174829449.html
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse, Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
- Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters
- Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.
- Jimmy Savile treated school like 'paedophile sweetshop'
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls
- Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.
Boy Scouts 'Perversion' Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters
By NIGEL DUARA 10/18/12
PORTLAND, Ore. — An array of local authorities – police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and town Boy Scout leaders among them – quietly shielded scoutmasters and others who allegedly molested children, according to a newly opened trove of confidential files compiled from 1959 to 1985.
At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting. But as detailed in 14,500 pages of secret "perversion files" released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers protected suspected sexual predators while victims suffered in silence.
The files document sex abuse allegations across the country, from a small town in the Adirondacks to downtown Los Angeles.
At a news conference Thursday, Portland attorney Kelly Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.
"You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children," said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.
The files were shown to a jury in a 2010 Oregon civil suit that the Scouts lost, and the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the files should be made public. After months of objections and redactions, the Scouts and Clark released them....
The 1959-85 files show that on many occasions the files succeeded in keeping pedophiles out of Scouting leadership positions – the reason they were collected in the first place.
But the files document some troubling patterns.
In many instances – more than a third, according to the Scouts' own count – police weren't told about the alleged abuse.
And there is little mention in the files of concern for the welfare of Scouts who were allegedly abused by their leaders. But there are numerous documents showing compassion for suspected abusers, who were often times sent to psychiatrists or pastors to get help.
In 1972, a Pennsylvania Scouting executive wrote a memo recommending a case against a suspected abuser be dropped with the words: "If it don't stink, don't stir it."
In numerous instances, alleged abusers are kicked out of Scouting but show up in jobs where they are once again in authority positions dealing with youths.
One of the most startling revelations to come from the files is the frequency with which attempts to protect Scouts from alleged molesters collapsed at the local level, at times in collusion with community leaders.
On the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1965, a distraught Louisiana mother walked into the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office. A 31-year-old scoutmaster, she told the chief criminal deputy, had raped one of her sons and molested two others.
Six days later, the scoutmaster sat down in the same station and confessed.
"I don't know an explanation, why we done it or I done it or wanted to do it or anything else it just – an impulse I guess or something," the man told a sheriff's deputy.
The decision was made not to pursue charges. "This subject and Scouts were not prosecuted," a Louisiana Scouts executive wrote to national headquarters, "to save the name of Scouting."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/boy-scouts-perversion-files-locals-cover-up-child-sex-abuse_n_1981596.html
Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.
By Martin Beckford, Home Affairs Editor
17 Oct 2012
Harriet Harman, the Opposition deputy leader, said the allegations that the late TV and radio presenter abused dozens of young boys and girls had “cast a stain” on the BBC and other trusted institutions.
But at the time Savile was at the height of his fame, Miss Harman was calling for the relaxation of the law on child pornography.
She was a leading light in the pressure group now known as Liberty, which advocated the lowering of the age of consent to 14.
The organisation, then run by the Health Secretary under Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, even counted among its affiliates a number of extreme pro-paedophilia groups whose leaders were later jailed.
It means that any independent public inquiry into the culture that allowed Savile to abuse children for so long with impunity, could end up looking into the radical left-wing demands for the liberalisation of child sex laws that were made in the 1970s....
As The Daily Telegraph first disclosed in 2009, in the 1970s the extreme end of the sexual liberation movement included groups who openly campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent. The Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation affiliated themselves to the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty.
NCCL complained to the press watchdog about their treatment by tabloid newspapers and in one article admitted it had “plenty of contact” with PIE, and argued that children are harmed by having to go to police and courts after a “mutual relationship with an adult”.
In 1976 the NCCL submitted a response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws that was dubbed a Lolita’s Charter as it claimed “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult result in no identifiable damage”.
The organisation said that children as young as 14 should be able to consent to sex, to reduce the “harmful effects of the present laws”.
It went on to say it is “logical” for the age of consent to be abolished but “we fear” it would not be “politically possible”.
Miss Harman, then a newly qualified solicitor, joined the group as legal officer two years later.
In April 1978 she wrote the NCCL’s response to the Protection of Children Bill, which was put before Parliament in order to tighten the laws on child pornography by banning indecent images of under-16s.
It claimed that the new law could lead to “damaging and absurd prosecutions” and “increase censorship”.
She suggested that pornographic photographs or films of children should not be considered indecent unless it could be shown that the subject had suffered, and that prosecutors would have to prove harm rather than defendants having to justify themselves....
Miss Harman left NCCL in 1982 when she was elected MP for Camberwell and Peckham, by which time several members of PIE had been jailed for conspiracy to corrupt public morals.
A spokesman for Miss Harman said: “This allegation is an outrageous slur. Harriet has fought for child protection from sexual abuse over the last 30 years – any attempt to suggest otherwise is untrue and malicious.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614516/Jimmy-Savile-Labour-faces-embarrassment-over-former-child-sex-claims.html
Jimmy Savile treated school like 'paedophile sweetshop'
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls.
Richard Alleyne and Rowena Mason
17 Oct 2012
At least five former pupils have told how the DJ abused them during visits to Duncroft Approved School when it was under direct Home Office control.
They claim that the Jim'll Fix star was given his own flat in the building in Staines, Surrey, by the headmistress in what one victim described as a "paedophile sweet shop".
The institution for emotionally disturbed girls was under the direct supervision of the Home Office until April 1973, a report in the Daily Mirror claims.
It was visited regularly by government inspectors.
A former pupil Toni Townsend, one of three girls photographed with the star in 1972, told the newspaper: "Jimmy treated Duncroft like a paedophile sweet shop....
"He used to take his pick of the mix. He would wander around the school in a vest and tracksuit bottoms.
"He stayed in a flat on the top floor. He was the only man allowed to stay overnight. Who knows what horrors happened up there.
"The girls at Duncroft had been sent there by the courts for prostitution, drugs and because they tried to kill themselves. Who would have believed us against Saint Jimmy?"
A fellow pupil Carole Wells, now 52, told how Savile once assaulted her in his Rolls-Royce after the headmistress asked if she wanted to go for a ride with him....
