Friday 12 October 2012

Exposure The Other Side of Jimmy Savile






I felt sickened watching this video: Jimmy Savile, the man who 'fixed it,' for so many children to fulfill a dream had abused so many young women. 

As a teenager, I watched Jimmy Savile on Top Of The Pops and enjoyed watching his "Jim'll Fix It," shows. It was great seeing those children having something fixed for them and Savile was a good choice to host that show: he was already known for his charity work and his being presenter almost guaranteed a good viewing audience for the programme. 

I can hardly believe what I'm reading now and hearing about. As far back as the 1970s there were complaints about Jimmy Savile. An ex-police officer, on BBC Radio 4 the other evening, said he'd taken a report in the 1970s from a nurse who stated that Savile was abusing children at the hospital where he worked. The police officer passed this on to his superior officer, who did not believe what was said. End of the story on that one. No investigation. 

This week I've seen a woman from Leeds talking about how she walked into Savile's dressing room and found him with a girl on his lap who looked about 14 years old. Savile's hand was up the girl's skirt and his tongue down her throat. Yuk! 

There's more and more and more. Every day there are more revelations: Savile had keys to Broadmoor and could enter any of the bedrooms; Savile abused a brain-injured patient; Savile picked girls out from the audience at TOTP; nurses told children to pretend to be asleep when they knew Savile was coming;  Savile raped under-age girls in that traveling bed of his. 

The worst of this obscene story about an obscene life is that it seems that there were many people at the BBC who knew what Jimmy Savile was like and they did nothing. They made Jimmy Savile an icon and a champion for children when they knew he was abusing children. 

Savile was feasted and feted by the BBC, who continued to use him as front man for so many TV shows, even as they knew what he was doing under cover of his charity work and how he was using his popularity to groom under-age children. 

Next question? How many more are there like Savile? How many of his contemporaries not only knew what he was up to, not only colluded by staying silent, but were actually involved in the same kind of crime themselves? So far, according to ITV News, the number of names being put forward is five: five people who allegedly knew Jimmy Savile and were engaged in grooming and abusing children. 

Jimmy Savile hob-nobbed with the rich and famous, with politicians and royalty. He was given a Knighthood by the UK government and a strange kind of Knighthood by the Pope. Did none of those people have any idea? Now that the dam has burst and more and more victims are coming forward and more and more people are telling us they either had their suspicions or actually knew what he was up to, is it reasonable to ask if any of those people who lauded him also knew what Savile was like? Seems like the whispers were very loud, loud enough for nurses to be warning patients of Savile's impending arrival. 

Dear God how much more? How many more cover-ups? Hillsborough and Savile and who/what else? Should there be some kind of serious public enquiry now into the Madeleine McCann case? Is that subject to a cover-up too? No evidence of an abduction, cadaver odour detected only on property belonging to the McCanns and in the apartment and the car they rented, enough inconsistencies and holes in official statements for even me to drive a bus through - and believe me, when I park the car sometimes, I have to consider getting a taxi to the pavement! 

Martin Grime, who trained the two sniffer dogs who alerted to blood and cadaver odour in the McCann case, is presently giving evidence in a similar case in the USA, where a child disappeared and no body has been found. The evidence of the dog's alerting to cadaver odour is being allowed into court. 

Sniffer dogs Eddie and Keela had an unblemished record of over 200 cases before they worked the McCann case and yet Gerry McCann can state that sniffer dogs are unreliable.

There is so much about the McCann case that gives cause for concern, in my opinion, starting with the fact that three small children were left alone in an unlocked apartment in a foreign country, that I think it's reasonable to ask why the McCanns were not at least charged with neglect leading to serious harm. It's also reasonable, in my opinion, to ask if there is some kind of cover-up in this case. Remove Jane Tanner's story about the man who initially was carrying a bundle that could have been a child, that metamorphed into a spotty/clear-skinned/clean-shaven/bearded man of indeterminate height and build, and the case falls apart. As it should. As it will one day hopefully. 

When that particular dam bursts, how many more names will be added to those of the Tapas Nine? Now that one public icon has been knocked off his pedestal, isn't it time that a few others were too? Let it begin with justice for Madeleine McCann.