Sunday Times 2
BBC in sex scandal cover-up
A TV director told the BBC he saw Jimmy Savile having sex with an ‘very, very young’ girl in his dressing room but was ignored, it emerged today. When David Nicolson alerted the corporation, bosses told him: ‘That’s the way it goes,’ according to a report today.
The now 67-year-old, who had been a director on Jim’ll Fix It, claims he made several attempts to expose Savile to the BBC, but was told: ‘That’s Jimmy.’ Mr Nicolson, who also worked on Top of the Pops, told The Sun: ‘Everyone knew what was going on. That includes senior BBC people – chiefs at the highest levels.’
New claims: TV director David Nicolson claims he told the BBC he caught Jimmy Savile having sex with an underage girl in his dressing room but was ignored
He claims to have gone in to talk business with Savile after filming an episode of the late star’s hit children’s show, but was shocked to discover him with a young girl. ’The girl could have been 16, maybe 15,’ Mr Nicolson said. ‘But she was just one of many – he always had one in the room. He said: “What do you want young man?” and shouted at me to get out of the room.’
Responding to Mr Nicolson’s claims, a BBC spokesperson said: ‘We have been disturbed to hear these allegations. All staff past and present who have any information relating to allegations of this kind should raise them with the BBC’s internal investigations unit or with the police directly.’
The BBC’s reputation is increasingly under fire after an avalanche of allegations that the corporation was aware of claims about Savile’s actions, but did nothing about them. BBC director-general George Entwistle has now asked a senior colleague to answer journalists’ questions on the dropping of a documentary about Savile.
Ken MacQuarrie, director of BBC Scotland, will speak to Newsnight journalists about the aborted broadcast after several of them wrote to Mr Entwistle to ask why the film was not aired, a BBC spokesman confirmed last night. Grant Shapps, chairman of the Conservative Party, told BBC1′s Question Time last night that it ‘seems unimaginable’ that people at the BBC were unaware of the child abuse allegations.
He said: ‘What happened now appears to be outrageous. It’s particularly disturbing that a programme paying tribute, a three-parter, went out just last Christmas after it was already known at senior levels within the BBC that something was wrong, enough to have had a serious Newsnight programme made about it and enough to raise serious concerns.
‘I do think there are definitely questions that do need answering.’
Yesterday 11 police forces were investigating allegations from a string of victims claiming they were abused by Savile.
Greater Manchester, Lancashire, North Yorkshire and Tayside are the latest forces to say allegations have been made.
Police believe Savile could have abused as many as 25 victims over a period of 40 years, and have so far formally recorded a number of criminal allegations including rape and indecent assault.
A woman told Greater Manchester Police of a sexual relationship she had with Savile from the age of 15, while a second said she was groped by him in Salford when she was under 16.
Another woman told Tayside Police she was targeted in the Liverpool area, an alleged victim told North Yorkshire Police she was preyed on by Savile in Scarborough in the 1980s, and two women complained to Lancashire Police about incidents when one was 14, in the 1960s, and the other 15, in the 1980s.
Claims have also emerged that Savile groped young patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, where he worked as a volunteer fundraiser, while one woman alleged that she saw him molest a brain-damaged hospital patient at Leeds General Hospital.
Nurses at Stoke Mandeville are understood to have dreaded Savile’s visits because of his behaviour and would tell children to stay in bed and pretend to be asleep when he came round.
Caroline Moore claims she was assaulted by Savile at the age of 13 while being treated for spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville in 1971. Mrs Moore, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, told BBC Radio Scotland: ‘I was outside a ward or a gym and he came out and just rammed his tongue down my throat.
‘I told my family at the time. They didn’t take it seriously because he was such a high-profile character.’
June Thornton, a patient at Leeds General Infirmary in 1972, said she saw Savile abuse someone she thought was a brain-damaged girl.
Ms Thornton said that when she told a nurse about the abuse, she was ignored. ’I thought he was a visitor coming to see her. He started rubbing his hands down her arms and then, I don’t know of a nice way to put it, but he molested her. He helped himself. She just sat there and couldn’t do anything about it,’ she told ITV News.
Another alleged victim came forward today and claimed Savile was banned from visiting a council-run children’s home after he molested her when she was 12. She said he was told to leave the care home in his home city of Leeds after staff found him in a bedroom with her in the 1970s.
The woman, who does not want to be identified, told BBC Radio Leeds she was indecently touched by the former DJ but a social worker advised her not to report it to the police.
Leeds Safeguarding Children Board said it had not received any complaints about Savile but encouraged anyone with concerns to report them. The alleged victim said the woman in charge of the home, who seemed ‘uncomfortable’ with Savile visiting, ‘ran upstairs and found him’ when she realised he had taken the girl into a bedroom.
She said: ‘You could hear it. There were raised voices from the staffroom and then she just ran upstairs. A social worker came down and basically he came back the next day and said it would be his word against Jimmy Savile and it would be unfair to put a girl through the procedure of a police investigation that probably will end in nothing and ruin a man’s career.’
Jane Held, independent chair of Leeds Safeguarding Children Board, said: ‘We have not, to the best of our knowledge, received any complaints or allegations about Jimmy Savile, but if any now come to light we will co-operate fully with any police investigation.
‘We would encourage anyone who has got information or concerns to report them.’The raft of allegations against Savile has been branded a ‘cesspit’ by BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten who pledged to hold an independent inquiry as swiftly as possible after the police investigation.
© Daily Mail, London
HE TOOK MY FACE IN HIS HANDS… IT MADE ME ABSOLUTELY SHUDDER
Caroline Moore was a paralysed 13-year-old in a wheelchair when Jimmy Savile abused her. She is still haunted by the assault as she recovered in a children’s ward at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1971 following an operation to fuse her spine.
Mrs Moore, now 53, said she was sitting alone in her wheelchair in the corridor, by the doorway to her ward, when Savile approached in silence.
Haunted: Caroline Moore will never forget the assault
She recalled: ‘I was quite shy and lonely. I don’t remember him saying anything to me but he leant down and I was excited because I thought he was going to give me a wee peck on the cheek. ’But he took my face in his hands and rammed his tongue down my throat. I was shocked.
‘I had never been kissed and I didn’t really know what had happened – only that it made me absolutely shudder.
‘Afterwards he just walked off as if nothing had happened.’ Mother-of-two Mrs Moore, who is paralysed from the chest down after a car accident when she was 20 months old, said: ‘It was a horrible experience. I can still see his face – it has haunted me to this day.
‘What really angers me is that this man was allowed to prey on disabled people. It is the lowest of the low.
‘My suspicion is that they let him do what he wanted because he brought in the money.’
Mrs Moore, of Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, added: ‘I told all my friends what had happened, I have never kept it a secret but, because of how respected he was, I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I went to the police.’
The former businesswoman, said she now intends to add her name to the police’s growing list of Savile victims. ‘I would like to see him stripped of his knighthood,’ she added.
Another former patient, Tracey Brown, 39, from Milton Keynes, said Savile thrust his tongue in her mouth when she was 15 as she recovered from an operation at the hospital.
She said: ‘He asked for a kiss – I thought he meant on the cheek. I’ve been waiting years for it to come out that he was a pervert.
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