Ms Wells said she reported the incident to the head who allegedly did not believe her....
Meanwhile his former assistant Janet Cope told how Savile had an explosive temper that terrified everyone from hospital staff to fund-raisers....
"He thought he was untouchable because he was hand in glove with the hospitals, royalty and the Prime Minister."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614091/Jimmy-Savile-treated-school-like-paedophile-sweetshop.html
Jimmy Savile confessed to reporter that he would be seen as 'crooked' after his death
Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.
By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
18 Oct 2012
In a previously unpublished interview given by Savile two months before he died, he admitted he was “not a straight punter”.
The Jewish Chronicle obtained a transcript of the interview, which was ostensibly about Savile’s work with Jewish charities, but which included the Jim’ll Fix It presenter’s enigmatic reference to his murky past.
Asked what he would choose if someone could “fix it” for him, Savile said: “A telephone in heaven.”
When he was asked why, he said: “Just leave it at that. That’s the trouble with you fellas, you always want to delve and go further.”
He then added that he was “not a straight punter. “When I’m gone, they’ll say ‘I always thought he was straight but he wasn’t – he was crooked’.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9618674/Jimmy-Savile-confessed-to-reporter-that-he-would-be-seen-as-crooked-after-his-death.html
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Jimmy Savile BBC Sexual Abuse Scandal, Savile's hospital access to be examined
Sexual Abuse Scandal Turns the Tables on BBC
By SARAH LYALL October 17, 2012
LONDON — The story seemed perfect for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s hard-hitting “Newsnight” program: a nationally beloved television host, it seemed, had also been a pedophile who for decades preyed on young teenagers in hospitals, in children’s homes — and in the halls of the BBC itself.
“Newsnight” found women willing to go on air to declare that the host, Jimmy Savile, who died last year, had abused them when they were young. But last December, as the segment neared completion, it was abruptly canceled by the editor in charge, who said there was not enough evidence to justify going ahead.
That decision, and the BBC’s earlier failure over four decades to investigate rumors about Mr. Savile’s behavior, is now the subject of three independent investigations. But they are just the latest and most explosive elements in a scandal that seems to widen by the hour, fed by a ferocious British tabloid press angry at the BBC’s coverage of the hacking scandal and eager, for a change, to write about misdeeds other than its own....
The Savile affair is by no means restricted to the BBC, drawing in some of Britain’s most important institutions. Scotland Yard has opened an investigation involving 14 other police forces and no fewer than 340 “lines of inquiry”; it said that from 1959 to 2006, Mr. Savile might have molested 60 or more underage girls.
But politically the primary focus is on the BBC. “Everyone has been sickened by the vile abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Savile,” Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said in the House of Commons. “What has deepened the revulsion is that this happened at the BBC, an institution so loved and trusted it is known as Auntie. This has cast a stain on the BBC.”
Even more embarrassing for the corporation is that in December, right around the time it canceled the Savile segment on “Newsnight,” it broadcast three separate programs praising Mr. Savile. BBC executives have said that there was no relationship between the decisions to cancel the critical program and to broadcast the laudatory ones....
It is hard to convey exactly what place Mr. Savile occupied in British public life. Known for his outlandish costumes, his fancy cars and his bizarre appearance — he had peroxide-blond hair that he wore in a kind of aging-pageboy, Prince Valiant-style cut — he was as familiar a presence as Johnny Carson or Dick Clark, and as odd a character as Pee-wee Herman. He was knighted by the queen; he was a friend of Prince Charles. Four thousand people attended his funeral last year. His obituaries described him as a national icon.
Mr. Savile worked as a radio disc jockey when disc jockeys were just being invented. On BBC television, he was the first host of the “Top of the Pops” show, which counted down hit records each week. He also fronted the hugely popular “Jim’ll Fix It,” in which he solved the problems and granted the wishes of viewers, most of them children.
He was also a tireless fund-raiser, credited with raising as much as $75 million, whose work took him into hospitals, children’s homes and schools. Many of the accusations against him have come from hospital patients who say he molested them while they were literally in bed....
Rumors of Mr. Savile’s behavior swirled around the BBC, in the music business, on Fleet Street. He was even confronted by tabloid reporters and BBC officials, but always denied everything. In 2007, the Surrey Police Department investigated complaints from hospital patients dating from the 1970s, but prosecutors failed to bring charges.
“I heard massive stories about Jimmy Savile being a dirty old man who kind of touched up anything in a skirt,” said a BBC reporter who began working there in the 1980s. She spoke on condition of anonymity because BBC employees are not authorized to speak to outside reporters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/europe/jimmy-savile-scandal-turns-the-tables-on-bbc-program.html
Savile's hospital access to be examined: Health officials announce inquiry into abuse at three institutions
By Sam Greenhill 17 October 2012
Health chiefs yesterday belatedly announced an inquiry into Jimmy Savile’s reign of abuse at three NHS hospitals. But it will be run by the Department of Health itself, raising fears it cannot be truly independent. Former barrister Kate Lampard will oversee the investigation to provide ‘independent oversight’, Downing Street pledged.
It will examine why the paedophile presenter was given the keys to Broadmoor mental hospital, a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville and free rein at Leeds General Infirmary. He allegedly raped and molested young victims for decades without anyone stopping him.
There are suspicions a blind eye was turned to the abuse because the hospitals reaped millions of pounds through Savile’s fundraising. Labour is still calling for a full independent inquiry into the scandal.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman said: ‘I think what we need to do is get to the truth....
Savile, who raised £40million for the hospital in his lifetime, boasted that he ‘lived’ in a bedroom managers had given him at Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, and said he could do as he pleased....
Astonishingly, he was even allowed to take young female patients out of the supposedly top-security hospital for rides in his Rolls Royce. And Savile boasted that he was actually responsible for getting some mentally ill patients - among them murderers - freed from their sentences.
