Profile: Jimmy Savile

BBC ^ | Oct 3 | BBC

[RandFan]

In his lifetime, millions knew Jimmy Savile as an eccentric TV personality. To some, he was Saint Jimmy, who raised £40m ($48 million) for charity. But it has transpired that he was also one of the UK's most prolific sexual predators.

Savile was one of Britain's biggest stars, a larger-than-life character who was known for tea-time TV favourites like Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It as well as stints on BBC Radio 1.

At the same time, it later came to light, he was exploiting his status to prey on hundreds of people - girls and boys, men and women, but mostly vulnerable young females.

He assaulted and raped them in television dressing rooms, hospitals, schools, children's homes and his caravan.

The scale of Savile's crimes was "to the best of our knowledge unprecedented in the UK", according to a report into his activities titled Giving Victims A Voice, which was published in 2013.

The abuse was thought to have begun in the mid-1940s, when he was in his late teens or early twenties, and lasted until 2009, two years before his death.

"It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fund-raising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades," the Giving Victims A Voice report concluded.

He was, the report said, "a mainly opportunistic individual who used his celebrity status as a powerful tool to coerce or control them, preying on the vulnerable or star-struck for his sexual gratification".

Another report, The Dame Janet Smith review, identified 72 victims of Savile in connection with his work at the BBC, including eight who were raped. Eleven of his victims were younger than 12 years old.

[MalPearce]

Part of it is establishment cover up but not class driven, it was to ensure ORGANISATIONS didn’t get dragged into an investigation that almost certainly would’ve involved Freemasons and PIE (the UK counterpart to NAMBLA).

Savile was from a Bevin Boys mining background, did some work as a bouncer, was a bit of a bruiser before getting into radio.

He was an adept DJ and knew how to schmooze, so was a man of many faces.

I said part of it.

The other was that the police simply didn’t believe rape accusations. They thought by default that if it happened in the home it was “a domestic matter”, and if it happened outside home the girls “crying rape” must’ve either made it up or had been “asking for it” somehow - dressing provocatively, going out alone at night, not fighting back, not screaming for help, having a reputation (”the town bike, everyone’s had a ride”).

A 14 year old girl making an accusation against a pop star or DJ in the 70s wouldn’t have gotten to making a police report let alone past the first interview. They’d have to prove that they weren’t groupies and walk into the police station covered in their own blood to be treated sympathetically.

I know this because my own birth mom got pregnant at 14 after being raped multiple times by a “community leader”. He sat on the chamber of commerce and various other associations. A “pillar of the community”.

My mom said nothing about the attacks because she’d have been tarred and feathered, but once people knew she’d beem “knocked up” her dad transported her out of county to see her pregnancy through in a “school “ for wayward young women. To eliminate any difficult conversations.

After she gave birth at age 15 she was declared mentally unfit to be a mom and the social services took me into foster care.

The guy who raped her was still an unsullied pillar of the community when I turned 18. Mom had left that community and was married with children. All I know about it comes from her diaries and unposted letters she’d written to me over the years, which I only saw after I died.

That cult level cover-up is bad wherever it happens but it tends to happen only in certain communities in England. The one thing we don’t let happen at all anymore is forced marriage (making the problem go away by forcing the raped to marry the rapist, shotgun marriages etc).

My perception could be wrong but it looks FAR more prevalent in American high schools. When prominent boys molest girls, the school almost always downplays it, or worse rallies behind the boys and victimises the girls.

And that’s also happening with boys who come out as trans too. The girls have to put up with it as an occupational hazard.

So this isn’t a British establishment issue, it’s just as deep rooted in American society.