Savile and the Tapes That Damn the Police: Revealed, the Kid-glove Treatment That Allowed Paedophile Dj to Escape Justice
By Martin Robinson
Jimmy Savile ran rings around detectives probing child sex claims against him, according to disturbing transcripts released yesterday. In a 56-minute interview in 2009, two years before he died, he fobbed off police with lies, bluster and legal threats. The 83-year-old said accusations from three of his teenage victims were the ‘complete fantasy’ of people ‘looking for a few quid’. Savile even boasted he ‘owned’ the NHS hospital at Stoke Mandeville and said he brushed off girls ‘like midges’. Repeatedly reminding the Surrey detectives of his charity work, he feigned incredulity at each allegation they put to him. The transcripts show the officers treated Savile with kid gloves and pose the question whether a more determined approach could have led to his prosecution. In March the policing watchdog HMIC identified 11 failures in the case, including the ‘lack of challenge to Savile’s assertions’. The transcripts were released by Surrey Police following a freedom of information request. A major review of the decision not to charge Savile in 2009 concluded in January there was nothing to suggest the victims had colluded in their stories, or that they were unreliable. Yet police and prosecutors treated the claims to Surrey Police – and one made by a fourth victim to Sussex Police – ‘with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required’. The report by senior CPS lawyer Alison Levitt, QC, was released in tandem with an official police probe into the DJ’s 60 years of abuse. It was revealed that he raped 34 women and girls and sexually assaulted up to 450, including children as young as eight. The HMIC said it was wrong to allow Savile to choose where and when his ‘ineffective’ interview took place.
Savile was interviewed under caution on October 1, 2009, in his office at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where police now believe he abused scores of patients he was supposedly helping through his volunteer work. At the beginning of the interview, the officers politely asked Savile whether it was ‘OK’ to call him Jimmy and thanked him for ‘kindly’ letting them use his office to conduct the interview. 'People are looking for money, and they will try blackmail and they will write letters, saying I will say you’ve done this and you’ve done that. 'We always get something like this coming up for Christmas because we want a few quid. Normally you can brush them away like midges - What Jimmy Savile told police in 2009 They had received an allegation in May 2007 that Savile had sexually assaulted a teenage girl at Duncroft Children’s Home in Staines in the late 1970s. In the investigation that followed, two more allegations emerged – the first that in about 1973 Savile had sexually assaulted a girl aged about 14 outside Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The second was that in the 1970s Savile had suggested to a girl aged about 17, again at Duncroft, that she perform a sex act on him. Asked to comment on claims he abused a girl in the TV room at Duncroft, he replied ‘it never happened and it is a fabrication’. Told that he was accused of putting a girl’s hand on his groin area, he snapped: ‘It’s starting to sound like the Mad Hatter’s tea party this’. Savile, now regarded as Britain’s most prolific child sex predator, furiously denied suggestions he was attracted to underage girls. Publication of the interviews will reignite speculation that some who worked at Stoke Mandeville deliberately overlooked Savile’s sexual abuse of patients because of the money he raised for the hospital.
A During the interview, Savile says: ‘I own this hospital, NHS run it, I own it, and that’s not bad. And one of the reasons that I get, that I take it seriously is that I wouldn’t let anything get out of hand to run the risk of spoiling things for my people here. ‘Because if I wasn’t here, they wouldn’t get the quarter of a million pound a year they need to keep it going.’ Last year staff at the hospital were accused of a cover-up. Savile also bragged about his charity work at Broadmoor, scene of more of his abuse: ‘I mean for 50 years I’ve had a set of keys at Broadmoor, but I never forget the rules, never forget the rules. You can if you want, but you finish up dead.’ Last night Graham Grant, a former head of Scotland Yard’s paedophile squad, said the Surrey Police interview appeared to have been ‘too informal and ‘lacked rigour’. The ex Met Detective Chief Inspector said of the interviewing officers: ‘Their tone was sympathetic and not challenging enough. I would surmise they were very good when dealing with victims but not the best interviewers when questioning a suspect, particularly such a manipulative one. ‘He was never challenged by any of the questioning and none of his answers probed. ‘The interview was subtly led by him to some extent. He denied any allegation in short sentences but when allowed to give an opinion waxed lyrically and at length over what a good person he was. ‘It is a classic case of minimising any wrong doing. I bet he was polite and probably charming, all part of his manipulation. Kevin Hurley, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, said that the force he monitors ‘could have done better’ when probing ‘nasty piece of work’ Savile. He said: ‘Surrey Police are right to release these interview transcripts under freedom of information laws.’ Savile also admitted entertaining officers from West Yorkshire Police at his home in Leeds, and that they were aware of previous ‘blackmail attempts’ from ‘weirdos’ but because he was ‘easy-going’ they had not investigated them.