Claims: Dozens of people have come forward to say they were abused by Savile at all three hospitals. He called himself the ‘Governor’ of the hospital and was inexplicably made chairman of a hospital taskforce by the Department of Health in the 1980s.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219361/Former-barrister-oversee-inquiry-Jimmy-Saviles-reign-abuse-NHS-hospitals.html
He grabbed me very tightly and said: This is my special move
Sue, 16, on Jimmy Savile cruise ship attack
Grinning beast ... Savile pulls liner victim Sue on to bed in friend's snap
Exclusive
By CHRIS POLLARD October 18, 2012
A VICTIM molested by Jimmy Savile on a cruise liner told last night how the star DJ lured her to his cabin and abused her when she was a starstruck 16-year-old.
Holidaymaker Sue Southgate was with a girl pal when he approached the two teenagers promising autographs.
The unsuspecting pair followed him giggling to his first class quarters on the P&O liner SS Canberra where he startled them by casually taking off his trousers — even though Sue’s friend had her camera.
Begging Sue for a “quick cuddle” as her chum took souvenir photos, the Top Of The Pops... — then aged 51 — pulled her on to his bed....
She said: “He was prancing up and down the corridors, introducing himself to everyone. He was obviously on the lookout for potential targets.”
Savile was kicked off the ship after a distraught couple accused him of inappropriate behaviour with their daughter aged just 14.
The captain said: “I told him he disgusted me and I wanted him off my ship when we reached Gibraltar. I told an officer to make sure he remained in his cabin. He was not allowed to leave it under any circumstances short of shipwreck.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4595261/jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-victim-recalls-attack-on-cruise-ship.html
By SARAH LYALL October 17, 2012
LONDON — The story seemed perfect for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s hard-hitting “Newsnight” program: a nationally beloved television host, it seemed, had also been a pedophile who for decades preyed on young teenagers in hospitals, in children’s homes — and in the halls of the BBC itself.
“Newsnight” found women willing to go on air to declare that the host, Jimmy Savile, who died last year, had abused them when they were young. But last December, as the segment neared completion, it was abruptly canceled by the editor in charge, who said there was not enough evidence to justify going ahead.
That decision, and the BBC’s earlier failure over four decades to investigate rumors about Mr. Savile’s behavior, is now the subject of three independent investigations. But they are just the latest and most explosive elements in a scandal that seems to widen by the hour, fed by a ferocious British tabloid press angry at the BBC’s coverage of the hacking scandal and eager, for a change, to write about misdeeds other than its own....
The Savile affair is by no means restricted to the BBC, drawing in some of Britain’s most important institutions. Scotland Yard has opened an investigation involving 14 other police forces and no fewer than 340 “lines of inquiry”; it said that from 1959 to 2006, Mr. Savile might have molested 60 or more underage girls.
But politically the primary focus is on the BBC. “Everyone has been sickened by the vile abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Savile,” Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said in the House of Commons. “What has deepened the revulsion is that this happened at the BBC, an institution so loved and trusted it is known as Auntie. This has cast a stain on the BBC.”
Even more embarrassing for the corporation is that in December, right around the time it canceled the Savile segment on “Newsnight,” it broadcast three separate programs praising Mr. Savile. BBC executives have said that there was no relationship between the decisions to cancel the critical program and to broadcast the laudatory ones....
It is hard to convey exactly what place Mr. Savile occupied in British public life. Known for his outlandish costumes, his fancy cars and his bizarre appearance — he had peroxide-blond hair that he wore in a kind of aging-pageboy, Prince Valiant-style cut — he was as familiar a presence as Johnny Carson or Dick Clark, and as odd a character as Pee-wee Herman. He was knighted by the queen; he was a friend of Prince Charles. Four thousand people attended his funeral last year. His obituaries described him as a national icon.
Mr. Savile worked as a radio disc jockey when disc jockeys were just being invented. On BBC television, he was the first host of the “Top of the Pops” show, which counted down hit records each week. He also fronted the hugely popular “Jim’ll Fix It,” in which he solved the problems and granted the wishes of viewers, most of them children.
He was also a tireless fund-raiser, credited with raising as much as $75 million, whose work took him into hospitals, children’s homes and schools. Many of the accusations against him have come from hospital patients who say he molested them while they were literally in bed....
Rumors of Mr. Savile’s behavior swirled around the BBC, in the music business, on Fleet Street. He was even confronted by tabloid reporters and BBC officials, but always denied everything. In 2007, the Surrey Police Department investigated complaints from hospital patients dating from the 1970s, but prosecutors failed to bring charges.
“I heard massive stories about Jimmy Savile being a dirty old man who kind of touched up anything in a skirt,” said a BBC reporter who began working there in the 1980s. She spoke on condition of anonymity because BBC employees are not authorized to speak to outside reporters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/europe/jimmy-savile-scandal-turns-the-tables-on-bbc-program.html
Savile's hospital access to be examined: Health officials announce inquiry into abuse at three institutions
By Sam Greenhill 17 October 2012
Health chiefs yesterday belatedly announced an inquiry into Jimmy Savile’s reign of abuse at three NHS hospitals. But it will be run by the Department of Health itself, raising fears it cannot be truly independent. Former barrister Kate Lampard will oversee the investigation to provide ‘independent oversight’, Downing Street pledged.
It will examine why the paedophile presenter was given the keys to Broadmoor mental hospital, a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville and free rein at Leeds General Infirmary. He allegedly raped and molested young victims for decades without anyone stopping him.
There are suspicions a blind eye was turned to the abuse because the hospitals reaped millions of pounds through Savile’s fundraising. Labour is still calling for a full independent inquiry into the scandal.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman said: ‘I think what we need to do is get to the truth....
Savile, who raised £40million for the hospital in his lifetime, boasted that he ‘lived’ in a bedroom managers had given him at Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, and said he could do as he pleased....
Astonishingly, he was even allowed to take young female patients out of the supposedly top-security hospital for rides in his Rolls Royce. And Savile boasted that he was actually responsible for getting some mentally ill patients - among them murderers - freed from their sentences.
