I am indebted to my commentator, DtP, for suggesting the title – superb! Wish I had thought of it myself.
First the Yewtree report. This long awaited £450,000 worth of expensive police time has succeeded in uniting two warring parties – the conspiracy theorists who are convinced that a combination of lizards/Rothschilds/the Royal Family/and sundry far-from-politically-correct comedians and DJs/are responsible for subverting the morals of the entire nation – and those who have direct experience of the various care homes and other institutions implicated in the ‘Savile was Britain’s greatest dead paedophile’ saga. Getting these opposing parties standing on the sidelines yelling ‘load of rubbish’ in unison will be a hard act to follow for future inquiries. My congratulations to DS David Gray and Peter Watt of the NSPCC, I wouldn’t have thought it possible.
Part of the problem is that although they have spent a great deal of money – two detectives travelled from Surrey to another part of the British Isles, staying in the most expensive hotel in the area for two days of interviews with a witness who gave them documentary evidence that Savile’s association with Duncroft in particular only commenced in 1974 they then publish a report detailing alleged offences there in 1971!
This may well be because the report has been based exclusively on accounts by those making allegations in order to ‘Give victims a voice’. Inconveniently contradictory documentary facts having no place in reassuring ‘victims’ that they have been ‘believed and listened to’.
My interest in this matter has always related to the ‘Duncroft’ issues, partly through personal knowledge, and partly because it was the believed ’suppression’ of these facts, vis-a-vis the initial non-transmitted Newsnight segment, that created the uproar that was to rock the BBC to its foundations and result in many experienced journalists and producers no longer in employment. I fully accept that there is a school of thought that says none of that matters because of the ‘good’ that has come out the ensuing publicity and the number of others abused that have felt able to come forward. That has always seemed to me to be an argument along the lines of ‘But Mussolini made the trains run on time’. There were other ways of getting the message across. I don’t believe that the resulting publicity justifies the damage that has been done.
For that reason alone, I draw a sharp dividing line between those allegations made before transmission of Panorama, and those made in the wake of publicity afterwards. Yewtree has taken them all together, and thus can cheerfully announce that
2.4 The volume of the allegations that have been made, most of them dating back many years, has made this an unusual and complex inquiry. On the whole victims are not known to each other and taken together their accounts paint a compelling picture of widespread sexual abuse by a predatory sex offender.
Nope, on the whole they are not, but those of us who were eagerly awaiting the results of your £450,000 inquiry are interested in whether the original complainants were known to each other, and in contact with each other….we say they were, and are not impressed that you have glossed over this important detail.
Yewtree, written in conjunction with the NSPCC is primarily concerned to ‘give victims a voice’. Therefore they have followed the California model of believing everything said about what might have happened to a child. (This only applies to sexual abuse, otherwise Venables and Thompson would have been sent home with a pat on the head, ‘believed’ when they said that Jamie Bulgers disappearance had nothing to do with them’). I am quite happy to accept that young children are unlikely to lie about sexual occurrences otherwise how else would they know how to describe what has happened to them? – so no surprise at the following part of paragraph 2.4.
We are therefore referring to them as ‘victims’ rather than ‘complainants’ and are not presenting the evidence they have provided as unproven allegations.
What is a surprise is that have said they are ‘victims’ as a fact, and therefore reports as factual evidence:
2.11 There are reports of offences from when Savile worked at the BBC between 1965 and 2006, at the final recording of Top of the Pops.
At Leeds General Infirmary, where he was a porter, offending was reported between 1965 and 1995.
At Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where he was also a porter, reported offending took place between 1965 and 1988.
They then single out Duncroft School as being the site of ‘allegations of offences’. Ho hum.
At Duncroft School there are allegations of offences between 1970 and 1978 when he was a regular visitor.
Interesting, particularly since Operation Outreach spent so much money establishing who introduced him to Duncroft, when, and the six visits he made…
The conspiracy theorists are mortified to read that:
2.15 There is no clear evidence of Savile operating within a paedophile ring although whether he was part of an informal network is part of the continuing investigation and it’s not therefore appropriate to comment further on this.
But DS Gray ploughs on with his sop to the nation’s intelligence…
9.2 The victims tell us that at Duncroft School Savile was given unsupervised access and preyed upon girls by offering ‘favours’ such as trips in his car and cigarettes in return for sexual activity.
Remember you said you were ‘investigating Savile’ – not just writing down what the ‘victims’ told you Petal?
Still the CPS report, also known as the Levitt report, released today, was far more interesting. Here for the first time we have an authoritative account of what the Duncroft victims amounted to. These were the girls, the only ‘victims’, over which the BBC was traumatised and brought to its knees. These are the girls who have resulted in no less than 14 separate inquiries running at present. Remember, everyone else came after this…
I will set aside Karin Ward for the moment, simply because she had never gone to the police, nor had made any complaint to the staff at Duncroft; her allegations arose purely because one of a series of fictional books she had written about her life as an abused child was picked up by investigating journalists. The story was ‘given legs’ as they say in the trade, by the revelation that Savile had been investigated by the police, and the investigation was stopped because Savile was ‘old and infirm’. If that was true, it meant by implication that Karin Ward was probably telling the truth…even though those who knew Duncroft and Karin’s hard won reputation for telling amazing porkies could see the glaring errors in her book. (I still love the idea of Bridie Keenan, the ex Judo teacher, administering injections with no previous training and no cries of foul play from the other residents!!!)
So, a wonderfully shortened version of the Duncroft victims, for those who don’t want to read the full report:
Surprisingly, the first person to contact Police, was nothing to do with Duncroft. That was the ’2007′ investigation which has been quoted many times as being the Duncroft investigation. It wasn’t.
It concerned a lady who, 40 years beforehand, had been in her 20s when she heard Savile on TV saying he needed a holiday. She, being a member of his fan club, offered her family home as a suitable place for him to take a holiday. She received a polite letter in response saying thank-you but no thank-you.
2 years later, Savile’s chauffeur appeared at her door without warning, and told her husband that Savile was in the local town and had sent him to see if she wanted to go and meet him. Her husband encouraged her to go. She went. The ‘next thing she remembers’ was that Savile had his arm around her, and they ‘ended up in his caravan’. Whilst there, he asked her whether she was on the pill, and put her hand on his groin. When she said that ‘she didn’t do that sort of thing’, Savile sat up, checked that she had her bus fare home, and invited her to take a memento. She chose a crucifix. That’s it. That’s the dastardly attack.
However, 40 years later, after living abroad for many years, she returned to the UK, saw Savile on TV, and sat down to write a letter to the Sun newspaper…as you do. A reporter hot footed it down to see her. She told the reporter that she wouldn’t go to the police. Four months later the Reporter tried again. This time the reporter told her that she’d ‘keep her name out of the papers’ but that Savile was now connected to events at Haute de la Garenne in Jersey, and that unless she agreed to make a complaint, nothing could be done about the alleged abuse of children there. On that basis she made a complaint to the Sussex Police.
The Police visited and told her that they would need to contact her (now) ex-husband, and her workmates from 40 years beforehand to check the story out. She was unwilling for various reasons to co-operate with this course of action.
The Levitt report concludes that had she made an official complaint, it would at least have gone towards showing a ‘pattern of behaviour’ – though given that she was in her 20s, had invited Savile to her home, gone willingly to his bedroom, and the man had cheerfully desisted after what was admittedly a coarse approach to suggesting sex, it scarcely shows a pattern of paedophile behaviour.
Fast forward another 2 years, and we have the first of the Duncroft allegations. 2009 and a Duncroft resident approaches Surrey Police not to report that she had been abused, but to tell them that she had witnessed an abuse occurring at Duncroft. This was 2 years after The Sun had first made strenuous efforts to connect Savile with a care home. She claims to have phoned Child-line – (Esther? Didn’t you say ‘if only’?) and been told to go to the Police. So she did.
She gave them the name of Witness C, who she alleges was sitting next to Savile in the TV lounge, when he took her hand and placed it on his crotch, he then ‘squeezed her hand’ which would have had the effect of ‘squeezing his testicles and penis’. She said that she believed witness ‘C’ to be 14 at this time. She says that Savile ‘groomed the girls’ by sending them a giant box of chocolates on their 16th birthday. (A bit tardy for someone who had ambitions to be a paedophile groomer I would have thought, 14th birthday would have made more sense, but what do I know). He did this all of three times. The chocolates on the 16th birthday, I mean.
All well and good, but when the police caught up with witness ‘C’, she didn’t want to know. She declined to make a statement. She agreed that the incident had occurred, but said it only happened the once, she was 15, not 14 at the time, and she had never seen Savile since – although she was the recipient of one of the three now infamous boxes of chocolates two days later – presumably on her 16th birthday?
Not a lot the Police could do with that, although Savile undoubtedly committed an offence. Either indecent assault or gross indecency with a child. There is no question of consent being given – and the arrival of the box of chocolates a few days later which we have already heard from another witness happened three times on 16th birthdays confirms this. It is not absolutely necessary that the victim give evidence themselves, the case could have continued without her, but was becoming weaker by the minute. However, had all these allegations been correlated, and this is the point that the Levitt report makes consistently, it could have amounted to ‘a pattern of behaviour’. The 20 year old claiming that Savile placed her hand on his crotch, and now a 15 year old being the alleged victim of identical behaviour – but being unwilling to formally confirm it.
The Police persevered though, and traced the other residents of Duncroft at the time (1978). Thus they came to speak to Witness ‘D’ who told them that nothing had ever happened to her, but she had heard rumours and that these rumours were being discussed on Friendsreunited. A few days later she rang the Police again and told them that actually her sister had been at Stoke Mandeville Hospital for a concert and Savile had approached her, kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth. Extraordinary co-incidence. Out of all those people at the concert, the sister of a Duncroft girl! Still, it might not reinforce the paedophile stalking the corridors at Duncroft, but it is an offence.
Oh dear, she didn’t want to make a complaint either. No witness statement from her, no botched police investigation, in fact she didn’t even want to meet Ms Levitt.
I’m trying hard here, but I’m up to page 36, and so far I’ve got one witness who is unwilling to formally confirm that Savile once placed her hand on his crotch and squeezed it, a few days before her 16th birthday. Onwards and Upwards.
We move onto witness ‘G’. Witness ‘G’ was certainly 16, in that she was resident in Norman Lodge, where girls were only entitled to live when they had reached the age at which they could go out to work. At one time (when I was at Duncroft, that was 14 – but things had changed by 1978, and now you had to be 16, by law) So there is witness ‘G’, 16 years old, and apparently training to be a nurse. Savile allegedly said to her, ‘Give us a blow job, and I’ll get you a job at Stoke Mandeville’ or words to that effect. She declined.
Er, and that was that…he didn’t pursue the matter.
Interestingly, witness ‘G’ was one of the girls on the television programme, and Ms Levitt says:
I did not know at the time I met her that Ms G had participated in a television programme about Jimmy Savile. During that programme she made a number of allegations which go considerably further than those she made to DC S in 2008. When I met her she made reference to having given him a “hand job” but said that she had refused to give him a “blow job”.
So much for the much vaunted ‘Duncroft’ allegations and the ‘five women’ who had gone to the police and come away empty handed as a result of corruption/blinded by fame and celebrity/ protected by higher powers etc, etc.
The evidence that the police had amounts to one 20 year old who rejected a crass approach and was nothing to do with Duncroft, one who was a witness, one near 16 year old who says he put her hand on his crotch but didn’t want to do anything about it, one who says he kissed her sister and made her cry, one who says he made an inappropriate suggestion but didn’t pursue it – and one who has made a career out of writing of child abuse, egged on by the psychologist who chose to involve herself in the Hollie Grieg ‘paedophile ring’ hoax.
In fairness, Levitt QC makes a point of saying that if all these allegations had been taken together then they might have been held to show a ‘course of behaviour’, and if all the witnesses had been told of the other allegations then those who declined to give evidence might have changed their minds, and Savile might have got two years, being the then going rate for indecent assault on a child. (Witness ‘C’).
As it was, he was interviewed under caution, and denied the offences. Both Surrey Police and Sussex Police did go to strenuous efforts to trace all the other residents looking to find more evidence and more importantly, DID notify a range of other charities, and institutions that they had investigated Savile. (See the appendix for full list).
At no point in any of the copious statements to Police did anyone so much as suggest that staff at Duncroft might have been aware of the two occasions we are left with – the ‘hand on crotch’ incident, or the ‘inappropriate suggestion’ incident.
Sky news just on – report by NSPCC reveals ‘full extent of Savile’s offending’ and Police missed ‘at least three opportunities’ to charge him. Sylvia Edwards just being interviewed – the girl who alleged that film of the final episode of Top of the Pops shows him groping her bottom – an event which she says has ruined her entire life….
And apparently ‘he struck at Duncroft School at least 11 times’….and Savile was ‘unchallenged by Police’. Interviewed under caution over an incident where the alleged victim declined to give a statement is NOT unchallenged.
Cobblers! I am ashamed to be British tonight.
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
{ 264 comments }
”one who has made a career out of writing of child abuse, egged on by the psychologist who chose to involve herself in the Hollie Grieg ‘paedophile ring’ hoax.”
Really? lord, how depressing.
Fine piece of writing and one that is hard for anyone to refute, given that it’s based on both careful analysis of the contents of the reports and first hand experience.
“Remember you said you were ‘investigating Savile’ – not just writing down what the ‘victims’ told you Petal?”
Sadly, these days, it seems that IS ‘investigation’. And so many people seem to be content that it be so.
Well, fine. It’ll be too late when they are the ones in the firing line. Serves them right. I have no pity. Not any more.
Sylvia Edwards was claiming her life was ruined on the 24th November 1976 recording of TOTP when she had her 19 year bottom pinched… I understand one of the allegations are of sexual molestation was made about the final TOTP (July 2006) when Jimmy was 3 months short of 80 years old, but I understand from someone WHO WAS THERE that JS’s links were pre-records… and not forgetting that even if they were not, TOTP had operated a strict “Over 16″ audience policy since at least the summer of 1971… Indeed, this is backed up of footage of Jim’ll Fix It (used cannily by Charlie Brooker for his “2012 Wipe” that should still be on BBC iPlayer) when JS received a letter from a 10 yr girl asking to dance on TOTP and stated it couldn’t be done “even as a special Fix-It” and for her to write back when she was old enough!
But, hey, why let facts get in the way of Mass Hysteria?
Excellent article by the way, and well done on getting it out today!
What was originally said was Jimmy put his hand up her skirt, yes skirt but looking at the clip (from BBC4 – not the shitty YT ones) she is wearing trousers and looks like she is sat down, unless Jimmy has a Eugene Tooms arm then it’ll be impossible to grope her that way, but as you said he probably pinched her to get an reaction….ruined her life and marriage – get real love…
If you can claim your life and career and everything else was ruined, that’s where the money is – that’s where it comes from.
