UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post
by Rob Parsons and Sam Casey
Published on the 28 March 2014
TWO Yorkshire schools and a children’s home in the region are at the centre of new inquiries into alleged child sex abuse by disgraced presenter Jimmy Savile.
Education Secretary Michael Gove yesterday ordered probes to be carried out at Northways Residential School, Beechcroft Children’s Home and Notre Dame Grammar School.
He said allegations about the shamed Leeds DJ’s connections to 21 schools and children’s homes across the country dating back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were handed to the Department for Education after a review by the Metropolitan Police.
Leeds City Council promised to investigate the allegations at the two city-run institutions named in Mr Gove’s list, but said it was unaware of any sites called ‘Beechcroft Children’s Home’ in the Leeds area.
Northways Residential School, which was based in Clifford, near Wetherby, closed in 1997. Of the three named institutions, only Notre Dame Grammar School, now known as Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College in Woodhouse, Leeds, is still running.
John Grady, spokesman for the Diocese of Leeds, which runs the school, said it carried out its own investigation after the revelations first emerged about Savile in 2012. He said it “could find no evidence that Jimmy Savile had any contact with Notre Dame school or any of our [diocesan] children’s homes”.
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