Claims: Dozens of people have come forward to say they were abused by Savile at all three hospitals. He called himself the ‘Governor’ of the hospital and was inexplicably made chairman of a hospital taskforce by the Department of Health in the 1980s.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219361/Former-barrister-oversee-inquiry-Jimmy-Saviles-reign-abuse-NHS-hospitals.html
He grabbed me very tightly and said: This is my special move
Sue, 16, on Jimmy Savile cruise ship attack
Grinning beast ... Savile pulls liner victim Sue on to bed in friend's snap
Exclusive
By CHRIS POLLARD October 18, 2012
A VICTIM molested by Jimmy Savile on a cruise liner told last night how the star DJ lured her to his cabin and abused her when she was a starstruck 16-year-old.
Holidaymaker Sue Southgate was with a girl pal when he approached the two teenagers promising autographs.
The unsuspecting pair followed him giggling to his first class quarters on the P&O liner SS Canberra where he startled them by casually taking off his trousers — even though Sue’s friend had her camera.
Begging Sue for a “quick cuddle” as her chum took souvenir photos, the Top Of The Pops... — then aged 51 — pulled her on to his bed....
She said: “He was prancing up and down the corridors, introducing himself to everyone. He was obviously on the lookout for potential targets.”
Savile was kicked off the ship after a distraught couple accused him of inappropriate behaviour with their daughter aged just 14.
The captain said: “I told him he disgusted me and I wanted him off my ship when we reached Gibraltar. I told an officer to make sure he remained in his cabin. He was not allowed to leave it under any circumstances short of shipwreck.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4595261/jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-victim-recalls-attack-on-cruise-ship.html
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Nearly 50 unidentified kids buried in reform school’s cemetery, No Way Out
Nearly 50 unidentified kids buried in Florida reform school’s century-old secret graveyard
Reform school cemetery that dates back to 1900s may hold unnamed victims of abusive school administrators, say family members.
By Anthony Bartkewicz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 14, 2012
A secret graveyard tucked behind a Florida reform school is home to 31 cross-shaped grave markers, but nearly 50 unidentified bodies.
The small cemetery dates back to the early 1900s. Some former students at the Florida Industrial School for Boys in Marianna now say victims of abusive school administrators are buried there, CNN reported.
When the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated in 2009, it found that 31 boys buried in the woods behind the school died either from the flu or in a fire.
But University of South Florida anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle found 18 more bodies buried without markers.
"We found burials within the current marked cemetery, and then we found burials that extend beyond that,” she said. “These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods.”....
A group of men came forward in 2008 and said the “White House” — a small concrete building on school grounds — was the site of brutal beatings and whippings in the 1960s.
Former administrator Troy Tidwell downplayed their claims, saying only that “spankings” took place.
Another former student said a boy named Owen Smith was killed by rifle fire as they tried to run away from the school.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/50-unidentified-kids-buried-florida-reform-school-secret-graveyard-article-1.1183090
‘No Way Out’ October 15, 2012
By Cara Tabachnick
In 1996, Holly Collins and her children became the first Americans to be granted asylum by the government of the Netherlands due to domestic violence. She fled the United States after losing custody of her children in Family Court to her ex-husband, who abused Holly and their two young children. Her remarkable story was featured in the 87- minute documentary “No Way Out But One,” by the Boston- based journalist/filmmaking team of Garland Waller and Barry Nolan. The film will be shown on the Documentary Channel at the end of October, which is national Domestic Violence Awareness month.
Filmmaker Garland Waller spoke with The Crime Report’s Managing Editor Cara Tabachnick about Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), bringing attention to abuse in contested custody cases, and the “Alice in Wonderland” state of the U.S. Family Court System.
The Crime Report: Why did you decide to make this film?
Garland Waller: There is little justice in American family court. The issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse that take place inside the courtroom get little to no recognition. It is hard to get enough traction with these issues. (We hoped) to get some acknowledgement or recognition in a bigger way.
Holly Collins had tons of creditable medical evidence and legal documents to support what she said. And her children were old enough, and had faith enough, to testify or to speak to us on camera about their experience. This took it out of the space of ‘he said, she said’ that normally happens when people think of a custody or divorce case....
TCR: Explain the issues facing abused women and children in family court.
GW: We know from research and statistics that a batterer is more likely than a non- batterer to get custody in family court today. That should be most shocking to people. What most people don’t understand is that most divorces and custody cases never end up in a family court. Even if the couple hates each other, they figure out what to for the (kids’ best interests). (But) when domestic violence is involved, everything changes. It’s Alice in Wonderland. Family courts are kingdoms; they are not like civil courts or criminal courts, and t judges could do anything they want.
When a battered person goes to court, usually she doesn’t look good. She’s nervous, she’s shaky, she’s scared, and maybe she’s been living in a shelter. She is certainly stressed when she goes to court and says ‘my husband beat me, my husband beats the children’ or ‘my husband is sexually abusing the children.’ One would think the court would help. But what usually happens is the woman is either not believed, or the court believes she is exaggerating.
The batterers are usually more charming. The whole family court system is really set up to challenge people who bring up sexual abuse and physical abuse of children. It is not a place where protected parents can go to court and expect support....
The film is going to be shown on the Documentary Channel October 29 at 8:00pm-11:00pm ET.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2012-10-no-way-out
Reform school cemetery that dates back to 1900s may hold unnamed victims of abusive school administrators, say family members.
By Anthony Bartkewicz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, October 14, 2012
A secret graveyard tucked behind a Florida reform school is home to 31 cross-shaped grave markers, but nearly 50 unidentified bodies.
The small cemetery dates back to the early 1900s. Some former students at the Florida Industrial School for Boys in Marianna now say victims of abusive school administrators are buried there, CNN reported.
When the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated in 2009, it found that 31 boys buried in the woods behind the school died either from the flu or in a fire.
But University of South Florida anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle found 18 more bodies buried without markers.
"We found burials within the current marked cemetery, and then we found burials that extend beyond that,” she said. “These are children who came here and died, for one reason or another, and have just been lost in the woods.”....
A group of men came forward in 2008 and said the “White House” — a small concrete building on school grounds — was the site of brutal beatings and whippings in the 1960s.
