Police 'Censored' 2009 Interview with Jimmy Savile So It Removed All Reference to the Royal Family
The Daily Mail
Police have censored a 2009 interview with Jimmy Savile by redacting all mentions of the royal family, it has been claimed. Transcripts from the Surrey Police report were released last week with 96 lines blacked out. But according to the Daily Star Sunday, they had first gone to Buckingham Palace to vet, as they were 'mentioned' in the documents. It was only revealed after an information officer working for the force 'let slip' that they had been sent to the palace. It took seven months for the papers to be released. In an internal report released in January, Savile referenced the cousin of the Queen - but in the documents released on Tuesday there was no mention of her. More...
Savile often boasted of his Royal connections, claiming to have had a close friendship with Prince Charles and Diana, and to have helped Fergie through her marriage break up. Savile was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 1972, and then a knighthood in 1990. He wrote in his 1974 autobiography of his friendship with the same cousin of the Queen he mentioned in the 2009 police interview. He told officers he visited the Surrey school - where it is said he abused girls - with Princess Alexandra. They were attending a garden party. In his autobiography he wrote: 'Princess Alex is a patron of a hostel for girls in care. At this place I'm a cross between a term-time boyfriend and a fixer of special trips out.' The paper claims that Savile's references to the princess are within the redacted lines of blacked out text. Nineteen of 32 deletions were taken out because they contained personal information, and the other 13 because they contained information sensitive to criminal investigations. Sixty-four were removed as they contained details of allegations from three women. A Palace spokesman declined to comment. A Surrey Police spokesman said the information had taken seven months to release as it contained personal information about witnesses. She added: 'Personal information was redacted and the transcript was shared with partners prior to its release, however there is a full report on our investigation in to Jimmy Savile which was published in January.' Details of the 56-minute interview, carried out two years before he died, came to light last week. The 83-year-old said accusations from three of his teenage victims were the ‘complete fantasy’ of people ‘looking for a few quid’. He boasted he ‘owned’ the NHS hospital at Stoke Mandeville and said he brushed off girls ‘like midges’. The transcripts have led to accusations that the officers treated Savile with kid gloves. 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. 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'
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