Suppose she works in Tescos on minimum wage (not criticising people who do that at all). If she can claim through some ridiculous route that if it hadn’t been for this trauma she’d have (say) been a brain surgeon she can make a claim for the wage difference between the Brain Surgeon and Minimum Wage for life
@Paul,
Lol, you’ve hit the nail on the head…
That’s a standard that is generally looked at rather closely by insurance companies here in the U.S when adjusting a claim for damages. They also want to know about how much debt you have, how far in arrears you are to Internal Revenue, and a lot of other factors involving personal finances. Presumably that would be the case in the UK as well.
@Chris Barratt,
He says the girl who claims to have been indecently assaulted by Jimmy Savile on TOTP in 2006 was between 13 and 16 (in other words doesn’t really know), but whenever MWT gives the age a ‘victim’ is supposed to have been at the time they allege a sexual assault took place, a good rule of thumb is to add 2 years to get the real age she would have been, or if he gives a range of ages, go for the highest 1 at the very least…
Good article. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but the Levitt Report seems like a very professional and competent piece of work that puts the other report published today to shame. Thanks for posting the link to the pdf.
I thought the Levitt report was excellent, very fair and objective.
I wonder how many ‘outraged of (fill in the name of your place of residence)’ currently filling the comments pages of online newspapers and twitter will bother reading any of these reports? As ever an enlightening piece. well done.
I believe you predicted this outcome Anna, or something very like.
Once again, I would point to the fact that despite all the allegations THERE IS NO NEW FACTUAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE ASSERTION that Sir James Wilson Vincent “Jimmy” Savile (31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011), OBE, KCSG was anything of the kind of person he is now condemned to be forever.
I have no doubt that he was a very odd chap, deeply creepy, lecherous, in the ‘Benny Hill’ mould and possibly even did some of the things that are alleged, exploiting his opportunities to the full, but nothing thus far has come to light that sets this into concrete, to a criminal burden of proof. The fact that, conveniently for his accusers, Savile is no longer with us, has allowed his name to be blackened, without the comebacks that would undoubtedly follow if he were still with us so, the ephemeral ‘jury’ is still out for my money.
Still and all, one does not have to be guilty of anything sometimes, if you can heap enough ‘dung’ on, because no one wants to wade through $8&£ to get to the truth.
I said the same thing earlier on another thread – but I don’t envy the job of the defence barristers of the ‘Savile and Other’ charges if they materialise. A fair trial in this atmosphere?
I can see one of two things happening at any trials in the coming months – either complete gullibility from the jury, afraid to turn into the prevailing wind, or a complete backlash.
Many people I know are actually sick of the whole thing and agree with Rantzen’s criticism. I have never been a fan, but she spoke up rather bravely I thought.
I can foresee a changing of British law (as with double jeopardy in the wake of the Lawrence debacle) to allow for the posthumous labelling of dead suspects as ‘official’ pedophiles.
I agree that there is a depressing feverishness around this. I mean, take Peter Spindler’s comment that Savile “spent every minute of every waking day thinking about it“. Er, thanks, Commander Palladino, but how do you know? It’s almost as if some people were so aggrieved that he was not the kindly gent they thought he was that he can be nothing except Satan himself.
I ploughed through the entire Levitt report. What leaves me gobsmacked is that there is no mention of going off in cars with Savile, or being molested at the BBC. Also I like that Miss C told the detectives that she’d like to “smack her in the gob” relative to Miss B who initially made the report to the Dorset police in 2008 I believe it was, because Miss C was not interested in having her private life discussed with the police without her knowledge or permission. Now then, who do we know who went to Duncroft and lives in Dorset? Why – our friend Fiona, of course! Hails from Weymouth. And who wouldn’t like to smack her in the gob? Line forms on the right, folks.
I know who D and E are. E has never been interested in pursuing this matter further. D was at Duncroft in 1979. I’m not sure who C (Blanket Girl) is because, amazingly, through the entire year on Careleavers, not ONE MENTION was made of groping under blankets, let alone this ‘beef biryani’ thing. I guess they thought they might be able to get some monetary satisfaction from the Beeb at one point, but that’s been dropped like a hot potato by the Levitt report. Which is interesting in itself.
Although I left a message for Yewtree that they needed to look at the entire history of exchanges on Careleavers, they apparently didn’t bother, because Miss B was over there whipping things up for at least a year, and to naively suggest that Duncroft women didn’t stay in touch with each other after they left is just stupid. Of course they did.
Nah, read carefully Mewsical, the devil is in the detail as always – Levitt said there was no evidence that they had SEEN each other since leaving Duncroft, he didn’t say they hadn’t been in TOUCH with each other……!!!
Well, Fiona had access to that database which she stole from Duncroft or received as a stolen item, with the contact information of former pupils and staff on it, and used Friends Reunited to rally the troops via that means as well. Seeing as this first report to Dorset which was transferred to Surrey came from Fiona in 2008(?), then obviously FRU and Voy were being utilized, along with their private message function.
Meswical and Anna
Would you please be kind enough to remind me who Deborah Cogger is? Apparently she says she is Ms C
Oops, sorry, my mistake. I was reading an article about how furious Ms Cogger is that one of the officers involved in the 2009 complaint by Ms B is now part of op Outreach. I got the impression at first that Cogger knew this officer from 2009. But she wasn’t. She’s just being outraged for a small fee. Funny that she’s not saying that she herself might have helped things along by finding the time in 38 years to go to the police herself.
Cogger sold her story to some magazine, if you recall. Talked to the Sun as well, but probably made no money from that.
Will Miss Jones (??) finally reveal what she told you bout Duncroft & Sir Jimmy…..
Excellent deconstruction of the reports, which these reports amounted to nothing but shifting blame and hearsay…..guilty by media
I spoke to Miss Jones for an hour this morning – she is in good spirits, but exceedingly angry.
She has no interest whatsoever in talking to the media, she is of the opinion that they twist everything, omit anything that doesn’t fit their agenda, cannot be trusted, and I cannot find the words to convince her otherwise – I’m probably not the best person to do so anyway, since I very much agree with her.
Her entire career has been trashed with allegations that ‘she pimped girls out to high flown paedophile rings’ and that she ‘knew what was happening and did nothing’- and night after night, her old school that she gave so much of her life for appears on her television screen, portrayed as some Victorian institution where ‘God knows what went on’…and what does it boil down to? She allowed the girls to meet a famous DJ who invited them to watch his show in London, and allegedly….put one girls hand on his crotch. Jesus, and she finds herself at the centre of one of the biggest scandals in modern Britain, with no reddress.
I thought in one of your earlier posts that she will tell the Police what really went on, but then again can they be trusted (from the looks of the ‘Victims’ report)
She did Andee, she spent two days with two officers from Operation Outreach, and gave them all the documents and all the information they could possibly need. The Yewtree report only reflects the victims claims…..incidentally the police didn’t bother to make an appointment, didn’t knock on her door, just walked straight into her house – a 91 year old woman, and she was still polite and helpful to them….!
Sadly, her generation will be – they think the police are out to get to the truth. In her generation, they were.
I spoke to Miss Draycott (Drilly to most of us old girls) who worked at Norman Lodge (the hostel at Duncroft) today. She is 81 and has not been interviewed by the Police. She has recently spoken to Ruth Cole who was the deputy head of Duncroft who was also not interviewed! Drilly said that Jimmy Savile never went to Norman Lodge which would indicate that Witness G was a liar -when I was a\t Norman Lodge we had no contact with Duncroft.
@JuliaM, The Police were so keen to get to the truth of Timothy Evans (1924-50) murdering his wife and daughter that they dictated his “confession” and forced workmen who had repaired the wash house at 10 Rillington Place during the period that Evans’ “confession” placed the bodies there to change their evidence to support the Police “truth” that Evans was the murderer. If the Police had been more open-minded in this and other cases, capital punishment for murder might still be available.
@Ellen Coulson,
It’s all coming out now, lol…
@Ellen Coulson,
Were you allowed to bring friends (that weren’t from Duncroft) or boyfriends back to Norman lodge?
E.g maybe Jimmy was her boyfriend and thats why she had him round there and he asked what she claims he asked her…
those whose hand ever strayed near a spare bottom and inadvertently groped should tremble today after this report.
And they will number in the hundreds of thousands.
I can think of one distinguished member of the Lords in his 80s who has such a reputation – a fine man who undoubtedly will be thrown on the fire at the stake when he passes.
Ms Racoon is right to say : “Cobblers! I am ashamed to be British tonight “. This report establishes the blueprint for Witch Hunts for decades to come.
However things may change if there is a mass demand for compensation.
Fact may have to be established- or perhaps the government will set up some sort of one-off payment to the claimants. That in itself raises the possibility of further claims against the recently deceased.
**as it’s now been established by the lizard hunters that Miz Racoon is a retired intelligence agent living in a safe house in France- can one choose where one’s safe house is located?. The South of France would suit me but I have my eye on a relatively cheap villa on a Greek Island.
The above comment is not by this “Joe Public”
yes not you but me: JoePublic (2)
;
Only the original Joe Public has the skull avatar…
Anna, he won’t be happy that after all this time you think it’s a skull avatar! Fray Tormenta for one would turn in his grave (if he was dead!).
Even worse than I expected, no real investigation, allegations by the hundred but no evidence, pronounced guilty and they call this justice! I am ashamed too and I still haven’t seen any evidence that Savile was any more that a serial groper of young women. Some of the ‘stories’ are simply fantastic and I don’t believe them.
I really feel for Davidson, DLT et al for being arrested like they are criminal masterminds, just to fuel the mass hysteria of aged beasts roaming the country preying on the innocent…Hammer eat your heart out, and again no proof about anything, just something to beat the BBC with (so the likes of Daily Mail, SKY, and Murdoch’s doings (Leveson report etc)) are forcing the public to be blindsighted and forgetful of their horrors…..shameful
Amidst all the allegations of rape & sexual activity, it seems not a single ‘victim’ bore his child which would have provided DNA proof of some ‘activity’.
Monica Lewinsky was astute enough to keep her dress.
Ah yes, but when that ‘stain’ was analysed, it wasn’t what everybody thought it was. It was soup, apparently. Cock-a-leekie.
LOL!
Excellent!
ROFLMFHO
@Joe Public,
Keeping your dress would only work from about 1995 onward – but who would have actually thought to do that before her, lol…
“On the whole victims are not known to each other”. I fear for their investigative skills : this statement ignores the fact that a thousand tabloid tales have circulated with all the information needed for complainants to collaborate. No need for them to ever meet.
I have no clue as to what Savile ever did in his life but somehow he has changed an entire nation in death.
Men are beasts. It’s unforgivable they don’t follow the same precise sexual behavioural pattern as women, mature at the same time and lose interest as soon as they hit 45, with prior written consent for every single sexual encounter. It’s disgusting that men are drawn towards finding young fertile girls attractive for most of their lives, and SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE!!
We need to stop men finding fertile women attractive so that they form these impure and abusive thoughts. Any ideas folks – maybe involuntary chemical castration for all, but at what age?
Something else struck me about D and E. D was at Duncroft she believes in 1979. She has personally told me that she never saw Savile there, and she has posted that ‘if I ever did see him it wouldn’t be a blow job he’d be getting, and I’d end up at Holloway.’ She made that statement on this blog in the Past Lives series. Oops.
Excellent writing.
This whole thing is the 21st century Salem.
“I saw Goody Howe with the devil!!!”
@JuliaM,
I saw Goody Williams-Thomas with the devil!!!
Anyone else…? lol
Well you would do, wouldn’t you, Silly Billy. She’s married to him.
@Elena ‘Andcart,
Ahh, that explains it…
I noticed yesterday he was still on Twitter stirring up bad feeling and trying to loose people their jobs when they’ve not even done anything wrong…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224573/Jimmy-Savile-scandal-3-doctors-collaborated-abuse-helping-select-child-patients-rape.html
Strange that these outrageous allegations don’t seem to have made it to the report.
Or maybe not, depending on your p.o.v. For the Ickites, it’s clear that doctors are exempt.
I have also just listened to an astonishing phone in on LBC, made way back in November, when a woman called Sarah claimed that she had been raped since she was a few weeks old, that doctors gave her parents drugs so that they could paralyse her muscles, that she had been part of a satanic abuse ring, that she had been pimped out to famous people… the whole appalling panoply. She also revealed she had been helped to remember all this through therapy.
The comments are 90% laudatory and believing.
Re: that Daily Mail article-this sort of sums it all up:
“Following publication of this article, Dr Salmon contacted the PCC to say that although he worked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, he was based at a separate campus to Savile. We are also happy to clarify that Dr Salmon never met or had dealings with Savile.”
In other words our entire article was a load of bollox but we published it anyway.
“In other words our entire article was a load of bollox but we published it anyway.”
I thought the very same thing with the very same words!
Can anyone tell me if there is any more detail of the man who claims he was taken as a young boy into a hotel’s reception area and sexually assaulted?
Have the staff been arrested?
Please someone tell me the attack actually happened in the toilets there and the media are misreporting, otherwise I may have to go and have a lobotomy.
It’s amazing what the authorities can accuse people of when they are no longer around to defend themselves, isn’t it?
So we get an approximate half million pound police report that boils down to ‘we didn’t do any investigating but we did listen to peoples moans’. If this is the state of police investigations for allegations of under age sex then all I have to say is God help the girls of Rochdale and similar places.
In fact it is nothing more than a witch hunt for moneyed people that have Conservative leanings and very similar to ‘pleb gate’.
All the police report does is put vulnerable children in more danger because it shows that those that should investigate don’t.
The Levitt report on the other hand is reasonably well thought out and shows up the police report.
To you, dear Anna, and to your intrepid researchers, I say keep up your vital, lierally vital, research. In the midst of a classic with – hunt your sanity will surely save lives. If only Richard Webster and Jean Bodin could see you now! Salutations!
To you, dear Anna, and to your intrepid researchers, I say keep up your vital, lierally vital, research. In this classic witch-hunt your sanity will surely save lives. If only Richard Webster and Jean Bodin could see you now! Salutations!
Charles Moore has been moved to write….
“Operation Yewtree’s report is not a contribution to the truth, but to the official obsession with being seen to be on the good side.”
“This uninformative and self-righteous report is not making it easier to answer this question, when – as they certainly will – future Saviles arise.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9795920/Treating-every-allegation-against-Jimmy-Savile-as-a-fact-undermines-justice.html
If the Yewtree report says Savile did not visit Duncroft in the 1970′s, where does that leave 62 year old BeBe Roberts claim she was assaulted when aged 15 (mid 1960′s). The report makes no mention of any claims having been dismissed so BeBe didn’t file a complaint that reached the police?
You just beat me to it with Moore’s comment piece. I’ve long considered him to be among the more level-headed and intelligent journalists, and he demonstrates that again here.
Jimmy Savile first came to the school in 1974. He continued to visit until about 1976 or so. He came at the invitation of Margaret Jones and was referred by a mother of one of the girls who worked at Broadmoor, and we assume this is where the mother first met him.
