Jimmy Savile and the IRA Predator boasted terrorist friends could have enemies hospitalised
20 Oct 2012
mirror.co.uk
JIMMY Savile terrified enemies by snarling that he was mates with IRA killers who would cripple anyone who crossed him. The cunning paedophile used threats of violence to silence victims and anyone else who threatened to expose him, investigators on his case believe.
Today the Sunday People can reveal how Savile once bragged to our journalist how he could fix anyone with just one phone call – to terrorists. He said: “All I have to do is call my friends in the IRA. They’ll have someone waking up in hospital the next morning eating their breakfast through a f***ing straw. I know the IRA, men from the IRA, and you don’t need to ask these guys twice. I’m serious. Don’t f***ing think I’m not serious. I can get them done – just with a phone call. That’s all it takes, young man.”
Our evidence has been passed to the multi-agency investigation into Savile, now believed to have collected the accounts of 200 victims. A team of 10 from the Met’s Operation Yewtree are leading the probe, with help from regional police forces, the NSPCC and former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, a child protection expert.
Late last week Peter Watt, head of the NSPCC’s helpline, said: “It’s now looking possible that Jimmy Savile was one the most prolific sex offenders our organisation has ever come across.” The Met’s Cmdr Peter Spindler said: “We are dealing with alleged abuse on an unprecedented scale.” Sources close to the investigation believe the complaints that have emerged so far are the tip of the iceberg. And others are STILL in fear of their lives despite Savile’s death a year ago aged 84.
Our source said: “He boasted of knowing gangsters and men who you wouldn’t want to double cross. It is likely that some had been threatened with the IRA. They are still worried about coming forward.From all of the evidence gathered there is a clear picture developing of someone who not only abused vulnerable children but intimidated them and left them fearing for their lives.”
Terror was just one weapon used by Savile to stifle threats as he systematically abused children from 1959 to as late as 2006. The others were charity work and becoming a TV institution. Each enhanced Savile’s reputation so anyone accusing him knew they faced being vilified. Both activities also gave him easy access to young flesh.
Savile, a Roman Catholic who was once blessed by The Pope, was a regular visitor to Ireland using his charity work as a cloak. He made IRA threats during a meeting 12 years ago when our journalist was a local reporter on the Bucks Herald. Savile was a volunteer helper at nearby Stoke Mandeville Hospital and was upset about the death of a local figure who he had known for several years. There was a rumour the man had died after being mugged in the street.
The TV bigshot demanded the names of the thugs responsible. Arrogant Savile summoned our journalist to his office and raged: “I want you to tell me what happened with **** *****. If you hear that someone has done this then I want you to tell me who straight away. I want to know names and I can have them waking up in hospital with every bone in their body broken. If someone has done this to **** ***** that makes them my enemy. And you don’t want to be my enemy.”
When asked to explain he then made his boasts of his IRA connections. Savile added: “You don’t get blessed by the Pope for nothing.”
We told Mr Williams-Thomas of Savile’s threats and the investigator said: “The pattern of behaviour which has emerged is that Savile’s victims felt in great fear of him and this has prevented many from speaking out then or ever since. Having researched Savile and knowing what I know, their fears were and are very genuine.” He said it was possible some victims are yet to come forward because they still have reasons to be afraid.
Savile also boasted of his use of violence and links to gangsters when filmed for a BBC Louis Theroux documentary. Talking of his time as a dance-hall boss in Leeds in the 50s, he said: “I was always in trouble with the law for being heavy handed but I couldn’t care less. I never threw anyone out. I tied them up and put them down in the bloody boiler house until I was ready for them at about two o’clock in the f***ing morning. They’d plead to get out.
“Bo***cks to them. We’d tie them up and then come back. I was the judge, jury and executioner. If a copper came and said, ‘You was a bit heavy with that kid or those two guys,’ I’d say, ‘Your daughter comes in here. She’s 16. She’s not supposed to come into town but she does and she comes here. I presume you’d like me to look after her. If you don’t, then tell me and I’ll let them dirty slags do what they want to her.’” He said the police would reply: “All right, Jim. All right.”
And he would tell the officers: “All right, then, don’t give me a f***ing hard time then. I never got nicked. And I’ve never altered.”
He hinted about underworld links in 1983 newspaper interview: “I never get physical personally. Let’s just say that while I’m in Edinburgh very dodgy things happen in London. “I am just waiting for a call from Hollywood offering me the lead in the remake of The Godfather.”
He is known to have visited Ireland annually between 1968 and 1981 to lead fundraising walks for the Central Remedial Clinic in Dublin CRC. The investigating team are also studying evidence concerning a number of high-profile figures in the BBC, in business and at the top of organisations friendly to Savile. It is feared they may have been involved in an institutional cover-up of sexual abuse.
