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