He was not at the school in 1965, which is when Bebe claims he was. I was there then, which she didn’t realize. The minute we all saw this ridiculous interview we knew it was a lie. That was when Anna became involved if you go back and read her Past Lives series. She was also there in 1965. So, no, Bebe didn’t file a complaint, she just yapped to the Mail and made a complete ass of herself.
I believe Barnardo’s formally took over in 1980 – the school closed for a few months during the transfer – and Margaret Jones and the remaining staff took retirement and the headmistress was Sister Consolata from then on. Savile did not come to the school after that time.
I was also there in 1965 and no Bebe (Beryl Scott as she was then) and certainly no Savile. Bebe is just an attention seeker who likes to see her face everywhere (only she knows why)!
Oh there you are, Ellen! Yes, know what you mean about Bebe, and I don’t get it either. It appears to be like an odd sort of Munchausen’s by proxy.
Correction:
If the Yewtree report says Savile did not visit Duncroft till the 1970′s, where does that leave 62 year old BeBe Roberts claim she was assaulted when aged 15 (mid 1960′s). The report makes no mention of any claims having been dismissed so BeBe didn’t file a complaint that reached the police?
Bebe obviously didn’t contact Operation Yewtree either….poor BeBe, I do hope the Mail paid her well for that story.
Now there’s an idea. Why don’t they all sell their stories to The Tabloid?. The Tabloids believe anything, especially if there’s no danger of a Libel Suit. This could run for years.
Bloody hell! Fortunately the Savile/Levitt Report is in a large font and with double spacing and thus a fast read! How on earth did DS Gray and Peter Watt manage to tally the Levitt Report with what they’ve output in their “Giving Victims a Voice – Joint report into sexual allegations made against Jimmy Savile”?!?!
• 1965. A 14-year-old girl met Savile in a nightclub. She later visited his home and was raped. (Classified as rape) – Uhhmmmm… what would a 14 yr-old girl be doing at a nightclub someone of Savile’s age would be at and why the hell would she ‘later visit his home’ (to be subsequently raped) etc., etc… Doesn’t add up…
• 1974. Savile took a 14-year-old schoolgirl for a drive in his car and seriously sexually assaulted her. (Classified as assault by penetration) – Oooops – I didn’t see anything in the Levitt report about this much mediatised (if that’s a word) alleged assault of a Duncroft girl witnessed by a few others while waiting on a park bench. Assuming of course that’s what this is referring to…
Oh – and I wonder about the hotel where Savile allegedly sexually assaulted ‘with penetration’ a 10 yr-old boy – buggery in the hotel reception area!!!
Aside from the alleged sexual assault where Savile is purported to have put his hand up the skirt of a 43 yr-old woman on a train – in 2009 (OMG) – the rest appear to be historic – and none of the claims appear to have been fully substantiated.
Savile’s italicized ‘policy’ on P.65 (Levitt Report) clearly shows he considered himself untouchable (in a most unendearing and boorish way) but that doesn’t make him guilty of the alleged abuse claims per se.
This is all SO over-the-top and it’s really hard to believe that this “Giving Victims a Choice” joint report has been allowed to be published as the result of a serious – what? I’m not sure what this investigation can be called that would be PC in the UK of today!
Alison Levitt has clearly done the best she could, considering what she had to work with, but still errs somewhat on the ‘…If Ms. C/D/G etc. had known/been told at the time that she had such and such a right… a clear pattern would have emerged… he could have been charged… but… ‘ – intimating that if the police had done a better job explaining the privacy rights to the 2007/9 claimants (alleged abuses from three decades prior) interviewed Savile would have been rubber-ducked while still alive.
Well, so much for taking the British media or ‘authorities’ and ‘professionals’ seriously!
On the money Wendi…
Anna, I don’t know how you manage to write so brilliantly so quickly. I hear of newspaper columnists spending days on one item, and though there are some other good blogs written their authors don’t write with the same frequency as you.
Thanks for drawing attention to the Levett report – I hadn’t been aware of it due to the wall to wall coverage of the rubbish tabloid pleasing one. If there is one good thing about today it is that it has sure produced a lot of reading material.
The Levett report sounds thorough and complete – at first. But almost immediately I felt something was not quite right, and I realised that this was in relation to the Savile interview. Only one excerpt is quoted out of a 7 page interview, and the excerpt sounds as though it must be Savile having a laugh as the interview drew to a close. For one thing he would have been accompanied by a lawyer, so much of that little speech had to be non-serious. And if it had been said in seriousness then the reply from the interviewing officer would have been ‘I am arresting you under suspicion of……’
I’d bet good money that somewhere in the 7 pages was a credible and serious reply to the allegations.
BTW, is it just me or has Levett stated incorrect dates as to the tv programs? I thought the ITV ‘Exposure’ was 3rd or 4th October.
Neither do I, but it involves starting at either 9pm or 6am.
Interesting perspective from the comment pages of the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9795920/Treating-every-allegation-against-Jimmy-Savile-as-a-fact-undermines-justice.html
I hope there are more stories like this and also hope much more attention is paid to the Levitt report, which is fair and balanced. The complainants themselves dismissed the encounters as ‘trivial’ and once again lies are told by Duncroft women, i.e. from 1978, “he was sitting with me on the couch, his mother had just died.” Well, no – his mother died in 1973. Miss A behaved in such a silly fashion, I can’t believe she actually sent a letter to Savile inviting him to holiday at her family home to begin with – wtf was she thinking?
Then he shows up several years later, and with her husband’s encouragement and permission she goes alone with Savile to his caravan, whereupon he put the moves on her and she’s shocked, I tell you, shocked!!
The same sort of situation occurs with Miss E, who misguidedly sends him a fan letter, however she shows a lot more gumption, is simply repulsed by his behavior, but sensibly refuses (and continues to refuse) to take matters further, wisely realizing that the man was a low-class slug, beneath her time and contempt. But not all these complainants have that much integrity, so they keep banging on, in hopes of a big pay-day.
As far as the other report, I began reading it and realized fairly soon it was a self-serving double helping of codswallop, from which I was going to learn very little that I don’t already know about the police.
My concern is that, if we start treating everyone as a victim as opposed to a complainant, who deserves to have their complaint investigated but not immediately believed, the societal consequences will be serious, and I’m not sure how real victims will be protected under such circumstances.
What really constitutes abuse? Sexual improprieties by sleazy celebrities or being murdered by your mother because you didn’t learn your lessons quick enough?
mewsical, the problem with the police ‘report’ is that it has toed the left liberal PC line. For some reason it must be shown that white males are the sex predators.
The only reason I can think of foe their doing this is to deflect attention away from the muslim pedophile rings in Rochdale and similar places. More a case of ‘look, he was much worse than them with all the girls he molested’.
More than likely, ivan, but all I have to say about the police report is don’t waste time reading it if you think that’s the case.
I’m starting to think that James Savile has been terribly slandered (and not sending out writs because he’s dead).
I’m not going to believe any of the hundreds coming forward. We’ve had hundreds of people coming forward, but none of them wanted to when he was alive? None of them even wanted to after he was dead and in the ground? They only came forward after other people reported it to the police?
We know why serial killers kill: it is because of the attention they gain. They are often people with very low self-worth who see shooting up their school as a way of giving them worth (and they are right as we are nearly always shown their face repeatedly). Is it possible that the hundreds of people coming forward are just people with problems looking for someone to take an interest in them? Call up the police, get listened to by people who write it all down, and now, you are part of a number on television.
Beyond that, we have a man putting a girl’s hand on his crotch a few days before her 16th birthday? Yes, that’s illegal, yes, it’s sleazy, but as sexual offences go, it’s about as close to crossing the line as you can go. Remembering what my dating of my girlfriend of around 16 was like, I’m struggling to find a moral case for sending a man to prison a few days before, but it being entirely legal a few days after. I can find you half a dozen names of rock stars that are still feted who did a lot more than that.
If Savile had been tried, chances are he would have gotten off with probation if found guilty. This is all about the money.
Well done Anna
Nonce sense indeed, a complete waste of effort and money. We have entered the world of 1984, doubleplusgood feminised policing supporting “victims” at everybody’s judicial expense, using Ingsoc approved crimespeak and doublethink.
By the standards used in these “reports” what would the recent “Dad of the year” ex-president BJ Clinton in the USA be classified as? Hugh Grant is still a sleazy procurer, for all we know Ed Milliband, Twatson or Mad Hatty Harman could be as-yet-unexposed sex criminals if they ever felt up a boy/girlfriend, footballers patting colleagues arses uninvited are sex offenders (and on TV too!). Perhaps the police need to visit their homes at six AM.
Come to think of it, I was a sex offender in my youth, though not as often as I would have liked. It was called growing up in those days and one of the main reasons you went down the youth club.
So what is to happen now? No money can be released by The Trustee without the say so of someone in authority. Will there be a Tribunal to decide who gets how much? How much for whatever part of the anatomy? Is a Boob worth more than a Bum? Who will question these “Victims” to decide if they are telling the truth? Will it be done in Public?
Would it just be easier for The Criminal Injuries Board to pay out? What will The Tax Payers have to say about that? Do The Tax Payers have any right to a say in this?
Don’t worry, Elena, the BBC is in the crosshairs, and they have plenty of money. Our money:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261077/Jimmy-Savile-scandal-Report-reveals-raped-34-women-girls-sexually-assaulted-450.html
So The BBC and The NHS have nothing to lose but The Tax Payer’s money, along with The Criminal Injuries Board. Excepting that The Criminal Injuries Board pay up without a murmur, let alone proof, allegedly. You might think that the “Victims” would find that a better bet, although perhaps not enough. Although even they might balk in the light of The Police “Investigation”, such as it is.
I am not worried as such since I don’t pay Tax of any kind in UK, but how they can hope to blame The BBC is a bit beyond me, especially as no one seems to have proved that any of this actually happened.
Did he smuggle kids into TOTP then, because I) they were not allowed (as per the Jim’ll Fix It footage shown on Charlie Brooker’s 2012 Wipe), and 2) there’s not hide nor hair of any U16′s on any surviving footage – most of which I possess on dvd (incl domestic recordings of wiped shows)
That Daily Heil article is beyond parody.
He “groomed the nation” and “thought about abusing every waking minute” indeed!
Think that if any claims are made there will be much more of an investigation/
I turned 16 in the Seventies, and I wouldn’t like to be specific about when anyone else in my year at school turned 16. It would have been very easy for any of us to be mis-identified as over 16. So I wouldn’t deny the possibility, based on the sort of evidence you have, because there’s no obvious change. What checks the BBC did, that’s another matter.
And even if I recognised an individual, after all this time I couldn’t be sure of either name or birthdate. I can’t comment on how traumatic experiences can be remembered, but I’d be a very imprecise witness of who might be snogging whom and when.
I do get the feeling that some politicians did not grow up, but sprang full-formed from the primordial ooze. Is that was Eton does for you?
It will be interesting to see what the former barrister Kate Lampard’s investigations into Savile’s activities at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary, Broadmoor Hospital and ‘other hospitals and facilities’, ordered by he Dept. of Health comes up with. This was ordered around 17th October and I would assume it would also be made public.
At least now, perhaps victims may be encouraged to come forward with allegations, before the accused has passed away…..
They DID come forward with accusations whilst the accused was alive.
However, they weren’t listened to/were brushed off/ignored/laughed at.
Were they?
Maybe. But maybe that assessment of their claims, or their chances of proving them in court against a live defendant, was the correct one. Viewed through the modern prism of ‘every case must be pursued with the utmost vigour, no matter what!’ I’m sure it’s easy to blame a grand conspiracy of powerful men casting aside vulnerable girls like used Kleenex.
there is nothing in the Levitt or Yewtree Reports that say the claimants “weren’t listened to/were brushed off/ignored/laughed at”
Levitt says the claims could have been handled differently and the police could have ‘built’ a case but that the claimants all say they were dealt with reasonably by the police and they only had good things to say about the officers.
That would indicate that claimants should have been in no fear of coming forward. Why 500 of them remained silent is a mystery.
Well, that’s not what the Levitt report indicates, Gavin. As far as BCD and E, all Duncroft connected, the police did interview them all (CD and E) and they ALL declined to prosecute. So where’s the laugh, brush off, ignore, etc? You can’t bring someone to court when the complainants don’t want any further fuss and decline to prosecute. Or at least C, D and E and also A, the caravan girl. B was someone who said she ‘saw something’ at Duncroft, involving C, but C wanted no more of it and pleasantly said she wanted to smack B in the gob for going to the Dorset police in the first place. B has an ax to grind with Duncroft staff, so she started this whole sorry mess, imo. Yet she has a framed photo of herself with Savile, and also wrote a glowing letter of thanks to Margaret Jones regarding her time at Duncroft. How can you POSSIBLY take any of this seriously at least as it concerns B and C? If this was related to complaints about Duncroft, how come the plods didn’t immediately contact the staff and speak with them? That’s my question. This wasn’t a regular school, this was a Home Office controlled establishment, involved in the administration of the law, as much as the police themselves, really. I would have thought that would have been the first place they would have gone. to establish veracity on the part of these women.
Levett report doesnt say that D was interviewed by the police, contacted , not interviewed
I think the use of the word ‘contacted’ in this case is not descriptive. They didn’t just give her a quick call, “Hello, Ms. D, this is the police regarding the Savile matter. Just thought we’d contact you. Well, thanks for the chat.” I don’t think we can hairsplit about what words are used, and try and apply common sense. At least in this case. I know who D is and I know who E is, but of course not at liberty to reveal that.
‘Nonce Sense’ is of course from Chris Morris’s Brass Eye – I couldn’t see acknowledgement of that anywhere.
Hi – I “am ashamed to be British” this morning having read the blog and subsequent comments, but probably not for the same reasons that you and your followers seem to subscibe to!- and yes, I have done my own ‘independant’ research.
Well, don’t be shy! Do elaborate…
Julia, I’m sure you realize this is the start of the ‘we is right and we want compensation’ cry from the ‘victims’ that can’t prove anything.
Oh, sadly, yes
Who couldn’t see that coming?
Indeed if you read the over 1000 comments section of Charles Moore’s Telegraph piece “Treating-every-allegation-against-Jimmy-Savile-as-a-fact etc etc” they are largely supportive with some questioning him and tooing and froing arguments mostly reasonable but then after 2 days comes a determined effort by a hard core of readers determined to scupper all talk and accusing those and Moore of being “pedo supporter” ” abuse enablers” or “having something to hide”.
To me it seems there was a conspiracy by whatever means to get this Savile matter in the tabloids (not that hard) and once unleashed they will go to any ends to silence dissenters.
Your research may have been ‘independant’ (sic) but it was not very thorough. I don’t suppose for one moment it actually extended to reading the many pages here penned by people who were AT DUNCROFT, knew some of the people involved, and have been watching them collude on social networking sites for the last few years?
Thought not.
The Telegraph article is quite possibly the best yet MSM response to this staggering descent into a Brass Eye sketch which I have lived through for the last few weeks. I note with amusement that the Ickites and others are now using the hashtag #paedogeddon on Twitter, without apparently being aware that it is also an invention of Brass Eye.