[Savile Interview] BRITAIN'S 'PREDATORY' PAEDOPHILE: HOW THE SAVILE SCANDAL UNFOLDED
October 29, 2011: Veteran DJ and broadcaster Jimmy Savile is found dead in his home in Roundhay, Leeds, aged 84. His death came after a spell of pneumonia. December 2011: BBC drops Newsnight investigation into his years of sex attacks. September 30, 2012: It emerges that allegations about Savile will be made in a new ITV documentary, due to be aired on October 3. October 1: Surrey Police confirms Savile was interviewed in 2007 over allegations dating back to the 1970s but was released without charge. October 2: Reports that Jersey and Surrey police both investigated accusations about alleged abuse in two children’s homes, but decided there was not enough evidence to proceed. October 2: Jeremy Paxman has a furious stand-off with his Newsnight bosses because he disbelieves editor Peter Rippon's blog into why he dropped the Savile abuse investigation. October 7: Prime Minister David Cameron calls for the 'truly shocking' allegations to be fully investigated. October 9: Scotland Yard reveals they are looking at 120 lines of inquiry and as many as 25 victims and launches Operation Yewtree. October 11: Allegations emerge that Savile abused children at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire and Leeds General Hospital. October 12: Then BBC director general George Entwistle offers a 'profound and heartfelt apology' to alleged victims as he announces two inquiries - one into potential failings over the handling of the abandoned Newsnight investigation, and a second into the 'culture and practices of the BBC during the years Savile worked here'. October 19: Scotland Yard announces that Operation Yewtree, the inquiry into alleged child abuse by Savile, is now a formal criminal investigation involving other living people. October 22: Newsnight editor Peter Rippon, will step aside, it's announced. October 25: Scotland Yard says it is investigating in excess of 400 lines of inquiry involving 300 victims, of whom all except two are women. Commander Peter Spindler says Savile is one of the most prolific sex offenders in recent history and the inquiry into his abuse will be a “watershed” investigation into sex crime. October 26: It emerges that seven alleged victims of Savile made complaints to four separate police forces - Surrey, London, Sussex and Jersey - while the disgraced television presenter was alive, but it was decided no further action should be taken. November 2: Newsnight runs controversial report which wrongly linked former Tory party chairman Lord McAlpine to child abuse allegations. December 19: Pollard Review reveals better leadership could have prevented 'chaos and confusion' at BBC over Savile scandal. Peter Rippon replaced as editor of Newsnight. February 14, 2013: It's announced that the BBC’s most high-profile woman executive Helen Boaden, formerly director of news, will become director of radio. She had been criticised in the Pollard Review for failing to tackle the 'virtual meltdown' in parts of the news department. February 22: Pollard Review transcripts and appendices are released on BBC website. March 6: Britain's top prosecutor Keir Starmer announces tough new measures to avoid 'another Savile moment'. When you're doing Top of the Pops, what you don't do is assault women... they assault you: What Savile told gullible police as tapes reveal soft questions, evasive answers and blatant lies
It was the moment the game could have been up for Britain’s most notorious paedophile. Sitting across the table from two female officers from Surrey Police, Jimmy Savile was facing potentially devastating allegations from three women who claimed he abused them as girls. But Savile, then 83, had dodged similar allegations and innuendo all his career and was not about to hand police an easy scalp. He even chose to be interviewed in his own office at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, where he abused so many of his victims. Savile refused to answer questions and launched into rants about his victims. The transcripts from October 2009 reveal how police treated him with kid gloves. They failed to push the star for answers, apologised for interrupting and ignored his boasts about access to Broadmoor and friends in other police forces. A file on the case was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service