Hunting Killers by Mark Williams-Thomas

Author:Mark Williams-Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473564190
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2019-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

6

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

JIMMY SAVILE DIED ON SATURDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2011.

Dame Esther Rantzen, the well-known broadcaster and founder of Childline, the counselling service for children, said he was ‘knighted by the Queen, knighted by the Pope, fantastic charity fundraiser, which of course he was, he was all those things’.

‘But,’ she added, after the evidence shown in the TV programme I made about Savile was in the public domain, ‘he was also a child abuser.’

Less than twelve months after Savile’s death, Peter Watt, head of the NSPCC’s helpline, described Savile as ‘one [of] the most prolific sex offenders the NSPCC has ever come across’.

Following the broadcast of Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile in 2012, the Metropolitan Police launched an investigation into Savile’s crimes. Ten weeks later, they announced that hundreds of people had been in contact. Dozens of crimes across seventeen police force areas were alleged to involve Savile as a suspect, while 80 per cent of those who came forward to report abuse were children or young people at the time of the incidents.

By March 2013, 214 complaints had been made against Savile after his death, which, had they been reported to the police at the time, would have been criminal offences. Four victims reported being raped by Savile when they were under the age of ten. Others reported serious sexual assaults by him, including another four who were also under ten years old. Savile had targeted boys as well as girls. It’s not certain, but it’s possible – from what it’s been claimed he said, as well as evidence about his movements – that he even sexually abused corpses in a mortuary.

On 26 June 2014, UK Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt delivered a public apology in the House of Commons to patients of the National Health Service who were abused by Savile.

‘Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades – from the 1960s to 2010. As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. Today’s reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes.’

I’m glad that Jimmy Savile’s name will be recorded in the history books as that of a serial paedophile, a predatory abuser of children, and not that of an entertainer and DJ. I’m proud of the part I had to play in making that so. I make no bones about this. Whatever else Jimmy Savile did in his life, whatever he achieved for himself or for others, he’s not worth remembering as anything other than what he was: a sex offender.

What should really be remembered, what should stand to represent what he was, are the stories of his victims, and the lives they had to piece together in the wake of his horrific abuse.

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