Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal
In late 2012, it emerged that Jimmy Savile, a British media personality who had died the previous year, had sexually abused hundreds of people throughout his life, mostly children but some as old as 75, and mostly female.
[1] On 19 October, London's Metropolitan Police (Met) launched a formal criminal investigation, Operation Yewtree, into historic allegations of child sexual abuse by Savile and other individuals, some still living, covering four decades.
[4][5] The report of the investigations undertaken jointly by the police and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Giving Victims a Voice, was published on 11 January 2013.
"[14] Press investigations dating back to at least 1973 did not lead to the publication of any direct accusations being made against Savile, although rumours persisted and were intermittently mentioned in the print media for many years.
[26] Broadcaster and journalist Orla Barry, on the Irish radio station Newstalk in 2007, asked Savile about allegations aired during the original Theroux documentary.
"[27] In 2007, Savile was interviewed under caution by police investigating an allegation of indecent assault at the now-closed Duncroft Approved School for Girls near Staines, Surrey, in the 1970s, when he was a regular visitor.
"[30][31] In March 2008, Savile began legal proceedings against The Sun newspaper, which had linked him in several articles to child abuse at the Jersey children's home Haut de la Garenne.
[35][36] Immediately after Savile's death, Meirion Jones and Liz Mackean from the BBC programme Newsnight began to investigate reports that he had sexually abused children.
The report was scheduled for broadcast on 7 December 2011, but a decision was taken to cancel its transmission, which ultimately developed into a major crisis for the BBC when the allegations against Savile were made public in October 2012.
The subsequent Pollard Review found that Jones and MacKean had assembled cogent evidence that Savile had a history of abusing young women and Newsnight had been in a position to break the story in 2011.
A joint submission to the Leveson Inquiry from Anna van Heeswijk (Object), Jacqui Hunt (Equality Now), Heather Harvey (Eaves) and Marai Larasi (End Violence against Women) was titled "Just the Women", a phrase which was reportedly written by Newsnight editor Peter Rippon in an email to a colleague concerning the lack of other authorities [than the alleged female victims] for evidence of Savile's abuse.
Savile denied the sexual abuse allegations relating to Duncroft Approved School put to him by the police, saying, "I've never, ever done anything wrong" and stating that the accusers wanted a "few quid.
Former High Court judge Dame Janet Smith, who led the inquiry into serial killer Harold Shipman, was to review the culture and practices of the BBC during the time Savile worked there,[64] and Nick Pollard, a former Sky News executive, would look at why the Newsnight investigation was dropped shortly before transmission.
Tom Giles, the editor of Panorama that aired the investigation on Savile on 22 October 2012, stepped down from his role in June 2014 and in 2015 joined ITV as its Controller of Current Affairs.
[93] The BBC carried statements from a retired detective inspector of the local police force that a nurse at Stoke Mandeville hospital had reported Savile's abuse of patients there to him in the 1970s and he had repeatedly informed his superiors about this, but they did not believe him.
"[98][99][100] Singer Coleen Nolan said Savile invited her to a hotel when she was 14 and had been involved in a TV recording at the Top of the Pops studio and that it made her "uncomfortable", "But you didn't talk about those things then.
[107] In November 2014, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that the enquiry had been widened, with the number of NHS organisations investigating allegations of abuse by Savile extended to 41.
An inquiry process, known as Operation Yewtree, was set up jointly with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and involving other organisations including the BBC and ITV.
These included former pop star Gary Glitter;[113][114][115] comedian Freddie Starr;[116][117] former BBC producers Wilfred De'Ath[118] and Ted Beston;[119] DJ Dave Lee Travis;[120] publicist Max Clifford;[121] children's entertainer Rolf Harris;[122][123][124] and an unnamed man in his 60s.
[6] Among its conclusions are that "It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fundraising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades.
For a variety of reasons the vast majority of his victims did not feel they could speak out and it's apparent that some of the small number who did had their accounts dismissed by those in authority including parents and carers.
[147] On 7 November 2012, it was announced that an inquiry would also be undertaken, by a senior legal figure from outside the island, into allegations that Savile had abused children at Haut de la Garenne in Jersey.
The inquiry, termed Operation Hibiscus, found no evidence of misconduct by officers, but also concluded that opportunities had been missed to prosecute both Savile and Peter Jaconelli, a former mayor of Scarborough who died in 1999, for child sex abuse.
[151] The Assistant Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police, Paul Kennedy, said that the report showed that there would have been sufficient evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service to consider criminal charges against both Savile and Jaconelli if they were still alive.
[152] On 29 April 2015, Surrey Police published a report stating that Savile had sexually assaulted 22 students and a visitor at the Duncroft Approved School for Girls in Staines-upon-Thames between 1974 and 1979.
[9] It was reported that Savile had boasted to nurses and other staff that he performed sex acts on the bodies of recently deceased persons in the mortuary of Leeds General Hospital and claimed to have removed glass eyes from corpses and made them into rings.
[156][157] A separate report on Savile's activities at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, prepared by independent investigator Dr Androulla Johnstone and published on 26 February 2015, found that he had sexually abused more than 50 people there, including staff, patients and visitors.
[166] An overarching panel inquiry was announced by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, in July 2014, to examine how the country's institutions had handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.
[177] In the same month a café at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, originally called "Jimmy's" and displaying a neon sign in the shape of Savile's signature, was renamed 'Cafe@WRVS'.
[192][193] In 2019, an episode of the alternate history TV series Pennyworth, depicted a televised public hanging of a man with long blond hair named James Savile, who was said to have committed "rape, sodomy and murder".