Former administrator Troy Tidwell downplayed their claims, saying only that “spankings” took place.
Another former student said a boy named Owen Smith was killed by rifle fire as they tried to run away from the school.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/50-unidentified-kids-buried-florida-reform-school-secret-graveyard-article-1.1183090
‘No Way Out’ October 15, 2012
By Cara Tabachnick
In 1996, Holly Collins and her children became the first Americans to be granted asylum by the government of the Netherlands due to domestic violence. She fled the United States after losing custody of her children in Family Court to her ex-husband, who abused Holly and their two young children. Her remarkable story was featured in the 87- minute documentary “No Way Out But One,” by the Boston- based journalist/filmmaking team of Garland Waller and Barry Nolan. The film will be shown on the Documentary Channel at the end of October, which is national Domestic Violence Awareness month.
Filmmaker Garland Waller spoke with The Crime Report’s Managing Editor Cara Tabachnick about Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), bringing attention to abuse in contested custody cases, and the “Alice in Wonderland” state of the U.S. Family Court System.
The Crime Report: Why did you decide to make this film?
Garland Waller: There is little justice in American family court. The issues of domestic violence and sexual abuse that take place inside the courtroom get little to no recognition. It is hard to get enough traction with these issues. (We hoped) to get some acknowledgement or recognition in a bigger way.
Holly Collins had tons of creditable medical evidence and legal documents to support what she said. And her children were old enough, and had faith enough, to testify or to speak to us on camera about their experience. This took it out of the space of ‘he said, she said’ that normally happens when people think of a custody or divorce case....
TCR: Explain the issues facing abused women and children in family court.
GW: We know from research and statistics that a batterer is more likely than a non- batterer to get custody in family court today. That should be most shocking to people. What most people don’t understand is that most divorces and custody cases never end up in a family court. Even if the couple hates each other, they figure out what to for the (kids’ best interests). (But) when domestic violence is involved, everything changes. It’s Alice in Wonderland. Family courts are kingdoms; they are not like civil courts or criminal courts, and t judges could do anything they want.
When a battered person goes to court, usually she doesn’t look good. She’s nervous, she’s shaky, she’s scared, and maybe she’s been living in a shelter. She is certainly stressed when she goes to court and says ‘my husband beat me, my husband beats the children’ or ‘my husband is sexually abusing the children.’ One would think the court would help. But what usually happens is the woman is either not believed, or the court believes she is exaggerating.
The batterers are usually more charming. The whole family court system is really set up to challenge people who bring up sexual abuse and physical abuse of children. It is not a place where protected parents can go to court and expect support....
The film is going to be shown on the Documentary Channel October 29 at 8:00pm-11:00pm ET.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2012-10-no-way-out
Monday, October 15, 2012
Predators on Pedestals - America has Jerry Sandusky, Britain has Jimmy Savile, Mystery surrounds graves at boys' reform school
Op-Ed Columnist Predators on Pedestals By BILL KELLER October 14, 2012
America has Jerry Sandusky. Britain has Jimmy Savile.
Sandusky you know; the predatory Penn State football coach was sentenced last week to spend his remaining years in prison for raping boys who looked up to him. Savile you may have missed; a venerable British TV personality who died last year, he is now at the center of a posthumous scandal unspooling in London. His appetites ran mostly to adolescent girls, but otherwise the parallels are striking. In both cases, the story is not just one of individual villainy but of the failure of a trusted institution, if not a flaw in the wider culture.
Perhaps you’ve had your fill of these sordid accounts — the celebrity gropers, the pedophile priests, the fondling in the locker room shower, the witnesses who look the other way. But Savile’s case is worth mulling, if only because the institution in which his serial child abuse took place is one of the most respected media organizations in the world, a putative shrine to truth and accountability: the BBC. And in the early days of the scandal the revered broadcaster has faced the same questions of dereliction or outright cover-up that dogged Penn State and the Catholic Church when they experienced their respective outbreaks of infamy.
To appreciate Jimmy Savile’s place in English culture, imagine a combination of Dick Clark of “American Bandstand” and Jerry Lewis, maestro of the muscular dystrophy telethon. Savile was the longest-serving host of the immensely popular BBC music show “Top of the Pops,” and the star of another long-running show called “Jim’ll Fix It,” in which he pulled strings to grant the wishes of supplicants, mostly children. Like Sandusky, he buffed his reputation by throwing himself into charity work. Like Sandusky he seems to have used his philanthropy both to identify vulnerable children for his personal sport and to inoculate himself against suspicion. The good deeds helped earn Savile two knighthoods, one bestowed by the queen, the other by the pope. He was Sir Jimmy, confidant — or at least photo-op accessory — of royals, prime ministers, even Beatles....
The testimony of his accusers describes what Malcolm Gladwell calls, in a shuddersome study of Sandusky’s ilk published in The New Yorker last month, “child-molester tradecraft.” You have “the subtle early maneuvers of victim selection,” the screening out of children who object or who are supervised closely by parents, the testing, ingratiating, “grooming” and “desensitizing the target with an ever-expanding touch,” the escalation of abuse.
Gossip about Savile’s fondling of young teenagers was rife, but never rose to a level deemed newsworthy during his life. But on Oct. 3 the investigative program “Exposure,” on the rival ITV network, aired a damning documentary. It included interviews with five women who described being sexually abused as teenagers and with colleagues who witnessed compromising behavior. After that, the deluge. London police now say they are pursuing more than 300 leads, and that they believe Savile abused girls as young as 13 over the course of four decades — in his BBC dressing room, in hospitals where he was a benefactor, in the back of his white Rolls-Royce.
It turns out that the BBC’s own investigative show, “Newsnight,” had also delved into Savile’s history, but ended up killing the program last December. It would have run a few weeks before a BBC holiday tribute to the memory of Jimmy Savile....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/opinion/keller-predators-on-pedestals.html
Esther Rantzen: 'How I long to turn the clock back'
We were all part of a conspiracy of silence – and that’s why it is vital that Savile’s victims come forward to tell their stories
By Esther Rantzen
07 Oct 2012
As I arrived at an NSPCC conference last week, a taxi pulled up, and the driver shouted to me. “Esther!” I walked over. “Jimmy Savile was in my cab some years back, with two very young girls he said were his nieces. But they weren’t. What he got up to with them in the back of the cab was bad, very bad. I knew it was wrong. But what could I say?”