Another man reportedly facing arrest is one of Savile’s BBC staff who is accused of working as his accomplice in abuse and raping a former beauty queen. The woman was 23 when she had consensual sex with Savile in the back of his caravan in 1970 after writing to him asking for work experience. A week later she was invited back to the BBC by this colleague.He then violently attacked her in a locked storeroom.
She alleges Savile conspired with the man who assaulted her. A source close to the investigation told the Sunday People: “What we’ve heard so far about Savile is the tip of the iceberg. It is clear there are people high up in organisations that either knew, suspected or turned a blind eye to the fact one of Britain’s biggest TV and radio stars was a prolific paedophile.”
It also emerged yesterday how Savile’s reign of terror and fear extended to his own family. His sister turned a blind eye to his abuse of her granddaughter, it was claimed.Caroline Robinson, 49, said Savile, her great-uncle, twice sexually assaulted her as a young girl – aged 12 and again when she was 15. She said that even today the smell of cigar smoke “makes my flesh crawl”. But she said close family members who knew, including her grandmother Marjorie Marsden would be bribed with lavish gifts in return for keeping quiet.
Caroline said: “Uncle Jimmy gave Marjorie everything she wanted. She was interested in Egyptology so he bought her a house on the Nile. He paid for the best lawyer for her divorce. He paid for her to live in a smart BUPA care home near his flat in Roundhay Park in Leeds before she died in 2006.
“She had private medical insurance and a cottage in Llandudno, courtesy of Jimmy. He bought her a caravan on the coast there. If Marjorie had blabbed, Jimmy would have had nothing. No fame, no money. In fact, he’d have been in jail. And Marjorie would have had nothing too.
“What Jimmy did to me was terrible. But the most unsettling thing of all is that Grandmama, whom I loved dearly, knew exactly what was going on and she kept her mouth shut because Jimmy paid for her silence. She always referred to him as her ‘next of kin’. The camp that has closed ranks and kept silent about all this are those who have benefited financially from him.”
Mr Williams-Thomas is working on a follow-up to the ITV documentary Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile.
Jimmy Savile: Questions for Edwina Currie and the BBC
Robert Mendick, and Laura Donnelly
20 Oct 2012
telegraph.co.uk
A Sunday Telegraph investigation today reveals:
* Edwina Currie appointed Savile to run a taskforce in charge of Broadmoor in the 1980s, where he is accused of sexually assaulting patients;
* the taskforce he presided over was given temporary powers to oversee the running of the hospital following a series of industrial disputes - despite the fact Savile, a disc jockey and television presenter, had no professional qualifications;
* a friend of Savile’s from his hometown in Leeds was then given the most senior job at Broadmoor;
* the BBC investigated a lurid sex scandal at Top of the Pops and Radio 1 in the early 1970s, but never made the report public;
* Savile was interviewed by the BBC as part of that inquiry but refused to cooperate, according to a senior source.
Scotland Yard last week announced it was launching a full-scale criminal inquiry into other members of Savile’s alleged sex ring who remain alive. The Met police is now looking at 400 separate lines of inquiry and more than 200 potential victims.
Savile, despite having no expertise in mental health, was given the job of chairman of the taskforce overseeing Broadmoor in 1988 after the hospital had been placed under direct control of the Thatcher government following a series of strikes.
Mrs Currie at the time was health minister with responsibility for the country’s high security hospitals under the auspices of Kenneth Clarke, the then-Health Secretary. Savile counted himself as a friend of Margaret Thatcher and reportedly stayed at Chequers on a number of occasions.
Savile had had a long association with Broadmoor, having been a volunteer worker there in the 1970s and 1980s with the unofficial title “honourary entertainments officer”. He had his own set of keys and living quarters on site.
Pete Saunders, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said of Savile's role at the mental hospital: "It really is akin to giving Dracula the keys to the blood bank. It really is outrageous that a disc jockey was given unfettered access to Broadmoor."
Savile’s appointment to the taskforce is now subject to a Department of Health official inquiry but last night Mrs Currie said: “The Department of Health are digging out the papers from the archives and I just don’t know - I’m ransacking my own notes to try to work out what happened, so I am not denying it, it is just very hard to tell.”
The former minister told The Sunday Telegraph that having checked her personal diaries, she had found a note of a meeting with Savile in Leeds in September 1988 - the month the taskforce was appointed. In the entry she described his thoughts on Broadmoor as “intriguing”.
Mrs Currie recorded that during the meeting Savile had told her that he suspected staff were inflating their salaries - and that he had threatened to pass the information to the tabloid papers if the staff caused him any trouble.
