Savile and the Tapes That Damn the Police: Revealed, the Kid-Glove Treatment That Allowed Paedophile Dj to Escape Justice
By Stephen Wright
Jimmy Savile ran rings around detectives probing child sex claims against him, according to disturbing transcripts released yesterday. In a 56-minute interview in 2009, two years before he died, he fobbed off police with lies, bluster and legal threats. The 83-year-old said accusations from three of his teenage victims were the ‘complete fantasy’ of people ‘looking for a few quid’. Savile even boasted he ‘owned’ the NHS hospital at Stoke Mandeville and said he brushed off girls ‘like midges’. Repeatedly reminding the Surrey detectives of his charity work, he feigned incredulity at each allegation they put to him. The transcripts show the officers treated Savile with kid gloves and pose the question whether a more determined approach could have led to his prosecution. 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. Yet police and prosecutors treated the claims to Surrey Police – and one made by a fourth victim to Sussex Police – ‘with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required’. More... 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. They had received an allegation in May 2007 that Savile had sexually assaulted a teenage girl at Duncroft Children’s Home in Staines in the late 1970s. In the investigation that followed, two more allegations emerged – the first that in about 1973 Savile had sexually assaulted a girl aged about 14 outside Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The second was that in the 1970s Savile had suggested to a girl aged about 17, again at Duncroft, that she perform a sex act on him. Asked to comment on claims he abused a girl in the TV room at Duncroft, he replied ‘it never happened and it is a fabrication’. Told that he was accused of putting a girl’s hand on his groin area, he snapped: ‘It’s starting to sound like the Mad Hatter’s tea party this’. Savile, now regarded as Britain’s most prolific child sex predator, furiously denied suggestions he was attracted to underage girls. Publication of the interviews will reignite speculation that some who worked at Stoke Mandeville deliberately overlooked Savile’s sexual abuse of patients because of the money he raised for the hospital. A During the interview, Savile says: ‘I own this hospital, NHS run it, I own it, and that’s not bad. And one of the reasons that I get, that I take it seriously is that I wouldn’t let anything get out of hand to run the risk of spoiling things for my people here. ‘Because if I wasn’t here, they wouldn’t get the quarter of a million pound a year they need to keep it going.’ Last year staff at the hospital were accused of a cover-up. Savile also bragged about his charity work at Broadmoor, scene of more of his abuse: ‘I mean for 50 years I’ve had a set of keys at Broadmoor, but I never forget the rules, never forget the rules. You can if you want, but you finish up dead.’ Last night Graham Grant, a former head of Scotland Yard’s paedophile squad, said the Surrey Police interview appeared to have been ‘too informal and ‘lacked rigour’. The ex Met Detective Chief Inspector said of the interviewing officers: ‘Their tone was sympathetic and not challenging enough. I would surmise they were very good when dealing with victims but not the best interviewers when questioning a suspect, particularly such a manipulative one. ‘He was never challenged by any of the questioning and none of his answers probed. ‘The interview was subtly led by him to some extent. He denied any allegation in short sentences but when allowed to give an opinion waxed lyrically and at length over what a good person he was. ‘It is a classic case of minimising any wrong doing. I bet he was polite and probably charming, all part of his manipulation. Kevin Hurley, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey, said that the force he monitors ‘could have done better’ when probing ‘nasty piece of work’ Savile. He said: ‘Surrey Police are right to release these interview transcripts under freedom of information laws.’ Savile also admitted entertaining officers from West Yorkshire Police at his home in Leeds, and that they were aware of previous ‘blackmail attempts’ from ‘weirdos’ but because he was ‘easy-going’ they had not investigated them.
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