Trawling for Scandal?

By Barbara Hewson
Spiked
July 3, 2014

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/savile-trawling-for-scandal/15317#.U7U7kfldWSo

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.

Wythenshawe

The Wythenshawe report fills 17 pages and involved 16 investigators. All it recounts is a single item of gossip dating back to 1962. The informant is a woman who contacted Operation Yewtree, the police investigation into alleged sexual abuse by Savile and others, with a ‘disclosure’. Apparently, when she was 17 or 18, she was a patient in the plastic-surgery and burns day ward. She was told by another, older woman that ‘Jimmy Savile was a dirty old man up to no good’, that he used to hold parties at his house, and that ‘very young girls’ were among the guests.

Savile would have been in his mid-thirties when the informant was at Wythenshawe. Apparently, he had appeared at a hospital charity event at a venue called Belle Vue, though the report does not identify the date of an advert, which it said it managed to locate for this event. This lack of detail is disappointing, given the enormous effort expended on this particular investigation. The informant’s GP notes made no mention of any hospital admission during the period in question.

Having drawn a blank, the Wythenshawe Trust decided that it would list some of its policies, with a statement of when they were being updated. While it is tempting to view this report as the result of a wild-goose chase over ancient gossip, it is worth noting in passing how the informant’s account may have been coloured by the furore that erupted concerning Savile late in 2012. Would someone call a dj in his mid-thirties a ‘dirty old man’? And was the reference to ‘very young’ girls a gloss with the benefit of hindsight?