UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Jimmy Savile police interview in 2009 – full transcript
Joan Smith
The Guardian, Wednesday 16 October 2013
When Jimmy Savile was questioned by Surrey police four years ago, he was 83 and had been sexually abusing children and teenagers for more than 50 years. The transcript of the interview, which has just been released, is the nearest we will ever get to hearing his version of events, almost as if Savile is speaking from beyond the grave.
Reading the transcript cannot be easy for the DJ’s many victims, who will no doubt recognise the bluff, domineering persona he used to deflect any suggestion of wrongdoing. What is supposed to be an interrogation quickly turns into a performance, in which Savile uses familiar devices – threats, bluster and name-dropping – to dominate the proceedings.
But the interview has a significance that goes way beyond the question of how the authorities failed to detect and apprehend one prolific sex offender. It exposes the ease with which a confident abuser was able to run rings around his interrogators, even as recently as 2009, when the failure of so many investigations into rape and other sexual offences was a matter of public concern. While popular culture is obsessed with serial killers, they are relatively rare outside crime fiction; serial sex offenders are much more common but poorly understood. So is the fact that some of them prepare in advance for the possibility of one or more victims going to the police – what Savile refers to quite blatantly in the interview as his “policy”.
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