For decades, nobody said anything, at least not publicly, not officially. Everyone knew – that is, everyone in the television and pop music industries knew. The rumours swirled around him, that he sexually abused young girls. A journalist friend told me in the 1970s about a little girl with a heart defect. Jimmy had helped her to have the defect surgically corrected. A newspaper heard about his generosity and contacted the girl’s family to run the story, but the family refused to talk to them because they were sickened by what they knew he had done to her to make her “earn” the operation.
But that story, like all the others I heard, was hearsay, rumour, gossip. Many a person has been crucified unjustly by rumour. A lie, they say, goes halfway around the world before truth has got its boots on. So for decades the abuse was an open secret, and Jimmy easily rebuffed the rumours when interviewers like Louis Theroux and the psychiatrist Anthony Clare dared to put them to him....
But now the truth is out. More victims are emerging every day, telling stories of the sexual abuse by Sir Jimmy of children as young as nine, on one occasion alongside the convicted paedophile pop star Gary Glitter. They reveal that, like every practised paedophile, he targeted the most vulnerable children, including those in care. Jimmy, for instance, reportedly visited the notorious Jersey children’s home, Haut de la Garenne, several times in the Sixties and Seventies, where seven people have since been prosecuted for child abuse....
Knighted by both the Queen and the Pope, Sir Jimmy hid the private reality that he was also a prolific, predatory paedophile. All of his crimes – the multitude of attacks committed in his famous Rolls-Royce, in his caravan, in schools and children’s homes, in his dressing room and in a London taxi – remained an open secret. In spite of the fact that he flaunted his taste for underage children, police investigations failed, newspaper investigations were never published, a Newsnight film was dropped, and through it all Jimmy’s image remained intact....
But the shock of his callousness, his ruthlessness as described by these women, was so profound that I found myself in tears. I listened to the careful, factual accounts by the women, whose recollections were so vivid and detailed that it was clear they were describing scenes etched on their memories. The helplessness of the children he had preyed upon made me long to turn the clock back, to assure them it was not their fault. It was all true; I had no doubt. Without knowing it, they corroborated each other by describing similar attacks that still caused them pain and shame, even down to the sexually transmitted disease with which he had infected two of the girls. Now they have been further corroborated by the other victims coming forward every day; at the time of writing, more than 40 of them....
Why were they silent for so many years? Because abused children find it difficult to describe the crimes against them. The shame is transferred to them, the guilt rubs off, they feel defiled. They think – because they are often threatened – that nobody will believe them if they do have the courage to ask for help. And in this case they were right. As the documentary shows, Charlotte, one child who did speak up and fight back, was punished for it. Jimmy was a regular visitor to the Duncroft Approved School for Girls, near Staines in Surrey, where Charlotte was a pupil. He invited her to his caravan, told her to sit on his lap and put his hand up her jumper. When she protested, her teachers dragged her away and told her off: “Uncle Jimmy does so much good for the school.” She was taken to the isolation unit for two or three days and told to retract her allegations. “I hated it in there,” she says now. “It was a padded cell, and you were just locked in a room and left.”....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9591322/Esther-Rantzen-How-I-long-to-turn-the-clock-back.html
Mystery surrounds graves at boys' reform school
By Rich Phillips, CNN Mon October 15, 2012
Marianna, Florida (CNN) -- This Florida panhandle town is the home of a mystery that has been lost to time.
A small cemetery buried deep into the grounds of a now-defunct boys reform school dates back to the early 1900s. Rusting white steel crosses mark the graves of 31 unidentified former students.
Former students said the deaths were at the hands of abusive administrators, but a 2009 state investigation determined there was no evidence of criminal activity connected with any of the deaths or of abusive treatment.
But the investigation did not clear up the mystery over the fate of 50 other students who died at the school and whose bodies have not been accounted for.
In the wake of that investigation, more former students -- who are now senior citizens -- have come forward with stories of abuse at the school, including alleged beatings, killings and the disappearance of students, during the 1940s, '50s and '60s....
The mystery surrounding the graves first made headlines in 2008 when Florida's then-governor Charlie Crist ordered an investigation after a group of men, known as "the White House Boys," came forward with stories of how they were beaten with leather straps by school administrators inside a small, white building on school property.
Robert Straley, who spent about 10 months at the school in the 1960s for allegedly stealing a car, said he was taken to the "white house" on his very first day.
"I came out of there in shock, and when they hit you, you went down a foot into the bed, and so hard, I couldn't believe. I didn't know what they were hitting you with," said Straley.
Former school administrator Troy Tidwell, a one-armed man who was there at the time and who some former students accused of beating them, has said in a deposition that "spankings" took place at the school but denied anyone was ever beaten or killed.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/13/us/florida-graves-mystery/index.html
America has Jerry Sandusky. Britain has Jimmy Savile.
Sandusky you know; the predatory Penn State football coach was sentenced last week to spend his remaining years in prison for raping boys who looked up to him. Savile you may have missed; a venerable British TV personality who died last year, he is now at the center of a posthumous scandal unspooling in London. His appetites ran mostly to adolescent girls, but otherwise the parallels are striking. In both cases, the story is not just one of individual villainy but of the failure of a trusted institution, if not a flaw in the wider culture.
Perhaps you’ve had your fill of these sordid accounts — the celebrity gropers, the pedophile priests, the fondling in the locker room shower, the witnesses who look the other way. But Savile’s case is worth mulling, if only because the institution in which his serial child abuse took place is one of the most respected media organizations in the world, a putative shrine to truth and accountability: the BBC. And in the early days of the scandal the revered broadcaster has faced the same questions of dereliction or outright cover-up that dogged Penn State and the Catholic Church when they experienced their respective outbreaks of infamy.
