UNITED KINGDOM
Spiked
BARBARA HEWSON
BARRISTER
A series of NHS reports lists claims of abuse by Savile – but how many could be proven?
Just when you thought it was safe to go out, more revelations about Jimmy Savile hit the headlines last week. The UK Department of Health published the results of its investigations into the late Savile’s dealings with the National Health Service, in which it is alleged that he abused children on NHS premises, using hospital visits to gain access to his victims.
The Department of Health issued a press release on 6 December 2012, stating that it was publishing terms of reference for the investigations into ‘the abuse by Jimmy Savile’. The overseer, a former practicing barrister, was quoted as saying: ‘It is important that victims of this abuse can be certain these investigations discover exactly what happened and what went wrong.’ She also claimed to ‘have worked with all the teams to ensure their investigations are following robust procedures that will reassure victims and produce effective results’.
It does seem from these official statements that Savile’s guilt was assumed from the outset. The investigations were not so much an impartial fact-finding exercise, and more an exercise in damage-limitation. That is rather different to the forensic process undertaken in court, where both sides are heard, and evidence is tested in public, before a formal adjudication is made.
Some 28 individual health trusts did conduct investigations into Savile, and two made statements. As time was short, I extracted two from the paper mountain: Leeds and Wythenshawe. They are of interest both for the methodology adopted, and the conclusions drawn.
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