Scores of Jimmy Savile’s Victims Describe Abuse at Stoke Mandeville
By Josh Halliday
In harrowing detail, 60 men and women have recounted the abuse they suffered at the hands of Jimmy Savile many years ago. One woman described how she was raped aged 12 by the late DJ after being admitted to Stoke Mandeville to have her tonsils out. Even though the encounter took place in January 1977, the woman had a vivid recollection of the hospital ward smelling of vomit and faeces. Savile, she said, smelled strongly of cigars and body odour. She remembered being approached by a white-haired porter, wearing a gold medallion and a white coat, as she walked to the television room one evening after her surgery. The man, who she did not recognise at the time because her family did not watch television, escorted her into the room and when they were alone he pounced, raping his young victim and walking off as if nothing had happened. When she told a nurse about the incident she says she was told not to say anything or the staff would get into trouble. She later wrote a note explaining what had happened on a page torn out of a Bible, adding her father’s name and address. She left the note in a red postbox on the ward in the hope that someone would contact her family, but nobody ever did. Twenty years later she says she wrote to Savile’s secretary, Janet Cope, explaining what had happened but she never got any response. Giving evidence to investigators, the woman said: “That’s what’s so sad. There are so many messed-up lives. Although people have built up lives – you have children, you make a life – it ruins everything: your relationships with another human being, the things you are supposed to have.” Later in 1978, an 11-year-old cancer patient was also to become a victim. The woman recalled being attacked by Savile in a treatment room as she recovered from a skin-graft operation. When she told a sister on the ward what had happened, she claims she was told Savile would not do such a dreadful thing and to be quiet because he raised a lot of money for the hospital. She later told her father what had happened but he decided not to pursue the complaint because she was seriously ill at the time. Dr Androulla Johnstone, the lead investigator in the report, said Savile could and should have been apprehended by hospital staff who failed in their duty of care. Another attack took place in the hospital’s chapel. Savile, who claimed to be a devout Roman Catholic, systematically abused a girl over a period of five years, carrying out the attacks behind a curtain in the presbytery. The girl, named only as Victim 24 in the report, described how she felt powerless to stop him and unable to tell anyone: “Every time I went in that room I just knew that he would touch me wherever he wanted to touch me.” Another youngster, aged eight or nine at the time, said she was raped on about 10 separate occasions by the celebrity. Savile cultivated a “special relationship” with her when she began visiting the hospital where her relatives worked in the late 1970s, she said. Recalling how the abuse escalated from touching to rape, the woman said Savile would order her to stop crying and say he could heal the physical pain he inflicted upon her during the abuse. “She felt she had no power over the situation,” the report of her account states. “She described Savile as extremely strong and revered by all around him.” On another occasion, Savile was said to have molested a 17-year-old girl in front of a camera crew, who she described as laughing as the abuse went on. One girl, who was a child volunteer at the hospital, said she was abused on her 11th birthday after asking Savile for an autograph. Victims also included a nine-year-old boy groped by Savile at a hospital fundraising event. The boy, who had become separated from his parents, was lured into Savile’s Rolls-Royce and says he was molested behind the tinted windows. Another man recounted how Savile would take him, aged between nine and 11, to the porter’s office and tell him he was a naughty boy for eating all the sweets, before molesting him. Savile also targeted members of hospital staff. One woman, a former care assistant, said she was made to feel important when asked to go to Savile’s room in the hospital grounds. But her initial reaction turned to disgust when Savile forced himself on to her and ordered her into different sexual positions. “I remember how awful he smelled,” said the woman, who was 17 at the time. “How he would talk while he was doing things to me and feeling confused when I left with a box of Roses chocolates in my hand.” He also attacked a 30-year-old patient on Christmas Day, the report said. The woman said she did not complain at the time because it was considered a privilege to be treated at Stoke Mandeville, even though patients were made to feel like “exhibits in a zoo” when Savile took VIPs on hospital tours. “You knew how difficult it was to get in there even then and you just didn’t want to really rock the boat,” she said. “It didn’t take long to realise how integrated, for want of a better word, he [Savile] was with everything. He was omnipresent.” Another victim, who said Savile molested her when she was an 11-year-old volunteer, said she did not know what had happened to her at the time but she knew it felt “wrong and dirty”. “I went to clean myself again and I just wanted to wash myself again and again,” she said.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.