But then people have been lighting on Private Eye spoof letters and thinking they were the real thing, despite being signed by ‘Lord Trestletable’.
“The Telegraph article is quite possibly the best yet MSM response to this staggering descent into a Brass Eye sketch which I have lived through for the last few weeks”
Oh, indeed. But sadly, Moore’s the only one. He’s like the Ray Milland character in ‘Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers’ , trying to warn heedless drivers on the freeway. Just check out the rest of the MSM.
I’m only too painfully aware of that Julia.
The way people have flocked to it this morning, as they did to a more measured but controversial Guardian article about paedophilia, shows that we are not a tiny minority however.
The British public, the part of it that can still think for itself, feels very uneasy about current events.
I’m pleasantly surprised at the overall reaction to yesterday’s reports. I haven’t quite worked out why, but people now seem able to publicly question all this palaver and express doubts and concerns without being flamed and pilloried for it.
That would be Kevin McCarthy rather than Ray Milland.
A pedant….me?
You may be wrong in the detail but I have to agree with your point.
Jon T
No one I know is taking this seriously. And most of them haven’t even read this Blog.
Damn! Why did I think it was Milland? I must be thinking about another sci-fi flick…
@Anna Raccoon,
I think you could write a good book about these events. Would be great if you could have your own tv documentary like ITV Exposure, only Exposing this nonsense. I think it does need exposing, as it’s totally dishonest and seems to have turned many into hysterical idiots, divorced from reality…
@ my tuppence worth
That would be super. Anna would do it brilliantly but if she doesn’t I reckon there will at least be someone who does.
Yep, agreed. Said that from the beginning, only a best-seller is going to get both sides of the story out which should be desirable.
Do please consider it, Anna.
Somebody better do it before Kat comes up with a highly embellished version which she’s probably already working on.
I have the entire history of this mess in emails, screen caps and so on. Very tempted to go ahead.
I’d suggest you find an interested UK publisher and go for it Mewsical – you’ve been on this right from the very beginning and have all the material… It’ll be a marathon job to collate everything along with the rubbish that’s come out in the media but I’m sure some of us ex-Duncroft 60s girls would be happy to help out/collaborate in any way if needed!
Regarding his “offending” on the final TOTP in July 2006, speaking to someone who was there in the audience (and was/is a regular on TOTP), JS was doddery (and indeed “old & frail”) throughout, “not quite with it” for the duration, and was guided around by assistants. Knowing JS only by his “image” Paul was struck by how “old” JS had become. Hardly equiped to “offend” unless….
Using that as a yardstick, are we to see penniless Care Home Workers across the c(o)untry have confused or demented old men charged with “sexual abuse” every time they say something “inapporopriate” (a daily occurrence) – after all, it would benefit all (solicitors, journalists, penniless young women) and, in the words of Morrissey, “he was old and he would have died anyway”,
“BBC faces huge payout over Jimmy Savile: Victims ‘hold bosses to blame’ for creating monster who abused EIGHTEEN girls under ten…”
Surely this will produce many more individuals who can now remember being ‘victims’.
Why would the BBC have to make any pay-outs if the ‘abuse’ on their premises can’t be proven and is just claimed/alleged to have happened by the claimant?
Would they seriously be expected to pay up because a woman claims Savile fondled her breasts or placed her hand on his crotch at the BBC 30-something years ago and this had caused her psychological anguish ever since? I don’t think so, or the UK’s really lost its marbles!
It’s a shame British Law doesn’t include the Statutes included in many other countries’ Legal Systems – Statutes of Limitations – they would surely save a lot of time-wasting and police hours…
Of course they will pay up Wendi. They dare not do otherwise in the current climate.
I have got an horrible suspicion that you are right. But then I thought that anyway. Do I care? Not a lot. What is there to care about? Britain is down the pan. This is exactly what history said would happen.
It has been said in the past that those who care deeply about Britain should stay and fight, and only cowards leave. I am not a coward. I just could not bear to stay and watch the decline. Or to live in fear of whatever might happen to old women who were afraid to live alone or walk the streets.
I left twenty years ago. And it has gotten even worse than I thought.
If you have the means, get out. But believe me, you don’t need half the means that you think you do.
It does but there are convenient exceptions, that’s why there’s so much cr*p about how I really did tell someone but they didn’t do anything (unlikely even in the 1970s !) or I was so embarrassed/repressed/scared.
Yep, some people do this, but a commonality in these sort of things (as with Savile) is virtually everyone didn’t mention it for some reason.
I read one claim about someone who’s child was in a Hospice, the child supposedly said that Savile touched them up. Is it really plausible that someone whose child is dying – who is going to be nervously stretched by this – is going to do nothing about it ?
What normally happens is these things are handled through things like legal indemnity insurance. You get two bunches of legal people who don’t really have any interest in curtailing each others expenses.
It is extremely unusual for claims like this to be handled via courts, they are normally cost/benefit calculations for the insurers.
I did get your point. But there are always more ways than one to skin a cat.
No terminally ill child would have been left entirely unattended for long enough to be abused by anybody. Certainly not in a ward full of other very ill children.
Just how stupid do these people think we are? Or do they routinely leave terminally ill children unprotected in extremity?
I just wanted to reiterate the information on Moor’s blog post, that the Clunk Click show was taped at the BBC Theatre, and NOT the White City, which is where some claimants have alleged they were molested by Glitter, Starr, etc.
British Common Law does include the Laches doctrine, I believe. That should shut out claims from the dim and distant past.
Very good article, Anna. I follow your blog- despite being generally at odds with you politically- for your personal knowledge of one aspect of this case, and because you seem to be the ONLY commentator in the entire media who hasn’t jumped onto the same bandwagon/witch hunt.
Has there been ANY attempt to corroborate these 200+ allegations? How about this terminally-ill child allegedly abused in Great Ormond Street hospital? The dates of her stay there will be on record- so too the names of all nurses on duty on her ward- who can be traced via the NMC’s records. A visit from a celebrity would have certainly been recorded in her nursing notes, with observations on any apparent changes in her mood.
“Yew Tree” illustrates the fundamental problem with the police- at least at their most senior levels- ie that they have forgotten their proper function in society, which is
(a) to deter crime, and
(b) to detect the suspected perpetrators of crime and facilitate their trial in a court by obtaining evidence of sufficient quality to withstand cross examination.
Possibly due to their poor success rate regarding the above, they have now switched to more achievable objectives, such as
(c) Creating and maintaining “community cohesion” (their stated reason for arresting a bloke whose employee posted, from his work address, a comment on lack of planning rules enforcement which contained the words “doing what you likey” (rhymes with pikey and is therefore racially offensive against the Romany person said to have got way with contravening said planning laws), and
(d) Creating a sense of “being heard” among those who claim to be victims of abuse (albeit only in specific very high-profile cases, ie not Rochdale).
Objective (c) is basically political, serving the interests of the government, while objective (d) is pseudo-therapeutic. In both cases, the underlying theme is “impression formation”, creating a vague belief that will reassure the public.
Speaking as a therapist myself, I’d like the plods to stick to what they know, and leave the therapy to those trained in it. And they should leave the creation of perceptions of how safe or “cohesive” a society we may or may not be, to the politicians, historians, film directors, and other artists who deal in these things.
There has been no attempt to prove or disprove the allegations Pete, at least the cops have been honest about that. Even basic fact checking has been rejected (eg was Savile in such a place at such a time, was he on his own etc) but how on earth would one go about standing up the allegation that he had penetrative sex with a 10 year old boy in a hotel reception in 1960?
This is what I find difficult to understand!
The cops admit there has been ‘no attempt to prove or disprove the allegations.’ So why is an ‘official’ report published if the findings have not been thoroughly investigated resulting in Savile being labeled by the MSM as the devil incarnate yet again? There seems to be a very serious flaw in the current British system or is this the norm these days? If the latter, god help the Brits and am I glad I don’t live there!
It’s really astonishing to me that this has gone as far as it has, and been so badly mismanaged all along the line in all aspects. No interviewing of the Duncroft staff, who were well-entrenched in the law and order community, therefore should have been regarded as reliable. Duncroft was very well thought of as Retired Probation Officer has noted.
Instead, we have a handful of complainants from the school, who have blatantly colluded on social media, i.e. Karin states she has been in touch with girls from when she was at Duncroft, because her memory is poor about those days. She specifically mentions “Frances” and I know who that is as well. “Frances” has now opened a page on Careleavers called Norman Lodge (which was the hostel for Duncroft, for the girls who were going to work or additional school), so the collusion is still at work.
Wendi and Ellen both joined the Norman Lodge page, because they were both there (I wasn’t). That alone should let “Frances” know that this sort of activity at this time is inappropriate. Or at any time. I’ve had some communication with “Frances.”
Ellen has remained in touch with Ms. Draycott (“Drilly”), who was the supervisor of Norman Lodge, for many years, and she’s already noted that Drilly has not been interviewed by the police, and neither has the inimitable Ruth Cole, the Deputy Head, (with a brother who was a Metro detective for many years – certainly while I was at Duncroft), and I would bet dollars to donuts that they haven’t spoken with Pamela Mason, the attending psychiatrist, or Janet Theobald, who was the staff member who escorted the girls to the BBC and features heavily in the Ward memoir. Those are the interviews I want to read.
“I am quite happy to accept that young children are unlikely to lie about sexual occurrences otherwise how else would they know how to describe what has happened to them? ”
Social Services and Police investigators are well capable of putting words in their mouths ; see for example Justice Eady’s report on Shieldfield.
But most of them weren’t exactly young children, were they. A large number of the girls who kicked this off were a bunch of giggling idiots who had been abused by their own families, which is possibly why some of them didn’t want to bring charges. Abused children are often very reluctant to admit that such things, and worse, had happened in their own homes. But they were certainly au fait with what went on.
Elena ‘andcart – I’m waiting to see when you’re going to tell us about when you ran off to sea!
Ha! She had a sailor in every port…that’s the story I want to hear!
Later, Darling. But I did once go to Portsmouth. I can’t say that I was impressed. The Fleet air Arm are frightful snobs. Just my cup of tea. But anything rather than admit you grew up in Kensil Rise and Neasden. Although Kensil Rise was probably marginally better than Neasden.
Really? Oh gosh. No one has ever asked me that before. Well, I didn’t have a particularly amazing childhood, the best of which was three years spent in a British Legion Children’s Home. But then they sent me back “Home” to more of what they took me away from. But basically only physical and mental abuse from a stepmother. My own mother died of Tuberculosis just after The War, and Daddy wasn’t the whole shilling after Burma. So I staggered on until one day I upped and joined The Wrens as an Air Mechanic. Women were allowed to be Air Mechanics in The Navy in 1957.
I would never have gotten into The Wrens if I hadn’t learned how to speak with a posh accent while I was in the Children’s Home, but I liked sounding posh so I clung to it despite it not going down frightfully well back at “Home” in London.
Most of my time in The Navy was spent around The Lochs of Scotland where I did a lot of sailing in not awfully big boats, so that was the Running Away to Sea bit. A slight exaggeration, I do admit.
But being Fleet Air Arm there weren’t too many Ports. None at all in fact. Fighter Bombers don’t need Ports.
I eventually married a Naval Shipwright. A Yorkshire man.. Not one of my better moves. He spent far too much time at sea, and then came home to order me about, which I had already had too much of. But I was posher than him and probably a bit more bright. And this does not go down well in Yorkshire.
But I did so like Mucky Hunslet. But that’s another story.
I’m impressed Elena! A Wren Air Mechanic back then – must have been quite unusual and it must have been useful for fixing things throughout your life along with any carpentry skills you may have picked up from the bossy Yorkshire man.
The posh accent was always a boon back in the days to get one over some hurdles (although it caused me a lot of aggravation with my ‘peers’ when I first landed in the Juvenile system in my adolescence.)
No, I was merely suggesting that statement (made in the post I think) is incorrect. Young children don’t “lie” as much as are persuaded.
Another peculiarity is Savile’s apparent disinterest in gender. Child abusers who sexually abuse both sexes to this extent are unusual.
aged 8 to 47 so they claim. most unusual.
There’s actually a really simple solution to this.
No claimants can have any money whatsoever if they haven’t verifiably made a complaint within three years of the “assault”. Anyone who has, their claim is considered on its own merits (this is what is actually supposed to happen)
Anyone else can have – therapy, support and so on.
They can, in fact, have anything other than a large cash sum paid to them to do what they want with.
I reckon this will reduce the number of complaints by a factor of at least 20.
I like your thinking Paul. Whether they can actually implement this is another thing altogether. But if there hadn’t been a payday down the line the Duncroft women would NEVER have indulged in this pantomime of theirs. Bebe Roberts had better not try anything, or I’ll be in personal touch with Alison Levitt. I have an ex b in law who is/was a QC and likely knows her. Frankly, I don’t think a one of them deserves anything other than scorn heaped on their lying heads.
Well according to the papers at least one “Sandra” who is still afraid to use her own name, is going to apply for compensation!
Excellent article!
Somehow we have lost sight of the concepts of an allegation being different from a fact, that we are all innocent until proven guilty, and that evidence is required to prove guilt.
I do wonder how the concept of “Compensation”, being it from Saville’s estate, the BBC or anywhere else can possibly arise – for civil matters the Statute of Limitations is surely three years “from the date on which the effect (of the wrong-doing) could reasonably have become apparent”. (There is no limit for criminal acts, except of course Death.)
I made a post recently about laches, the legal doctrine that bars recovery after a lapse of time. I’d say 30-odd years does for that. If the BBC doesn’t launch their own defense against these claims, then the taxpayers certainly should. They don’t pay fees to shell out undeserved, ill-gotten and unjust enrichment to a bunch of old slags who can’t prove anything at all.
Not in sex offences unfortunately.
This will happen over the dead bodies of senior members of the Legal Profession, Paul. I mean, can you appreciate how many spurious claims must be processed just to meet the annual running costs of a crewed yacht?
The Indy has in interesting article which contains stuff I have not heard reported elsewhere, including what Savile is alleged to have said to two WPCs who questioned him over Duncroft in 2009 (??)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/jimmy-savile-a-report-that-reveals-54-years-of-abuse-by-the-man-who-groomed-the-nation-8447146.html
It also includes a statement from Kevin Cook, who alleges Savile assaulted him in his dressing room after he ‘fixed it’ for a bunch of Cubs. Only now there is an added line that another man smacked him round the head afterwards. In the many reports and an interview on Schofield’s programme that I have seen, that has never been mentioned!
OMG.
I have just researched this a bit more – and the man has TWO completely different stories. Google it and see for yourself. Here is the Guardian story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/11/jimmy-savile-report-case-studies
The former boy scout said he was nine when he was forced to give oral sex to an accomplice of Jimmy Savile while the TV host looked on and laughed.
Kevin Cook said he was physically and sexually abused by Savile and another man on a trip to BBC studios to watch the filming of Jim’ll Fix It.
He claimed that while he was being sexually abused by Savile a second man walked into the dressing room but just said “oops” and walked back out. He has now spoken to police.