but no further action was taken. Savile died two years later. Here we reproduce edited extracts of the taped interview. The names of alleged victims and officers were removed by Surrey Police. Police: What’s your full name? Jimmy Savile: James Wilson Savile. P: You said earlier it was OK to call you Jimmy. JS: Jimmy – that’s me name, yes. P: Ok, thank you. And Jimmy can you confirm your date of birth for me? JS: 31.10.26. P: Thank you. JS: That makes me 83 and proud that in 83 years I’ve never, ever done anything wrong. P: OK. JS: That doesn’t mean to say that in my business you don’t get accused of just about everything because people are looking for a bit of blackmail or the papers are looking for a story, so they keeps going up but if you gotta clear conscience, which I have, everything’s OK. P: This interview is being conducted in your office at The National Spinal Injuries Clinic at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. So you’ve kindly let us use the room here. JS: I’m quite happy to answer questions, because if you’ve done nothing wrong then you’re OK. If somebody alleges you’ve done something ... but I’ve had so much of it in 50 years, it started in the 1950s and it’s always either someone looking for a few quid, or a story for the paper. ‘THE ALLEGATIONS ARE FICTIONAL – WOMEN ASSAULTED ME’ P: OK, so the reason for this interview [is] I received reports from a lady [who] reported to me that when she was a resident of Duncroft children’s home in Staines, in the late 1970s, she was told by another girl, that when Jimmy Savile visited, he touched her over her clothes sexually. JS: Oh! Out of the question. P: And he would tell her he would buy her chocolates when she got to the age of 16. JS: Out of the question. P: Both girls were under 16 when [name removed] saw him behave inappropriately and said he put her hand on his groin over his clothes and moved it around, making him aroused. I became aware of two further incidents that were reported. [Name removed] was also at Duncroft, she stated she was asked to show the visitor, Jimmy Savile, around, and he asked her to comb his hair, then massage him. JS: Not true, none of it. P: Then massage his groin area, and give him oral sex. JS: Oh! Out of the question. JS: Right, the main allegations are completely fictional, in fact they are made up. There’s no chance for anything that you described to happen, say, cos there’s never less than 30-40 people, all milling around, and so you can’t do things like you’ve just suggested, so that’s why I know. P: So in the late 1970s, were you more well known? JS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did 40 years on Top Of The Pops, did the very first one, and the very last one, I did 36 years on Radio One, and when you’re doing Top Of The Pops and Radio One, what you don’t do is assault women, they assault you, that’s for sure. And you don’t have to because you’ve got plenty of girls about, and all that, so dealing with something like this is out of the question and totally wrong. Full stop.
‘UNDERAGE GIRLS HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER’ JS: I mean for 50 years I’ve had a set of keys at Broadmoor, but I never ever forgot the rules, never forget the rules. You can if you want but you finish up dead. P: It was said that she had a blanket over her knee, you went under the blanket. JS: No, ridiculous. In front of 30, in front of all the people, what are you talking about, ridiculous. P: OK, then she said did you take her hand and place it on your groin area over your clothes. JS: No, no. P: Did you then move her hand round causing you to become aroused? JS: No, not at all, not at all. It’s starting to sound like the Mad Hatter’s tea party this. P: So did you ask for a massage from the girls? JS: Not at all, never. P: Did you ask them to comb your hair? JS: No, not at all. Bearing in mind I was in the business where there was a million girls, which was the pop business, you didn’t have to go to these people for that sort of thing, it was out of the question. …P: So the girls at the home, how old do you remember them being? JS: Well they all come from wealthy parents, so you didn’t really bother whether they were 16, what the hell they were. They all acted like adults. P: So did you ask any girl at Duncroft to perform a sexual act? JS: Never.