To appreciate Jimmy Savile’s place in English culture, imagine a combination of Dick Clark of “American Bandstand” and Jerry Lewis, maestro of the muscular dystrophy telethon. Savile was the longest-serving host of the immensely popular BBC music show “Top of the Pops,” and the star of another long-running show called “Jim’ll Fix It,” in which he pulled strings to grant the wishes of supplicants, mostly children. Like Sandusky, he buffed his reputation by throwing himself into charity work. Like Sandusky he seems to have used his philanthropy both to identify vulnerable children for his personal sport and to inoculate himself against suspicion. The good deeds helped earn Savile two knighthoods, one bestowed by the queen, the other by the pope. He was Sir Jimmy, confidant — or at least photo-op accessory — of royals, prime ministers, even Beatles....
The testimony of his accusers describes what Malcolm Gladwell calls, in a shuddersome study of Sandusky’s ilk published in The New Yorker last month, “child-molester tradecraft.” You have “the subtle early maneuvers of victim selection,” the screening out of children who object or who are supervised closely by parents, the testing, ingratiating, “grooming” and “desensitizing the target with an ever-expanding touch,” the escalation of abuse.
Gossip about Savile’s fondling of young teenagers was rife, but never rose to a level deemed newsworthy during his life. But on Oct. 3 the investigative program “Exposure,” on the rival ITV network, aired a damning documentary. It included interviews with five women who described being sexually abused as teenagers and with colleagues who witnessed compromising behavior. After that, the deluge. London police now say they are pursuing more than 300 leads, and that they believe Savile abused girls as young as 13 over the course of four decades — in his BBC dressing room, in hospitals where he was a benefactor, in the back of his white Rolls-Royce.
It turns out that the BBC’s own investigative show, “Newsnight,” had also delved into Savile’s history, but ended up killing the program last December. It would have run a few weeks before a BBC holiday tribute to the memory of Jimmy Savile....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/opinion/keller-predators-on-pedestals.html
Esther Rantzen: 'How I long to turn the clock back'
We were all part of a conspiracy of silence – and that’s why it is vital that Savile’s victims come forward to tell their stories
By Esther Rantzen
07 Oct 2012
As I arrived at an NSPCC conference last week, a taxi pulled up, and the driver shouted to me. “Esther!” I walked over. “Jimmy Savile was in my cab some years back, with two very young girls he said were his nieces. But they weren’t. What he got up to with them in the back of the cab was bad, very bad. I knew it was wrong. But what could I say?”
For decades, nobody said anything, at least not publicly, not officially. Everyone knew – that is, everyone in the television and pop music industries knew. The rumours swirled around him, that he sexually abused young girls. A journalist friend told me in the 1970s about a little girl with a heart defect. Jimmy had helped her to have the defect surgically corrected. A newspaper heard about his generosity and contacted the girl’s family to run the story, but the family refused to talk to them because they were sickened by what they knew he had done to her to make her “earn” the operation.
But that story, like all the others I heard, was hearsay, rumour, gossip. Many a person has been crucified unjustly by rumour. A lie, they say, goes halfway around the world before truth has got its boots on. So for decades the abuse was an open secret, and Jimmy easily rebuffed the rumours when interviewers like Louis Theroux and the psychiatrist Anthony Clare dared to put them to him....
But now the truth is out. More victims are emerging every day, telling stories of the sexual abuse by Sir Jimmy of children as young as nine, on one occasion alongside the convicted paedophile pop star Gary Glitter. They reveal that, like every practised paedophile, he targeted the most vulnerable children, including those in care. Jimmy, for instance, reportedly visited the notorious Jersey children’s home, Haut de la Garenne, several times in the Sixties and Seventies, where seven people have since been prosecuted for child abuse....
Knighted by both the Queen and the Pope, Sir Jimmy hid the private reality that he was also a prolific, predatory paedophile. All of his crimes – the multitude of attacks committed in his famous Rolls-Royce, in his caravan, in schools and children’s homes, in his dressing room and in a London taxi – remained an open secret. In spite of the fact that he flaunted his taste for underage children, police investigations failed, newspaper investigations were never published, a Newsnight film was dropped, and through it all Jimmy’s image remained intact....
But the shock of his callousness, his ruthlessness as described by these women, was so profound that I found myself in tears. I listened to the careful, factual accounts by the women, whose recollections were so vivid and detailed that it was clear they were describing scenes etched on their memories. The helplessness of the children he had preyed upon made me long to turn the clock back, to assure them it was not their fault. It was all true; I had no doubt. Without knowing it, they corroborated each other by describing similar attacks that still caused them pain and shame, even down to the sexually transmitted disease with which he had infected two of the girls. Now they have been further corroborated by the other victims coming forward every day; at the time of writing, more than 40 of them....
Why were they silent for so many years? Because abused children find it difficult to describe the crimes against them. The shame is transferred to them, the guilt rubs off, they feel defiled. They think – because they are often threatened – that nobody will believe them if they do have the courage to ask for help. And in this case they were right. As the documentary shows, Charlotte, one child who did speak up and fight back, was punished for it. Jimmy was a regular visitor to the Duncroft Approved School for Girls, near Staines in Surrey, where Charlotte was a pupil. He invited her to his caravan, told her to sit on his lap and put his hand up her jumper. When she protested, her teachers dragged her away and told her off: “Uncle Jimmy does so much good for the school.” She was taken to the isolation unit for two or three days and told to retract her allegations. “I hated it in there,” she says now. “It was a padded cell, and you were just locked in a room and left.”....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9591322/Esther-Rantzen-How-I-long-to-turn-the-clock-back.html
Mystery surrounds graves at boys' reform school
By Rich Phillips, CNN Mon October 15, 2012
Marianna, Florida (CNN) -- This Florida panhandle town is the home of a mystery that has been lost to time.
A small cemetery buried deep into the grounds of a now-defunct boys reform school dates back to the early 1900s. Rusting white steel crosses mark the graves of 31 unidentified former students.