Cook said: “The man walked into the room and carried on the abuse. He made me do stuff to him and he physically abused me as well, he hit me……. Cook said the second man punched him on the head forcefully and tried to do it again but was stopped by Savile.’
Compare and contrast to other interviews – where he says
He said “Do you want to earn your badge?” and he sat me on a chair in the middle of the room.
‘He put his hand on my knee and then tried to put his fingers up the bottom of my shorts before he unzipped them and touched me. Then he made me put my hand on top of his trousers.
‘There was a knock at the door and someone came in but said “Oops” and left. In hindsight, I think he [Savile] knew what he was doing and stood between me and the door so that no one would see what he was doing.’
So which version is true? Is it possible that he deliberately left out the most serious part of the allegation (forced oral sex and battery) because the ‘other man’ was being investigated?
Somehow I don’t think so. I will admit I was curious about the account his man gave on Schofield’s show when I watched the video, because Schofe rather perceptively I thought asked him if anyone had missed his absence from the set, where there was some kind of ‘party’ going on. He said no, because he had only been gone a ‘couple of minutes’ – even though he had already given a description of a lengthy but somewhat dream-like description of the long walk from the set to the ‘sort of dressing room’. It’s on Youtube somewhere I’m sure.
Even as a cynic, I’m somewhat shocked by this.
Here you go peeps, audio of him revealing why he changed his story. http://audioboo.fm/boos/1150931-kevin-cook-reveals-for-1st-time-i-was-abused-by-jimmy-savile-another-man-at-jim-ll-fix-it-aged-9
@ I love the BBC.
Thanks for the interesting links. I hadn’t heard about the Kevin Cook two tales saga. Am I horrid for thinking he sounds like a man who was chuffed to get his first round of appearance fees and thought he would come back for another payday?
The newspaper article I had to skim read as it seemed to contain every cliche and rumour ever used in this saga, but the bit about the discussion with the police officers comes from the CPS report. Theres a link to it in Anna’s piece above.
No you are not horrid, although i don’t think the motive is money (may be wrong). I think it’s simply that he was praised and made a fuss of for telling his first story, so decided to give them even more.
It’s a well known response in allegations of sex abuse, but normally seen in children who have been led by adults who have made suggestions about what might have happened. And praised for ‘disclosing’ more and more.
Only once the story tips into easily-spotted impossible fantasy does the balloon go up. Quite literally in the famous case of the McMartin daycare Satanic abuse allegations in the US. The kids ended up saying they had been taken out from the nursery in hot air balloons, and flown miles to other cities to be abused.
And speaking of far fetched, we now have the Express reporting a girls’ claims that she was beaten and abused by a hooded Savile in the basement of a hospital while other paedos looked on. Candles and chants, the Full Works.
Glad you mentioned McMartin – I live in California and was very familiar with the case.
Next thing we know it’ll be multiple personalities, mark my words.
Paging Dennis Wheatley and bring on the candles and chants. That’d be good for Act Two of “Duncroft – The Musical.”
@ I love the BBC
Of course, excellent point. I see it now.
Just heard the latest on TV, the young woman, 18 I think, who claimed her bottom was touched by JS at TOTP is saying that it triggered memories of her childhood abuse and seems to think the BBC should pay compensation for this as she claims she has spent thousands on counselling, I always thought it was useless and this seems to prove it. Has the whole world gone mad? I give up.
I only ever had one reaction if someone touch my backside when i was half a grown up. I instinctively lashed out and smacked whoever in the gob. No sweat. Probably due to being beaten as a child. But that is a bit more than I really wanted to say. But I just cannot see these supposed children tolerating this if they didn’t want to. Jimmy Savile didn’t make then who they were, or even who they thought they should be. In fact I could make a victim of him if I really wanted to.
As it happens, it was just the way of the world. And mostly no harm done. There is no purpose to what is happening now.
I have a 4-year-old stepdaughter and she is quite capable of punching the lights out of any one who tried anything like that with her or karate kicking them. She also bites. I think children of today are much more socially advanced than those of our generation. She knows words like vagina and was closely monitoring the pregnancy and birth of her baby sister. When I was 10 and my youngest sister was born, I don’t think I even knew mother was pregnant. Of course I was a boy, maybe girls are different.
After all when I was 4 years old I had never seen a TV or a video, or a movie, or Internet, or anything of mass media other than Music While You Work and Woman’s Hour on the “wireless”. Maria is already learning a second language and wants to go to dance school.
Jonathan Mason
I’m not so sure about the idea of children being in any way less aware back then than now. Its true we knew pretty much nothing about sex but speaking for myself I definitely knew when a certain man who was an acquaintance of my parents made a move on me, and I protested loudly and vigorously. Even as a child I think its a natural thing to have a sense of ‘personal space’ and to just instinctively know when its breached.
Its true that children can be groomed by abusers over a period of time, or in a domestic situation they can be simply cowed, but in my view its impossible to snatch a happy healthy child away for 5 minutes for a quick abuse session without all hell breaking loose. Such a child would have nothing to fear and everything to gain from running to his loving parents or guardians.
My mother introduced me to her new boyfriend by walking him into the bathroom while I was having a bath. I was maybe 4? I don’t think she meant any harm, but I was outraged and remember still that I screamed my head off.
I hasten to add that the boyfriend ultimately moved in with us and was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He never behaved inappropriately towards me and stayed with us for ten years or more.
No, but when I was 4 I had only probably met half a dozen adults close up in my life (family members) had never been to a city, and would have been very respectful towards adults, as I remained at least until late adolescence. Like George Orwell (“Such, Such Were The Joys”), I believed that all adults were in league and would automatically report any misbehavior on the part of a child to the relevant authorities. Maria, my step daughter, on the other hand has little fear of adults and will sometimes call out cheeky remarks to strangers. Today an older man was passing our balcony and she called out “Hola, viejo” which means “Hello, old man”. It would have been impossible for me to act in such a way 50+ years ago.
Yer, well. Good for her. Although she does seem a trifle young to be so aggressive. I was twenty years old before I ever lamped anyone. Four years old is a bit too young to be biting lumps out of people, in my opinion. Could you get her to hang back for a minute or ten?
But then if you were listening to Music While You Work then you must be as old as I am, so more power to your elbow for whatever. Sheesh, I am seriously impressed.
PS. Send Maria to Dancing Boarding School as soon as possible.
PPS. No one in their right mind ever listens to Woman’s Hour. You have been seriously undermined. But not that much. Stick in there. I blame your mother.
Fortunately she is not aggressive at school, although she once punched a boy. I do think a lot of it comes from copying TV movies, cartoons, etc., because when I was 4 years old I would never have seen any kind of act of violence or had any concept of violence.
No, Music While You Work originated on the BBC Light Programme during World War II, but it continued until 1967. I would have heard it in the mid 1950′s when my mother was doing housework. Funnily enough I still listen a great deal to big band music and jazz from the swing era, so it may have been more of an influence than you would think, at least in terms of recognizing the classic songs and tunes from the film and stage musicals of the 30′s and 40′s.
You and me both Carol!
anna – have you ever found yourself having any involvement with the order of the eastern star?
as for the term “nonce sense” chris morris beat you to it by about 12 years.
Eastern Star requires that you be related to a Freemason. What’s up with this Freemasonry thing? My Dad was a Mason and would no more have tolerated child abuse than he would have flown to the moon.
It seems the comrades don’t trust plod either, where’s the solidarity?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261220/Socialist-Workers-Party-held-sharia-style-court-exonerate-party-member-accused-raping-female-comrade.html
I look forward to twatson’s and Mad Hatty’s belligerant response.
Satanic ring? OMG the ‘journalists’ have been reading Icke’s again
“I spoke to Miss Draycott (Drilly to most of us old girls) who worked at Norman Lodge (the hostel at Duncroft) today. She is 81 and has not been interviewed by the Police. She has recently spoken to Ruth Cole who was the deputy head of Duncroft who was also not interviewed! Drilly said that Jimmy Savile never went to Norman Lodge which would indicate that Witness G was a liar -when I was a\t Norman Lodge we had no contact with Duncroft.”
I still don’t understand why the police didn’t speak to the remaining staff, except for behaving in a boorish fashion with Margaret Jones. I’m going to have to assume they are afraid of the inconvenient truth. Did Drilly know if the plods had spoken with P Mason?
What surprises me Mewsical is that so far as I know they did not interview Theo who drove the Duncroft girls to the BBC and would have accompanied them in the studio!
To answer an earlier question – we were allowed to take boyfriends into Norman Lodge but we were chaperoned by staff at all times and Drilly categorically stated that Jimmy Savile never went to Norman Lodge.
Ooops! The nesting comments have gone haywire – that last was a reply to Elena ‘andcart at 19:39
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No… It’s SuperTWaT!
Tosspot is taking on the world now… via the redtops of course!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/investigator-who-nailed-jimmy-savile-1532115
Crikey! A commenter there says Savile must have sexually assaulted 20,000 people. Now, isn’t that a bit hysterical?
Ah Ha! Just what I have been waiting for. 20,000 sexual assaults over 50 years is 400 a year. More than one a day. Forget the Marathons and the TV Shows and all that money raising. Jimmy Savile was Superman.
And Nope, I don’t believe it.
@ dick puddlecote @
Not so much hysterical, as statistical, and it cuts both ways. I first saw this sort of “argument” expressed here, as a questioning of the Allegation’s veracity, but this guy calculated more like 40,000:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/01/jimmy-savile-affair-media-celebrities?commentpage=2
“Savile was involved in the pop music / dance hall business from the mid fifties .If he fondled three willing girls a night thats a thousand a year.
By 1966 when he really became famous he might have fondled 10,000 .From then on he probably fondled 2000 a year until 1986 thats another twenty thousand..From then on he probably slowed down but its not impossible he fondled perhaps forty thousand willing girls .Even if this figure is cut by half its still a huge number. Against such figures the 500 accusations recently, particularly when there is money to be made is not really so many..”
I imagine this condemnatory escalation is to try and counter that same argument. There are always two sides to this of course……..
I hope for a moment that it was Mark Lawson who had come out with that nonsense, but alas it’s “only” someone adding a comment. They assume “2000 a year until 1986″ just so they can then halve it to appear cautious, but 1,000 is still three a day. Really? I guess the a lot depends on the definition of “fondling” – that could could cover everything from a stray hand brushing against a backside as if “by accident” and upwards.
@ I guess the a lot depends on the definition of “fondling” @
The CPS seem to have fondling down as “sexual assault” just now.
That commentator was actually trying to *defend* Savile btw……
If nothing else he illustrates the potential Savile had, if he really was “spending his every waking moment” thinking about illegal nookie.
On the other hand, it’s a well-known “fact” that men think about sex every four seconds, so even those numbers seem conservative…..
I am struggling to understand and get my head around all of this, I have so many unanswered questions. What I don’t understand is why it took 30/40 years for these “victims” to come forward, surely they would of known that if they spoke up earlier it could have prevented others from being abused. Then you have the 19 year old who had her bum felt on air by JS and has been traumatised by the experience ever since and has ruined her life. Is it wrong for me to be screaming at the television shouting ‘come on’. How many women have had a guy grab you arse in a club, you deal with it there and then, in my experience I slap them across the face and tell them to f’ off…was I traumatised by it…no, would I remember joe public who did that 20/30 years later…no would I report it 20/30 years later…of course not. Guaranteed if it was Joe Blogg who had grabbed a bit of bum, would they of remembered…questionable, but would they know who to report 20/30 years later…of course not. I am ashamed to be British with the way society has turned…that we now find it acceptable to have atrial by media, to hang people at the gallos without being charged, without a trial, without any substantiation and without any evidence. Is this really what this country is coming to.
Someone please tell me why Operation Yewtree found it acceptable to arrest Jim Davidson as he arrived at Heathrow? Was there any need for that, is he a serial killer…no, is he a danger to the public…no, so why humiliate him in that way? WHy was Max Clifford and DLT arrested in dawn raids, what did they expect to find 30/40 years after the alleged offence? And why was Freddie Starr Arrested? For attempting to grope a woman, I call her a woman because she was clearly not a child when the alleged incident happened. From what I have read on line is that she was born 25th March 1958, the episode that FS appeared on was aired on the 20th April 1974 and filmed 2 days prior, you may ask how do I know that, well if you look up IMBD it states that for a 5/6 week period Olivia Newton John appeared on the show for a song for Europe where people had the chance to phone in and vote for their favourite song. It was only after this that JS had other guests on his show, Gary Glitter filmed his around the 16th March 1974, the following week I believe it was Pans people which then takes us into April, from other forums they have stated that this was the date he appeared and along with other supporting evidence this seems to be the case.
Also, KW has changed her story on my last count 4/5 times from watching her various interviews in date order this is what I have come up with, now this is only my opinion but see for yourself from the links that follow;
1. Panorama 2011 KW states that she would never go near a man like that as he stank of alcohol and he reminded her of her Step father.
2. ITV documentary KW states that freddie Starr attempted to put his hand her her jumper,
3. Daily Mail reports that FS tried to grope KW whilst GG was have sex with an underaged girl, and JS had a girl sat on his knee with his hand up her skirt.
4. KW states that it was on a separate occasion when FS tried to grope her, states that he has over reacted.
5. Interview with the Shropshire Times, she allegedly went to Duncroft in 72 when she ws 12/13 but according to her book she never left the care home prior to Duncroft until she was 15.
6. FS states in an interview that he has never drank.
7. KW gives interview to Daily Mail and says FS stank of collogne and pounced on her, grabbed a handful of arse and attempted to touch her boob.
From what I have found is a piece she wrote on Fanstory in 2009, it’s a synopsis of her books, but what I find more interesting is that there is no mention of abuse at Duncroft although she states all the other abuse throughout her life. She also states that she was convicted of fraud and deception for alledging to stealing £50,000 from 4 banks and was surprised when she was given a year in jail as it was her first offence!!! Some of the points I wish not to divulge on here but the link will enable you to read for yourself.
http://www.fanstory.com/displaystory.jsp?hd=1&id=286530&userid=304314&tf=0
Then in 2010 there is a review to her online chapters which she has responded to, this one is dated June 2010, relating to chapter 1 of Keri-Karin, subsequent chapters had not been wrote at this time but she stated the following, link provided….
http://www.fanstory.com/viewcomments.jsp?storyid=356109&page=2
reply by the author on 25-Jun-2010
Thank you so much, Brooke. I’m glad you didn’t feel I botched the job. Subsequent chapters are going to be more difficult because I was drugged and the memories are horribly vague. ~Fortunately, I have reconnected with Frances and others who were at Duncroft with me. Between us, we are piecing together our memories of events. It is actually much worse than I recall!
Hugs
Kat
Once again so many unanswered questions and in the meantime like Esther Rantzen stated in her article…even if anyone who has been arrested under operation Yewtree are found to be not guilty or no further action from the police…the damage has been done.
You have reputations ruined, many of the accused have had to seek help for their mental state, accused, having social services involved and all being told they are not allowed to be unsupervised around any children. But most importantly have been publically humiliated by dawn raids, media persecution and their names tarred with being a peodophile.