P: Did you use your TV or radio status to request this? JS: No, not at all, never. P: So, the last allegation, was the one from this girl called [name removed]. She’s alleged that you’ve kissed her on the mouth, and put your tongue in her mouth. JS: No, out of the question. P: But she said this has happened when she was in a girls choir, and she’s come to Stoke Mandeville hospital to a concert. JS: I wandered down there, of course, there was much excitement when I walked in, because they knew that I worked here as a porter, right, ohh! [mock applause] it’s Jimmy Savile, so I had pictures taken with them, but I mean, there was at least 40 of them in the choir, so how on earth’s anybody going to kiss somebody on the lips and stick their tongue down their throat is ridiculous. P: The girl, well she’s now a woman, said that after dinner you messed around with the girls before they got on the coach to return. JS: Not at all, how can you mess around with 40 girls? P: And this girl said during that sort of messing around, you grabbed hold of her and she was [age removed] at the time ... and that’s when you put your tongue in her mouth. JS: Untrue and impossible. P: So are you sexually attracted to girls under 16? JS: No, exactly the opposite. P: Were you attracted to girls under 16 in the late 1970s, in the early 1980s? JS: No, they have nothing to offer, in so far as they didn’t even have much conversation, so I’m not socially attracted to them at all. And that’s why I never got married anyway, because I wasn’t particularly keen on accepting the responsibility of another person. ‘I HAVE A COLLECTION OF SENIOR POLICE PERSONS I SOCIALISE WITH’
P: Why would these girls say this about you? JS: Well in 50 years in showbiz, we showbiz people get accused of just about everything. One of the reasons is people are looking for money, and they will try blackmail, and they will write letters, saying if you don’t send us money, I will say you’ve done this and you’ve done that. That’s why I have up in Yorkshire, where I live in Leeds, a collection of senior police persons, who come to see me socially, I give them all my weirdo letters, and they take them back to the station. You would be amazed at the depth that they go to. Wearing my Broadmoor hat, I don’t find it amazing at all, because wearing the Broadmoor hat, people do strange things. The strangest of strange things. P: You said you had a policy on how to deal with certain things. JS: Oh, yes, yes but I’ll come to that in a minute. P: You mentioned about your weirdo letters and that you give those to some police officers in Yorkshire. Who is it that you give those to? When you meet socially where do you meet them? JS: My place, yes, yeah they come round and drink tea and that. One of the reasons that I do that is that things happen to people like me that don’t happen to normal people. And just in case anything happened to somebody like me then the lads would be able to sift through all this weirdo stuff and maybe find somebody that they… P: OK so your expectation in handing the letters to them is that they’re going to investigate them? JS: No, no, not investigate them no. P: But store them on your behalf then? JS: Well yeah but they don’t keep them very long they pass them round the office, and everybody has a laugh. ‘I JUST BRUSH OFF MY ACCUSERS LIKE MIDGES’ JS: I take this sort of thing very seriously and have done right from the 1950s when it started because instinct tells me that whereas it’s a nothing, I know that a nothing can turn into a something. So all of a sudden somebody comes and makes an allegation. Now I’ve had five people make allegations that I did something about, because I take them to court. I sue them, and the five I’ve already sued happen to be newspapers. If it doesn’t disappear for any reason then my policy will swing into action at the same time. I’ve never done anybody any harm in my entire life. 'No need to chase girls, I’ve thousands of them on Top of the Pops, thousands on Radio One' One of the initials after my name is LOD that’s a doctor of law right, not an honorary one, a real one, that gives me, how shall we say friends. I never actually got round to actually suing because they all run away and say ‘Shush, pay him up’. We go not to the local court we go to the Old Bailey cos my people can book time in the Old Bailey so my legal people are ready and waiting, all they need would be a name, and an address, and then the due process from my angle would stop. I’ve never done anybody any harm in my entire life. No need to chase girls, I’ve thousands of them on Top of the Pops, thousands on Radio One. No need to take liberties with them, out of the question and anyway it’s not my nature because all my life I’ve been a semi-pro athlete with 216 marathons, over 300 professional bike races, and when I was fighting 107 pro fights that I had. So socially, and I don’t drink. Never taken a drug in my life ever. In fact from a newspaper point of view I’m very boring. I don’t do anything. I don’t drink no booze, no drugs, no kinky carryings on, don’t go to brothels. I’m known in the trade as Litigiousness because, which means to say I’m willing to pull people into court straight away, no messing, thank you. There’s women looking for a few quid, we always get something like this coming up to Christmas, and normally you can brush them away like midges. ‘I OWN THIS HOSPITAL’ I own this hospital, NHS run it, I own it and that’s not bad, and when they see the faces and you go in there and suddenly they smile. ANYTHING TO ADD, JIMMY? P: OK, so Jimmy is there anything you want to add about the Duncroft or the girls choir? JS: No, not at all. It’s complete fantasy, it really, really, really is and neither thing was at a place where you could get away with what they said you’ve got away with. And I wouldn’t want to in the first place anyway, complete fantasy.
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