Former students said the deaths were at the hands of abusive administrators, but a 2009 state investigation determined there was no evidence of criminal activity connected with any of the deaths or of abusive treatment.
But the investigation did not clear up the mystery over the fate of 50 other students who died at the school and whose bodies have not been accounted for.
In the wake of that investigation, more former students -- who are now senior citizens -- have come forward with stories of abuse at the school, including alleged beatings, killings and the disappearance of students, during the 1940s, '50s and '60s....
The mystery surrounding the graves first made headlines in 2008 when Florida's then-governor Charlie Crist ordered an investigation after a group of men, known as "the White House Boys," came forward with stories of how they were beaten with leather straps by school administrators inside a small, white building on school property.
Robert Straley, who spent about 10 months at the school in the 1960s for allegedly stealing a car, said he was taken to the "white house" on his very first day.
"I came out of there in shock, and when they hit you, you went down a foot into the bed, and so hard, I couldn't believe. I didn't know what they were hitting you with," said Straley.
Former school administrator Troy Tidwell, a one-armed man who was there at the time and who some former students accused of beating them, has said in a deposition that "spankings" took place at the school but denied anyone was ever beaten or killed.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/13/us/florida-graves-mystery/index.html
Sunday, October 14, 2012
BBC Crisis Over Jimmy Savile Sex Abuse Scandal, Convening of The International Common Law Court of Justice October 15, 2012
BBC Crisis Over Jimmy Savile Sex Abuse Scandal Widens; Chief Announces Inquiries
AP By JILL LAWLESS 10/13/2012
LONDON (AP) - The BBC is struggling to contain a crisis sparked by allegations of serial sexual abuse against the late Jimmy Savile, a longtime children's television host.
Dozens of women have come forward to say that Savile, who died in October 2011 aged 84, sexually assaulted them when they were as young as 13. London's Metropolitan Police, which is leading a national investigation, says it has identified 40 potential victims.
The publicly funded national broadcaster is facing questions about its failure to stop Savile's predatory behavior, which was an open secret in showbiz circles during his heyday several decades ago.
BBC Director-General George Entwistle announced late Friday that the broadcaster would hold an inquiry into the "culture and practices of the BBC during the years Jimmy Savile worked here."
"It will examine whether that culture and those practices allowed him or others to carry out the sexual abuse of children," said Entwistle, promising a "forensic but also soul-searching examination."
Some assaults are alleged to have taken place on BBC premises, others at hospitals and schools Savile visited as part of his charity fundraising....
The allegations against Savile were eventually aired in a documentary broadcast earlier this month on the rival ITV channel.
The British government said it would hold its own investigation into how Savile was appointed to lead a taskforce overseeing management restructuring at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in the 1980s. Former patients at the hospital have claimed Savile abused them....
He was knighted by both Queen Elizabeth II and the Vatican for his charity work, but his reputation has been in free-fall since the abuse allegations were made public. Last week his family removed the headstone from his grave in Scarborough, northeastern England, and destroyed it, "out of respect for public opinion." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/bbc-jimmy-savile-inquiry_n_1963347.html
Convening of The International Common Law Court of Justice October 15, 2012
My name is Kevin Annett - Eagle Strong Voice, and I am the chief consultant for the Prosecutor's Office of the International Common Law Court of Justice.
Today is Monday, October 15, 2012, and marks the formal online convening of the five sworn judges of our Court, from Canada, the United States and Belgium. They are joined by fifty eight sworn citizen jurors from Canada, the USA, Ireland, England, Holland, Italy and Australia, who have been prepared to receive the evidence in the first of five cases in the Docket of our Court.
This first case involves the evidence that the government and churches of Canada entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit genocide and other crimes against indigenous people and their children for over a century; and that such crimes were committed by the defendants and their organizations, and continue today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr3lpMA58EE
AP By JILL LAWLESS 10/13/2012
LONDON (AP) - The BBC is struggling to contain a crisis sparked by allegations of serial sexual abuse against the late Jimmy Savile, a longtime children's television host.
Dozens of women have come forward to say that Savile, who died in October 2011 aged 84, sexually assaulted them when they were as young as 13. London's Metropolitan Police, which is leading a national investigation, says it has identified 40 potential victims.
The publicly funded national broadcaster is facing questions about its failure to stop Savile's predatory behavior, which was an open secret in showbiz circles during his heyday several decades ago.
BBC Director-General George Entwistle announced late Friday that the broadcaster would hold an inquiry into the "culture and practices of the BBC during the years Jimmy Savile worked here."
"It will examine whether that culture and those practices allowed him or others to carry out the sexual abuse of children," said Entwistle, promising a "forensic but also soul-searching examination."
Some assaults are alleged to have taken place on BBC premises, others at hospitals and schools Savile visited as part of his charity fundraising....
The allegations against Savile were eventually aired in a documentary broadcast earlier this month on the rival ITV channel.
The British government said it would hold its own investigation into how Savile was appointed to lead a taskforce overseeing management restructuring at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in the 1980s. Former patients at the hospital have claimed Savile abused them....
He was knighted by both Queen Elizabeth II and the Vatican for his charity work, but his reputation has been in free-fall since the abuse allegations were made public. Last week his family removed the headstone from his grave in Scarborough, northeastern England, and destroyed it, "out of respect for public opinion." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/bbc-jimmy-savile-inquiry_n_1963347.html
Convening of The International Common Law Court of Justice October 15, 2012
My name is Kevin Annett - Eagle Strong Voice, and I am the chief consultant for the Prosecutor's Office of the International Common Law Court of Justice.
Today is Monday, October 15, 2012, and marks the formal online convening of the five sworn judges of our Court, from Canada, the United States and Belgium. They are joined by fifty eight sworn citizen jurors from Canada, the USA, Ireland, England, Holland, Italy and Australia, who have been prepared to receive the evidence in the first of five cases in the Docket of our Court.
This first case involves the evidence that the government and churches of Canada entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit genocide and other crimes against indigenous people and their children for over a century; and that such crimes were committed by the defendants and their organizations, and continue today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr3lpMA58EE
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