Wellwisher
There are many of us who are struggling to believe that we aren’t living in some weird parallel universe. As you say, the country seems to have gone mad. Thanks for the links, I hadn’t seen or read those previously.
More confirmation of collusion!
I would dearly love to be working for whichever firm of lawyers is instructed to defend these claims. It must be hilarious.
And little Frances has gone ahead and opened the Norman Lodge page on Careleavers as of this writing! Tsk, tsk.
Well Witness G was at Norman Lodge so they have to try and bring that in now!
Thanks for the links. I was not previously aware of the adult history of Keri/Karin, but the whole thing severely undermines her general credibility as a witness, particularly the history of a prison sentence for fraud.
One point of interest is that she says she had difficulty remembering Duncroft because she was drugged while she was there. I think she has mentioned Lithium, a metallic salt used to stabilize people who have severe mood swings, which, as far as I know, is not associated with long term memory loss. If she had had ECT, then that might be another matter.
The other point to note is that in her memoir of Duncroft–apparently reconstructed with help from others–there is almost no mention of what medications she was receiving or how they were administered. For example did she have to get medication daily from staff or was she given a bottle to take herself? And yet there are details about how many cigarettes were earned and smoked to an almost obsessional degree as the cigarette transactions are reported on almost every page.
For example, one might have expected in the memoir some discussion of how the girls had to line up daily for medications, and whether they used strategies to avoid taking the drugs, like pretending to swallow and spitting out later, or whether the pills were administered crushed or were the medications in liquid form. Were injections given if the girls refused medications? Did any girls secrete their medication and then take it later in overdoses for suicide attempts or attention?
NONE OF THIS is discussed as far as I remember from my reading of the book and in her mentions of appointments with the psychiatrist there is no mention of discussion of medications or why she needed to take them.
Yes that synopsis of her life was quite a revelation, at least to me. I had already become aware of the fact that she had 7 children and that some of these had been taken off her, etc. But seeing it laid out like that is pretty horrendous. So she either did abuse some or all of the children or she threatened to do so. Nice.
She seems to have had lots of counselling about her own alleged abuse suffered. Bet JS’s name never featured.
And my my, what double standards she has. She was spitting feathers on her twitter feed some months ago because having driven into the back of another car the other driver was making a whiplash claim.
Lithium salts occur naturally. Hippocrates used to treat mental patients in his day by having them come to the natural springs and pools near his residence, which are still there today. They would dunk themselves in the water and calm right down. Tests have revealed a high level of lithium salts in the water. There’s nothing drug-like about its effects at all.
The only drugs given to the girls were those prescribed by a doctor or psychiatrist (same thing). We had a girl there in our day who was a diabetic and needed daily insulin shots, which she administered herself, while supervised by Bridie. Otherwise, Bridie had a surgery in the mornings and in the early evenings (she used to walk down the corridor hollering “Surgereeee”) and you’d go see her, be handed your pills and a glass of water, and you took them while she watched you. Miss B has said that some of the girls would ‘cheek’ their meds, and spit them out once they were out of Bridie’s sight.
Sorry Mewsical I have to correct you on that. Lithium is an incredibly potent medication which is used to manage depression and prevent mania. It’s highly toxic so patients need regular blood tests to check their levels. And because its bloody good at stopping the highs of manic illness, lots of people are uncompliant with it, quite understandably, patients with bipolar disorder usually prefer feeling high than low. Although mania is equally debilitating.
None of this has any beating on whether the person in question is talking a load of old bollocks tho!
Lithium is no good at treating depression, and it is naturally-occurring. Usually it’s prescribed along with a regimen of other drugs. As you say, patients tend to not comply with the lithium, as it spoils the manic high. Ask Connie Francis about that!
“WHy was Max Clifford and DLT arrested in dawn raids, what did they expect to find 30/40 years after the alleged offence?”
I imagine they would be looking to take computer hard drives and look for evidence of e-mails or messages that might somehow involve discussion of sexual topics, evidence of viewing child pornography, etc. Also for evidence of other members of the pedophile fraternity, if such a thing exists.
Jonathan Mason
Max Clifford and DLT were not arrested for any offences against children so how would they expect to find child pornography on their computers…and do you really believe that there is this so called “peodophile ring” this is just someing that MWT has planted into the media. A similar thing happened in Portugal I believe Casa del Pi where the seed was planted in the media and they went looking for it. Because the seed has been planted the public are looking for it to be true and is why whoever is arrested under Yewtree are automatically assumed to be guilty of pedophilia, when in fact it has nothing to do with children. This is the danger here with having all this so publically played out through the media.
No, I don’t think there is a pedophile ring, but they could still have been looking for Internet evidence of some kind. Presumably the police must have arrived armed with search warrants and one would want to know what the terms of the search warrants were. It is hard to believe that they really arrested Travis for jiggling breasts at the BBC 30 years ago, so maybe this was just a fig leaf pretext for searching for interrogating him and searching for evidence of other sexual crimes that they suspected, but had no firm evidence of.
@ Jonathan Mason and Wellswisher.
Joanthan has it pretty much correct. Its part of the standard operating procedure in any sex offence investigation to look to see whether there is any evidence of more than ordinary interest in sexual stuff. The theory goes that offenders almost never change their nasty habits !
Wonder if Merion Jones saw Karen needed ‘reminding’ by others of her time at Duncroft?
I see a recent message on Voy is from someone who says they sat next to a sweaty Gary Glitter at the Clunk Click recording, wonder if she went to the dressing room?
Something I could not understand was how 8-10 Duncroft plus others stood around while in full view Savile gropped a girl and behind a curtain another celebrity had sex with a Duncroft girl, surely that would have silenced the room? But reading the statements made to the police about the TV room it would seem at the time the girls found it all a laugh and a giggle?
The girls didn’t find it a laugh or a giggle, because it didn’t happen. That’s extremely easy to figure out.
Not just media insanity, insanity at all levels! The Russians have put together a little collection of politicians’ ‘insanity’ in the following video – but it doesn’t include footage of members of the US Congress giving a long, standing (shameless) ovation to Bibi Netanyahu last year unfortunately:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/4CYqw4s6XF8?rel=0
Re the Sunday Express “Saville the Satanist” allegations- the source for this is Valerie Sinason, who is a self-proclaimed “expert” on SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse). He involvement in this issue goes back to the SRA panic of the 1990s, when many children were removed from their parents on what later turned out to be complete fantasy. The Orkney case was the most notorious, although of course far worse cases happened in America. Dr Sinason features prominently in this http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/11/carole-myers-satanic-child-abuse
horrific story. The discrediting of the 1990s allegations has clearly not shaken Sinason’s self-belief in any way.
The SRA panic resulted from an unholy alliance of two similar groups, both “educated” through the absorption of dogma supported by anecdotal, unevaluated “evidence”, both having a rigid beleif system that automatically discounts all contrary evidence or even personal experience. These groups are (a) the social work profession, and (b) fundamentalist Christians. Put these two factors together and you have the necessary ingredients for a witch hunt, ie power + unshakeable belief.
Pete I have not had a chance to read the Express Satanism article – I am certainly not going to actually buy a copy – in what way is Sinason involved?
And WHY is anyone still paying the nutter any attention?
Anna, the argument seems to be that although the complaints were pathetic, and even the complainers did not want to take it further, if they had only known that there were other people out there making equally pathetic complaints, the results might have been different.
I’m getting quite the old cynic aren’t I?
But the media have swallowed it unquestioningly. How could it be otherwise? You have said yourself that journo friends are unwilling to expose the truth about the Duncroft affair.
The police seem to be in a position now where they feel obliged, or have been instructed, to treat every allegation of sexual impropriety with a minor – or indeed even with an adult if a celebrity is involved – as factual.
I have done some of my own research into one or two of the non-Duncroft complainers, as far as I am able from a laptop, and the very first person I looked at it any detail changed his story radically inside a matter of weeks, from an assault by Savile to an assault by Savile and a BBC employee – who he originally claimed was blameless.
This crapola is doing no-one any good, absolutely no-one – except lawyers and police on overtime.
Just a small point. The Yewtree report claims on p 12 that Duncroft was under the supervision of the Home Office in the 1970s. Not true, it ceased to be after the implementation of the CYPA 1969. When I did a placement there in 1977, it was managed by Barnado’s and the Head I think was a nun. Barnado’s I remember had a very active and hands on approach to managing the school, and I can remember Gillian Wagner the Chairman visiting several times. The idea that it was some kind of aberrant place is totally untrue, it was highly regarded and considered to be well managed. I never heard a scrap of any discussion about Mr Saville and it would be surprising if he was allowed unsupervised contact by Barnado’s. This is not to say that I support the general tenor that all these allegations are rubbish, for example I have read about professionals eg an OT student at Stoke Mandeville making allegations. It is really difficult to subject historic allegations to forensic analysis, and many of the memories of alleged victims will be befuddled by other factors.
I certainly don’t think that all the allegations against Savile are rubbish and I’m not sure too many others here do either. It’s just that the ones we are able to test in some very basic ways (were they there? was Savile there? have they colluded with others? have they changed their story?) have turned to dust in our hands. That’s disconcerting.
And the police deciding they don’t need to look at the allegations to make any kind of assessment whether they are true or not doesn’t look like any kind of justice or rule of law. Nor does it serve the interests of the real abused.
Quite so. Media reports have focused on relatively trivial accusations by some women with a dodgy background, yet Savile is accused of 31 rapes, making him possibly Britain’s most prolific serial rapist. And now the police have kind of convicted him post-mortem without any airing of the evidence either in a judicial hearing or in a public report.
The report Giving Voice To The Victims doesn’t do that at all. Hundreds of victims are buried in Excel charts and not heard from at all. At this stage of the game there is no shame in being named, although I can understand that women who are wives and mothers and grandmothers might be reluctant to have their families know about what happened 30 or 40 years ago, but if Savile had groped me, I want want my name right there in the report precisely because it would boost the credibility of the report to have it backed by my good name. One wonders whether the plaintiffs were even asked if they were willing to be named.
@ RPO – Sister Consolata came on board in 1980, when Margaret Jones and the rest of the staff retired. Barnardo’s was involved from about 1977 on, I think you’re right there, and before that it was MIND and the NAMH who had oversight.
“Last year (2001), Jeremy Laurance, the health editor of the Independent, was alerted by a well known psychotherapist to the existence of pictures on the internet of a man eating a dismembered baby. The paper ran the story. A week later it apologised. “Let’s not beat about the bush. I’ve been had,” said Laurance. It turned out that the photographs were a hoax by a Chinese performance artist. And the gullible psychotherapist? Valerie Sinason, of course.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3574493/The-people-who-believe-that-Satanists-might-eat-your-baby.html
Can’t find the original articles but this is apparently part of what Jeremy Lauramce wrote and his subsequent apology….
“The Metropolitan Police have provided an officer Mr Driscoll to work with Dr Sinason’s clinic for half a day a month to investigate claims of abuse made by patients…”
“The existence of the websites was revealed by two patients at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies based in London’s Harley Street and run by Valerie Sinason, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of adult survivors of child abuse.”
“Dr Sinason said: “I heard accounts of the websites from two different survivors of abuse who didn’t know each other. It is a further sign that if you want to do anything bizarre you will get away with it because no one will believe it or speak about it.” ”
http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/indyhoax.htm
And you are one hell of a kind Lady. You picked up on a passing post of mine which wasn’t even directed at you, and then remedied the possible future problem. I now have a Mac that anyone would die for. I mean seriously die for. Although I have absolutely no intention of dying soon because I am only 73.
And felling trees is only an art anyway. Pure Mathematics. Such a beautiful thing. I do everything by mathematical equations, and have done since I was knee high. I never go anywhere without a Tape Measure. But mine own eye is good.
Logs are only Cords of Wood. Three Metres by One Metre by One Metre. You can see it if you really look. And beautiful they are. Life’s blood around here.
And you can see that Jimmy Savile never had to the time or means by which to do all of what he is now being accused of. Some, perhaps, but if you can’t trust some of it then you can’t trust any of it. This is The Law. So I am not having any of it. And I would rather be wrong than accuse unjustly. Just think Mathematics.
Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintainance is a good read. If anyone wants to understand the total lack of understanding. Absolutely nothing to do with Motor Bikes beyond ignoring the obvious.
Now, that was one of my favorite books!
I was just thinking the same thing about Savile, and ranting about it telephonically. How could he find the TIME to do all this molesting/groping/etc.??!
Btw, good measuring trick, if you have an American dollar bill it measures exactly 6 inches. Contractors here use them all the time to measure out jobs. If you don’t have one, I’ll be happy to send you one! It’s about all American money is good for these days, anyway!
Hugo Rifkind says in his article in The Times today “How did 450 accusers morph into only (only!) 209 criminal offences?”
Hugo Rifkind says in his article in today’s Times “How did 450 accusers morph into only (only!) 209 criminal offences?”
@ ellen coulson
He isn’t the first to ask that question, and I hope he won’t be the last….
I sense a sea-change, but in the meanwhile we endure such nonsense as awarding Savile a posthumous knighthood so he can be stripped of it. So, now we go to the Queen to ask permission to do that??
Any chance of posting part of that article here? It is behind a pay wall.
Here’s the Hugo Rifkind piece from the Times:
Apparently it’s impossible for the State to strip you of your knighthood once you’ve died because, at the point of death, you technically lose it anyway. Bet Fred Goodwin wishes he’d thought of that little ruse. Maybe he could have faked it. Remember John Darwin, who pretended to drown so he could claim his life insurance? Banking crisis meets Canoe Man. There’s a movie in that.
In an attempt to get around this problem, anyway, Whitehall mandarins are said to be considering awarding a new, posthumous knighthood to Sir Jimmy Savile in order to be able to strip him of it. That sounds like time and money well spent, eh? There’s something primal about it, like we want to dig him up and restore him to his former glory just so we can cast him down in exactly the manner we didn’t when we had the chance. It’s not enough for him to be dead and gone. It’s like he needs to be expunged. Sir Humphrey’ll Fix It.
Scotland Yard’s final report into Savile, released at the end of last week, is an astonishing thing, alleging 214 crimes over more than half a century. Coming along with a review by the Crown Prosecution Service into why he wasn’t prosecuted — in Surrey and Sussex in 2009, when it seems he could have been — all this has the look, and feel, of a desire for closure.
We’ve binged on Savile, guzzled the outrage until we could stomach no more. Enough horror in BBC dressing rooms and children’s homes; in hospitals and mysterious apartments attached to hospitals. For a while we could talk of nothing else; now there’s a palpable desire to talk about anything else. Before we do, though, I reckon we’re due an audit. Before all this goes in a box in the attic, let’s stare at it one last time and think what we’ve learnt.
First, we’ve learnt that the tricky terrain of sexuality, particularly as it pertains to adults having sex with children, has changed immeasurably in thirty years. Don’t be confused by all those who point to the contemporary abuses in Rotherham and Rochdale and argue that this sort of thing still goes on. They’re right, but they’re badly missing the point. Savile was not a figure on the fringes of society in a world of minicabs and kebab shops. He was the embodiment of light entertainment, having sex with as many children and teenagers as he could at a time when having sex with teenagers was considered a roguish, slightly naughty thing to do.
Part of the rage against Savile, I’m sure, has been an inward one, driven by our uncomfortable knowledge that, in some distracted part of our minds, we knew this stuff already. As recently as 1989, the late John Peel was so relaxed about sex with the underage that he told a funny anecdote in a newspaper interview about accidentally receiving fellatio from a 13-year-old. Nobody alerted the police or appeared even to notice. The list of arrests in Operation Yewtree — the Met’s investigation born out of the Savile allegations — is starting to sound like a roll call of a panel on Blankety Blank.
Today Savile seems less like a lone predator and more like a murderer on a battlefield, or an alcoholic on New Year’s Eve. More than once I’ve found myself thinking about Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, where a 2004 criminal case found the sexual abuse of minors to be beyond endemic and something closer to a tradition. There a population of about 40 British subjects found themselves — unexpectedly, and to their own bafflement — answering to British law. Putting seven of them on trial (six were jailed) meant effectively putting them all on trial.
Today it seems as though 1970s light entertainment was Pitcairn Island. Where does a vile culture end and vile people begin? What better cover for a monster than monstering being all the rage?
If Savile couldn’t happen now, though, that’s not all about contemporary sexual enlightenment. It’s also about deference and what it means for it to die. Some foul paparazzi would snap a modern-day Savile arriving somewhere with two 14-year-olds and leaving with another two. He’d be on the blogs and the celebrity websites, certainly dubbed a paedo down in the comments. Something happened in the latter half of the 20th century (when media was mass, like it still is, but also centralised, like it now isn’t) that gave public figures a demigod stature they will not enjoy again. With politicians and royalty, we’re inclined to mourn its loss. Savile shows why we shouldn’t.
It would be wrong, though, to see all this as a ringing endorsement of the here and now. Sure, the 1970s and 1980s look pretty bad as a result of Sir Jim. But via the travails of poor Lord McAlpine we have also learnt that Britain has a shrill and hysterical appetite for a witchhunt.
This has become a country that keeps a mob on standby, and in which truth and consensus pass themselves off as the same thing. It’s ugly and it’s frightening. Today I’m wondering about the 450 people who approached the police with accusations against Savile and how they’ve managed to morph into only (only!) 209 criminal offences. What has happened to all of the others? And why am I still a little afraid to suggest what surely must be true, which is that some of them — even if only a handful — must have made it up?
It’s a strange sort of fear. I made the same suggestion a few months ago, also nervously, in response to a question, while giving a talk in East London about the limits of satire. Much to my surprise, the audience cheered. Gratifying as this was, I’ve worried about that cheer ever since. Partly it felt like a reward for my perceived brave transgression, but why should it be brave and transgressive to admit to thinking something that almost everybody else thinks, too?
I worry, though, at the extent to which the audience wanted to believe that people were making these things up, as indeed I did. I was similarly alarmed at my own tinge of relief and schadenfreude when the testimony of Steven Messham, Lord McAlpine’s accuser, was shown to be unreliable. This, after all, is what abuse victims always face: disbelief, scepticism and a desire that they just go away.
The Savile affair has been one of those times when we veer from believing nothing to believing everything. Probably that’s better, but it’s no place to rest. I understand the desire to declare Savile a bogeyman, wipe him from history and move on. But we did celebrate Savile and others, and not in complete ignorance of the sorts of men they were. Today that stirs angers in us that we still barely understand and still struggle to discuss rationally. So now we’ve all calmed down a bit, let’s try.
Thanks mewsical but I’m not sure I’d have preferred Hugo had stayed behind his firewall…….
That illogical tosh illustrates how the media will find it impossible to get this story straight – so embedded are they within the belly of the beast. His Pitcairn Island irrelevance seems to be suggesting that back in the Seventies we all thought kiddy-sex was just dandy. He clearly never read about what happened to Jerry Lee lewis in the UK twenty years before, when the man with the great balls of fire tried to bring his US-legal wife over here. History is bunk to The Times nespaper, just like proper journalism everywhere else in the press just now.
The press in both London and Memphis, TN, soon discovered the truth about Myra’s age and the date of their wedding, and the response was immediate: The British press began labeling Lewis a “cradle robber” and a “baby snatcher”
http://oldies.about.com/od/rockabill1/f/jerryleemyra.htm
Almost right from the very start of this, my OH and I were in full agreement – it stinks! True or not, it all seemed a bit too convenient; then it started dragging others in, like a black hole for aging stars – once in, none could escape. While I have not pursued it with the same zeal as yourselves (there is little in it that affects me in any way or another historically, though it could point to the way things could become), I am appalled that so many careers and reputations have been ruined on basically unverifiable evidence: a good case in point is Stuart Hall; whether he is innocent or not, the cases made against him cannot have any objective proof offered – it is just his word against hers, and who would believe a paedophile, huh? All the presenters are now guilty until they can prove themselves, fully and beyond all reasonable doubt, innocent – and if they do achieve this impossible task… well, there is no smoke without fire, eh?
@ historically, though it could point to the way things could become @
Historically, it seems to be that way already, if you are unlucky enough.
http://www.insidetime.org/articleview.asp?a=802&c=guilty_until_proven_innocent__historic_cases&cat=Sex%20Offenders
The comments are in many ways more meaningful than the article.
Just read the cited article and now understand why the Yewtree Report is set out the way it is since (should anyone not have read the article)
‘In cases of a sexual nature… In the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, it was decreed that the evidence of an adult victim was sufficient to convict. Corroboration of this evidence was no longer necessary, so judges could no longer warn the jury of the dangers of convicting a defendant on a single victim’s testimony alone. The Criminal Justice Act 1988 had previously decreed similar in respect of minors.’
The comments posted below the article prove how cruel the results of the above can be and obviously a deceased ‘accused’ can be totally pilloried by all and sundry!
This discussion reminds me of a case I knew about more than 20 years ago when I was working at a hospital in Bermuda.
A general practitioner doctor called (I think) Paul de la Chevotiere who had also been a member of the Bermuda parliament and a government minister was accused by his daughter, now in her 30′s of sexually abusing and raping her when she was 12.
A woman I knew, also married and in her 30s was a member of the jury.
The verdict was a hung jury. I spoke to the juror afterwards and said “You didn’t believe the woman’s testimony, then?”
She said, ” Yes we DID believe her, but we didn’t think the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.”
Since there was no other evidence other than her testimony this seemed contradictory to me, but perhaps showed that juries are very uncomfortable with these kind of cases considering the immense harm a conviction could do to an innocent person (or a guilty one, of course).
Not sure there is much that one can take away from this anecdote, except that maybe juries are not as daft as they sometimes seem.
Couple of links here. 1. An obituary that makes no mention whatever of the case. 2. A court document regarding the attorney general’s appeal against the quashing of the indictment.
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20120209/NEWS01/702099917/-1
http://www.justice.bm/files/18/files/Attorney%20General%20v%20De%20La%20Chevotiere%20%281991%29%20Criminal%20Appeal%20No_%2011%20of%201990.pdf
“Mum-of-two Caroline, from Clarkston, Glasgow, who is paralysed from the chest down after a car accident when she was a toddler, told how Savile thrust his tongue down her throat on a visit to Stoke Mandeville in 1971.”
(from the Daily Record)
Is this even physically possible?
It sounds like a quasi-quote: Caroline could have said something like that, which turned into that line. I don’t think it can be literally true but I’ve seen that sort of phrase used in fiction as a somewhat hyperbolic description of passionate kissing. So the phrasing doesn’t decide me one way or another.
As I remember it, there was an awareness that under age sex was illegal and also that the police used discretion in prosecuting. My own brother received a police caution for having sex with his under age girlfriend, a fact that had come out only because she became pregnant (by another, later bf) and her parents called the police. Questioning brought out her full sexual history and she was pressed to give names and state ages.
The police made it clear to my father that they had only got involved at all because her parents were outraged and insisted they take action. My brother was only two years older than her so no-one actually thought any crime had been committed, least of all the police.
My own mother had only one rule about boyfriends – they could not be much older than me. Because, as she put it, such a relationship was both potentially illegal and sleazy. We knew there were rules but we also knew they were very widely broken.
I clearly remember when the Radio 1 Road Show, which had just started, came to the nearby market town. About a dozen girls from my school bunked off to attend. Most, but by no means all, were sixth formers.
One particular girl came back into school to find she was under threat of suspension and in Big Trouble with her parents. It was worth it she claimed because she had got to snog and a’ bit more’ with a famous DJ. I thought she was a silly tart but most of the school thought the whole thing was impossibly glamorous and they envied her.
So while I agree that we all knew it was illegal to have sex under age, and considered it grubby if there was a big age difference, there was also a culture where many girls did both and hang the consequences. I’m surprised to find from my own teenage daughter that certainly in her circles it now appears to be less widespread. Her friends who ‘put out’ with several boys before 16 are regarded as sad, rather than heroines. This can only be a good thing.
I will also say that I had the unpleasant task of informing the parents of one of her then friends (13) that she was seeing a man who was 27. (My daughter told me about the relationship because it worried her). They set up a sting where the police nicked him. Turned out he had previous – at least one prison sentence for grooming and having sex with very young girls, together with using violence against them. And he got another stretch as a result.
Now I don’t know whether they would have prosecuted him in the 1970s – but they could not have done him for grooming because that offence did not exist.
I certainly remember that we knew underage sex was illegal in the 1960′s. I remember a girlfriend from the 70′s relating how she lost her virginity on her 16th birthday, as her then boyfriend had refused to do it while she was underage due to the legal aspect. However I think we only regarded intercourse as illegal under 16, as that could lead to pregnancy. I don’t think people were worried about non penetrative sexual activities or things that could not cause pregnancy.
This might be a little bit relevant to Savile, because from remarks quoted from Savile, he was well aware of the age of 16 being the watershed for legal sex, but might not have regarded a bit of groping with younger women as illegal sex in the same way. At least he may have used this as a rationalisation, because a man in his forties and fifties groping young teens is still pretty gross behavior by any objective standards, and not really in the same category as peer group sexual activity.
As I have noted before the diagnosis of Savile as a paedophile seems a bit questionable , but if he was guilty as charged of 31 rapes, his record as a rapist puts him in a league of his own.
Every young man in most “civilized” countries is familiar with the term ‘jail bait.’ So was Jimmy Savile. Nothing legally wrong with boinking women of the age of consent unless it’s forced. So, who are the 31 complainants of rape?
@ So, who are the 31 complainants of rape? @
One of the issues with regards to the Savile case is that whenever the “charges” become known and able to be looked at from outside of the media/legal cabal, they look either completely groundless or minor contraventions made to sound much worse with the use of Legalese. One of the Exposure witnesses referred to returning to the BBC “dozens of times” and having sex with Savile, which she now considers as ‘rape’. Many charges could all relate to that one person.
@i love the bbc
I notice that the issues of *grooming* are a modern phenomenon and that your reports about the 13 year-old are current. The laws involved that are being retrospectively invoked somehow, have been in place since 1994 and strongly strengthened since 2003. They appear to be no special deterrent? The way the media seeks to represent previous generations as somehow lacking the moral fibre, whilst because we now have more LAWS, society now is more morally stronger – is a complete nonsense, to paraphrase Anna’s blog-title
Just as a matter of interest, Ms Raccoon long ago deconstructed the Pitcairn fiasco – wouldn’t you know it – she managed to be in Pitcairn as well as Duncroft! (This woman has an uncanny knack of managing to find herself with a connection to media fantasies!!!)
Link HERE if you are interested.
re. the Pitcairn story…. I wonder if there were ever any issues of boys being initiated into sex by older women?
I noticed this in the press last weekend, it’s the new Rock’n'Roll…….
…. it turns out he has been given carte blanche by his management company to have as many flings as he wishes, as have all of One Direction. Rather extraordinarily, you might think, his handlers’ view is that as long as the boys keep away from the band’s very young fans, all should be well…………… Niall Horan, also 19, added: ‘One mum was with her daughter, but whispered to me: “If you are looking for an older woman, then just give me a shout.”’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261136/Harry-Styles-At-just-18-pops-naughty-little-charmer-going-rails.html#ixzz2I8LGRsOu
@ Moor Larkin
One of the 31 seems to be a 14-year old woman mentioned in the “Giving No Voice” report, but there are no details of the whens and wheres as far as I recall. Here it is: “1965. A 14-year-old girl met Savile in a nightclub. She later visited his home and was raped. (Classified as rape).”
Of course the question is, I think someone else has mentioned, what was a girl of 14 doing in a nightclub? Even at that time there were some restrictions on age at such places. It sounds like she might have been trying to represent herself as older than her age.
Grooming seems like a silly offense, because you can’t prove it was grooming until the sex takes place, it which case the sex is surely the more
What was the name of the nightclub and where was it? We just don’t know. The most popular disco club in Leeds in the mid 70′s when I lived there was called Cinderella Rockafella, as I recall.
There are no details about any of the other 30 alleged rapes.
Grooming seems like a silly offense, because how do you know it was grooming until the sex takes place. Is every grandfather who has a female child on his knee guilty of “grooming”, because a few grandfathers commit incest?
I have said over and over that I am perfectly prepared to believe that Savile was a sex offender, but if I was a juror I would want to hear some evidence from a credible witness with no personal axe to grind and no history of dishonesty. It would not matter if the witness was a formerly trouble youth if they had grown up to become a respected member of the community.
Although it is true that historic sex convictions may be made based on the testimony of a sole witness, my experience as a juror tells me that ANY jury case is basically a case of the jury having to see and hear the witnesses and decide which side they think is telling the truth, because they are always going to hear two sides of the story.
@ my experience as a juror tells me that ANY jury case is basically a case of the jury having to see and hear the witnesses and decide which side they think is telling the truth @
If I knew that for a fact that the defendant was not even in the same place as the witnesses claimed he was at the time of one or more of the offences they were swearing to, I think I would refuse to convict on those at least, and be inclined to disbelieve all of their other testimony too, no matter how persuasive the witness seemed to be in the flesh.
@ Moor Larkin
Yes, in the case in which I was a juror a woman was charged with drunk driving. She had refused to give a blood sample after her arrest.
Her story was that she was a sound technician for ESPN who had arrived in town to televise a boxing match that was at the local country fairgrounds. Subsequent to the trial I found that the fight in question had been covered by a different TV network and was at a different location, an indoor auditorium not the fairgrounds.
Nearly all the evidence concerned her testimony versus that of two police officers, one man and one woman. The very slick defense attorney did manage to trip the cops up on a couple of items of their paperwork, but they were clearly painstakingly honest, if dim. For example she claimed she stumbled when asked to walk a straight line due to a long standing knee injury. (This was not apparent when she was called to the witness box and walked up very purposefully.)
We convicted her anyway with almost no discussion as we did not believe a single word of her story, for example being offered free cocktails at breakfast time on the plane on the way down, and due to her poor explanation of the empty bottles of wine cooler on the seat of the car. She looked like an alcoholic (very slim, lined face).
The fact is that in most court cases one side is lying their pants off. The jury has to decide which.
”Grooming seems like a silly offense, because you can’t prove it was grooming until the sex takes place”. Not so, grooming is still an offence even if he didn’t get what he wanted. In the case of my daughter’s friend, he tried to cajole her into a sexual relationship by a mixture of flattery and manipulation of her rather soft nature. He gave her a terrible sob story about his own background and told her in effect that only she could put it right, but they needed to be ‘really close’ for it to work. Well you can guess what kind of really close he had in mind, and he was very explicit about it.
By text message, which was his downfall, the fool.
I actually thought long and hard about going to her parents for many reasons, not least because I did not know for sure how old he was. But I had overheard a phone convo between them and it was very clear he was manipulating her and she felt pressured. When I found he had previous, including for assaulting another girl who tried to break off with him, I felt vindicated.
Don’t worry they will! I never though I would ever feel sorry for Jimmy Savile but I do now this report is an insult to justice and the thought of the unproven ‘victims’ getting our tax money revolts me.
Actually they will probably get a treble whammy. The Criminal Injuries Board. The BBC or The NHS. And The Tabloids. This is all too, too funny. Political Correctness at it’s best. Millions of Tax Payer’s Money up the creek when Britain is nearly bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Savile couldn’t give a shit. He might even be laughing as loud as I am.
And No, I don’t actually think it is funny. But I don’t care all that much either.
Indeed, but some how the knowledge that useless plod, social workers, meejah writers and charidee workers, basically all trying to do the others job and doing it very poorly have been over-compensated is even more revolting. And the usual political bed-wetters have not even had their day yet.
Just lurve the Sunday Express front page…advertising department not talking to news editor…classic FAIL!
We aren’t all daft, you know. Although we might well have been forty odd years ago when we had this weird idea that all Politicians were God. But something weird happens to the best of their original intentions when they walk through The Portals. They somehow become better in their own minds than the rest of us. This is where the real problem lies. They need for us to be useless without them.
Jimmy Savile is only a symptom, if he even existed. He was never the cause. He raised more money for Charities than The Government ever could have done, and should have been dealing with. While The Government were much more perverse and perverted, and robbing the Common Man of Millions with their Expenses Claims. And we never quite got to the bottom of that.
At this moment in time I will not have that Jimmy Savile was a bad man. And I really don’t care what anyone else thinks. Have at it as you will. He was bloody fine in my book.
Do they use the pedometer to count pedophiles?
This is such insanity, and I’m not talking about the pedometer. A revival of the Satanic Panic twenty years after it was buried? Amazingly, nobody at the Sunday Express in a position of authority said “wait, we can’t print this bollocks.”
Purrrrrrrrrrfect!
I care.
I care about the further waste of taxpaper’s money.
I care about the potential uses to which this will be put by people with an agenda.
I care about the further coarsening of our media and our public discourse.
I care about the dangerous precedent this sets for future accusations.
I care deeply about the bad law that’s almost certain to come of this.
FWIW, I was in the music business in London back in the early 70′s, I even socialised with some of “Jim’ll Fix It” production team (never met JS himself). You used to see lots of dubiously aged girls struggling to get near their idols; and hear lots of rumours. I never heard any about Jimmy though.
Nothing is too insane to get printed. People making allegations must be treated as victims. Nothing has been remembered from all the awful miscarriages of justice – against adults and children – that have preceded the current panic.
MWT is a Sacred Cow and those most at risk are dead, batchelors, Tories, old or a mixture of the above.
I know you read widely IlovetheBBC – have you seen anywhere, anywhere at all, the pathetic nature of the original complaints that the ‘failure to publicise’ nearly crippled the BBC? Everywhere I look it is just ‘had charges been brought’, or ‘CPS missed three chances to cage the beast’ – nobody, but nobody, it seems, is actually reading the CPS report for themselves!
One more time journalists! Read the bloody CPS report HERE!
I wish people would damn well read it too, Anna.
Having reflected on it a bit more since my initial reading of it I am far less comfortable with Levitt’s approach and her conclusions than I was initially. She no doubt believed that she had interviewed these people robustly and she therefore attached some considerable weight to them telling her, unprompted, that they would have been inclined to support a prosecution had they been told there were more complainants. However she fails to recognize that these people had not lived in a bubble in the weeks prior to her investigation, and that by now they knew exactly the right noises to make. Probably they had already instructed the no win no fee lawyers and were primed perfectly. She also completely ignores the fact that Ms A’s position in 2007 was simply that she wanted to do a deal with the Sun and that the Sun seems to have made this conditional on going to the police. I think the report really rather disingenuous now and I am guessing that the police are quietly fuming about it.
@ have you seen anywhere, anywhere at all, the pathetic nature of the original complaints – nobody, but nobody, it seems, is actually reading the CPS report for themselves! @
I’ve just speed-readed it. If that “case” had a realistic possibility of leading to a conviction with serious consequences for j’accused, as the QC seems to be contending, then it leads me to believe even more in the contention that there are thousands of British citizens being jailed for absolutely nothing.
Oddly enough, it seemed to me the police proceeeded with that 2007-2009 matter in a very balanced way, and seemed to end up with a reasonable solution. The fact that the QC seems now to be criticising them and blaming them somehow, makes me understand better why Spindoctor of the Yard takes the approach he does. Lions on the street. Donkeys in the Office. Asses at the Assizes.
It seems to be completely impossible to get a comment here to come out in the right sequence. Very frustrating!
I’m repeating this here, apologies, because it has appeared in completely the wrong place:
Anna, the argument seems to be that although the complaints were pathetic, and even the complainers did not want to take it further, if they had only known that there were other people out there making equally pathetic complaints, the results might have been different.
I’m getting quite the old cynic aren’t I?
But the media have swallowed it unquestioningly. How could it be otherwise? You have said yourself that journo friends are unwilling to expose the truth about the Duncroft affair.
The police seem to be in a position now where they feel obliged, or have been instructed, to treat every allegation of sexual impropriety with a minor – or indeed even with an adult if a celebrity is involved – as factual.
I have done some of my own research into one or two of the non-Duncroft complainers, as far as I am able from a laptop, and the very first person I looked at it any detail changed his story radically inside a matter of weeks, from an assault by Savile to an assault by Savile and a BBC employee – who he originally claimed was blameless.
This crapola is doing no-one any good, absolutely no-one – except lawyers and police on overtime.
I do apologise for the disruption in the comments – it seems to happen when the site is very busy as it is at the moment.
I’ve tried altering the number of comments on each page but it doesn’t seem to help.
Thanks Anna, I was just having a rant but I know there is little you can do about it.
I have now found out that Sinason is indeed ‘treating’ the unfortunate creature who has made an allegation of Satanic ritual abuse against Savile. I have also read her Wiki entry, and found out more about her involvement in some very singular and disturbing cases – such as this one http://www.justiceforcarol.com/ which almost beggars belief.
The woman is clearly more mentally disturbed than most people walking the streets.
What is terrifying is to read on the comments at Carol’s site that many officers at the Met and much of the GMC still believe in satanic abuse, a full couple of decades after it was exposed as a confection of credulous born-again Christians and an abusive form of psychiatry.
I was in the music business in London in the late 60s, and I went to TOTP as well, in a working capacity with clients. I wasn’t impressed with Savile’s odd image, being more of a Ready Steady Go person myself, but I realized that he was working another angle of the business and it was all good. And no, I didn’t hear anything negative either.
What we should concern ourselves with, universally, is a continued concern for the safety of children. Reports of child abuse should not have to contain a sexual component that appeals to public titillation. Reports should be subject to close official scrutiny, with a guarantee of anonymity for all parties concerned, which should include a court-ordered gag order on the press until the findings are officially complete.
The police don’t want that to happen mewsical because they want to be able to ‘corroborate’ complaints with those of other people.
@ Wendi. Not sure if you will get this on Site, but I expect you will by Email.
Actually, there were a couple of dozen Wren Air Mechanics in my day, and well proud of ourselves we were. We were The Elite. Although mending aeroplanes isn’t all that difficult when push comes to shove. And most of us were on the small side, which made us able to get into small compartments that men couldn’t get into. I really don’t want to tell you about the hours I spent stuck up the arse end of a Sea Hawk bleeding some grease nipple.
But rumour had it that those who designed these pieces of machinery never had to think about keeping them on the road, or how anyone was supposed to service them.
Suffice to say that I never fly without a parachute. This means that I never fly. And nor should you. You will have to trust me on that one.
I did once offer to mend the Family Washing Machine but step mummy wasn’t having that. I might have looked half useful, instead of the moron she wanted me to be.
Nowadays I do anything and everything that I don’t want to pay someone else to do. But some things defeat me. It’s knowing what you can’t do that counts. I can fell a tree where I want it to fall, but I am useless when it comes to computer stuff. So I get paid for felling trees, and then I pay someone else for sorting my lovely new Apple. Such is life. Always try, but pay attention to your limitations, if you have any.
Felling trees, and reducing them to a neat pile of logs, cutting acres of grass, rebuilding a chimney if I remember correctly, last time we met; the woman IS amazing.
See if you can persuade her to tell you how old she is, I won’t be so rude as to do so, but honestly – she is one Hell of a role model for old age!
crikey..you sound like my sort of woman.
Hats off to you Elena! In a perfect world you would no doubt have gone into engineering after the Wrens but I suspect it would have been much frowned upon in those days.
Re. the flying in planes, I heard a curious piece of trivia on the radio yesterday claiming that more people are killed yearly by rhinos than airplanes – where such data is collected god only knows!
Fascinating to read how you mathematically fell trees – I’m assuming you use a chainsaw?
I also take note of your sage advice on accepting ones limitations.
That was a lovely gesture of Anna’s re. the Mac and ensures the continuation of your always honest and interesting comments here!
I think dear Dr Sinason is trying to corner the market in the possessed so why not begin with those unfortunates who ended up in a satanic circle with Savile in mask and robes chanting “now then now then ” in Latin.
I’m reading elsewhere that Savile may have pre-recorded his appearance on the last TOTP due to health. Does anyone know?
##Apparently psychic Sally Morgan wants the copper who knew about Jimmy Savile’s thoughts during “every waking moment” to go on tour with her.
@ I’m reading elsewhere that Savile may have pre-recorded his appearance on the last TOTP due to health. Does anyone know? @
He was fit as a fiddle, but the show itself was pre-recorded. Sarah Cawood was apparently the last woman standing……..
Sir Jimmy had told the BBC he could not present the final show live as it clashed with the Lochaber Highland Games in Fort William, which he had already agreed to attend. He said: “The BBC called me to say they were doing the last Top Of The Pops, that it would be live and that it would be on Sunday. I said, “Well, you can do without me, because I am going to the Highland Games.” “They asked me what the organisers were paying me and I told them they were paying me nothing. I gave them my word and my word is my bond – there is no contest.” Producers later agreed to pre-record the show to fit in with his other commitments. Sarah Cawood, who hosted the show until recently, told how she celebrated the final edition with the production crew into the early hours. “I was in the star bar until 3am and was the last presenter standing,’ she said.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-398230/The-shows-finally-Top-Pops.html
Nunc tunc, nunc tunc!
Trouble is the MSM don’t seem to want to know the truth. Still I have noticed there has not been very much in the newspapers recently and quite a few critical comments about the whole thing so maybe the tide is turning.
I still remember our fury about Jerry Lee lewis in 1958 I think it was, I lived in Glasgow then and we had tickets which we had queued up for ages to get. Couldn’t have cared less then about his wife’s age and I didn’t finally see him until 1980 at the Country & Western Festival in Frankfurt, still he was worth the wait.
I write some amateur fiction set in the “Spontoon Islands”, and Elena could almost be a character from there. I’m sure the Naval Syndicate would appreciate her talents.
That all looks like so much fun! Elena would surely be attracted to the Rain Islands Naval Syndicate being ‘Anarchist Territory’…
many thanks but the article complicates things more…everyone seemed so cheery about Savile yet now they all say they knew !!
I think it was the combination of her age and also that she was his cousin. I could have cared less about either.
@ I think it was the combination of her age and also that she was his cousin. I could have cared less about either. @
This article is fascinating in that it suggests that people paid money just to demonstrate to him, their disapproval….
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wBFQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XVUDAAAAIBAJ&dq=jerry%20lee%20lewis&pg=2174%2C3758865
My point remains that the situation with Jerry Lee Lewis is clear evidence that the British never approved of “under-age” sex as the ‘papers are nowadays saying. I have also noted that in discussions about the groupies around the likes of Led Zeppelin in days of yore, it is always pointed out that the low ages of the likes of Lori Maddox and so on, had to be kept secret for fear of public reaction. The idea being put across by the likes of Hugo that nobody was bothered about older men and too-young girls in the Seventies and Eighties is a pernicious lie that the press is trying to peddle against all factual evidence.
yet that was common in his part of the world.
There is something very distasteful with Britain forever trying to impose it’s Puritan morality upon the world.
Interesting reading – one wonders why your father took you to such a remote place at such a young age?
I would have thought that, when the original girls were taken to Pitcairn, as with many ethnic groups, girls were considered sexually available for pairing as of their first menstruation in their island of origin and the Bounty sailors would understandably need to procreate asap to ensure the continuance of their line. I wonder what the ‘age of consent’ was in Britain when the mutineers initially landed in 1790 – I suspect it was definitely under 16!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe
United Kingdom (and dependencies)
The United Kingdom consists of the jurisdictions of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. UK national age of consent legislation does not apply to its dependencies. (no ref. or ‘citation needed’ here though)
The age of consent for heterosexual acts in England was set at 12 in 1275 during the reign of Edward I. The wording was along the lines of “It shall be deemed illegal to ravage a maiden who is not of age” – at the time “of age” being 12[citation needed]. Therefore, there was, and is, technically no age of consent for the male participant – unless the female participant is an adult in which case laws pertaining to sex with a minor and so on come into force. The English law became applicable in Wales following the Laws in Wales Acts (1536 and 1543). In medieval Welsh law there was no actual equivalent of the concept of the age of consent as such, but a girl was marriagable at 12-14 (the onset of puberty) and a fine was payable for the taking of a girl’s maidenhood by force; the rules varied according to status and may not have been applied rigidly to commoners.[66]
I know – Pitcairn and Duncroft! He left me in so many places where child abuse was apparently rampant that I’m beginning to get a right old complex about still being a virgin at 16….!!!
@ Bounty sailors would understandably need to procreate asap @
Check out Mark Twain on the subject of the British subjects…..
“The reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A stranger, for instance, says to an islander:
“You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her your aunt.”
“Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law–and next week she will be my wife.”
http://www.online-literature.com/donne/3269/
Aaah! Brings to mind Stephen Vizinczey’s delightful “In Praise of Older Women”…
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