Savile also told her he had uncovered millions of pounds missing from budgets and poor use of the hospital’s housing stock. “In my diary, I wrote 'Attaboy’, she said. “This was what he claimed to be doing; now it is hard to know whether any of it is true. And obviously when you look back, it does suggest he was prepared to use blackmail to ensure people did what he wanted.”
Mrs Currie, who had previously met Savile on his television programme Jim’ll Fix it and on visits to Leeds General Infirmary, where he also worked, said she now thought the presenter was “totally evil” and that she was glad criminal investigations were underway.
Savile once described himself in a newspaper interview as “the boss of Broadmoor” and in 1989 said he was responsible for the freeing of 60 patients and intended to introduce “mixed sex wings” so patients could fall in love with each other.
Following Savile’s appointment at Broadmoor, Alan Franey, an administrator who spent 10 years working at Leeds General Infirmary, also began work on the same taskforce, with progress to be reported to Mrs Currie. In a book about psychiatric care, Mr Franey described having “an unusual meeting” with health officials in the Athenaeum Club in London, where his new role on the temporary taskforce was proposed. He neglected to mention in the book that Savile, who was a member of the Athenaeum, was also present. When asked by The Sunday Telegraph if Savile was also there, Mr Franey agreed.
In 1989, Mr Franey was put in overall charge of Broadmoor, where he remained for nine years before retiring as chief executive. Mr Franey worked as an assistant general manager at Leeds General Infirmary from 1975 to 1985, when the television presenter was volunteering as a night porter. Savile is also accused of sexually abusing girls at the Leeds hospital.
Mr Franey said he got to know Savile because they were among half a dozen men who ran charity marathons together. He said: “I am absolutely astonished. There was absolutely no indication that he was doing what was alleged.” Mr Franey insisted his friendship with Savile did not help him to get the job on the taskforce, and that he later got the job as general manager of Broadmoor through open competition.
Mr Franey took early retirement from Broadmoor following an inquiry into the hospital in March 1997. The inquiry followed claims made in newspapers that a child pornography ring was operating at Broadmoor. Although the full report was never published, a summary found no evidence to support the allegations but made some criticisms of lax security while pointing out the hospital had actually improved under Mr Franey’s management. Mr Franey is insistent that he only resigned because he wished to write a book and was ready to retire. He is now a Conservative councillor in Welwyn Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
Last night, Ray Rowden, a former senior NHS executive supervising England’s three high-security hospitals - a job he took up in 1996, a year before Mr Franey’s retirement - said: “He [Mr Franey] used to boast that he would drive him [Savile] around nightclubs in Leeds in the 1980s.”
Mr Rowden said that on his first visits to Broadmoor, he was shocked that Savile appeared to be able to turn up at whenever he wanted - as did Princess Diana - and tackled Mr Franey about it. “I said to him how can you let Princess Diana and Jimmy Savile into Broadmoor to wander about whenever they want? This is a high-security hospital - would you let any other Tom, Dick or Harry in?”
Mr Franey said claims he had driven Savile to nightclubs was “rubbish”. He added: “I have never been to a nightclub in my life.” He said the conversation with Mr Rowden about visits from Savile and Princess Diana never occurred.
Savile was caught up in a sex scandal that engulfed Top of the Pops and Radio 1 in the early 1970s when police investigated claims that music companies hired prostitutes for disc jockeys and producers in return for playing their records on air. The same officers also investigated the suicide of a 15-year-old dancer on Top of the Pops, who Savile is alleged to have abused. The Sunday Telegraph has been told that an independent inquiry launched by the BBC and run by a senior QC questioned Savile over the sex scandal but its findings were never made public.
Savile’s activities on Top of the Pops and other programmes where he is accused of raping and sexually assaulting girls on the corporation’s premises will form part of a new BBC inquiry into the time. But it is the failure of the BBC to broadcast an investigation into his years of abuse that will come under the immediate spotlight.
Two journalists from Newsnight, who uncovered evidence of Savile’s sex crimes, have given interviews to Panorama questioning the BBC’s motives for ditching its original report. Sources say emails will also question the BBC’s official version of events - that the investigation was only pulled because it failed to show failings at the Crown Prosecution Service in bringing a prosecution against Savile in 2008.
The claims will put renewed pressure on George Entwistle, the director general, who will be quizzed by MPs on the Culture Select Committee on Tuesday, only a few hours after the screening of Panorama. Mr Entwistle faces claims that the Newsnight investigation was shelved to make way for two tribute programmes in honour of Savile following his death last year at the age of 84. At the time Mr Entwistle was BBC Director of Vision, overseeing the tribute programmes.
Much of the Newsnight evidence was contained in an ITV documentary a little over a fortnight ago which first exposed Savile as a predatory sexual offender.
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It's quite incredible to think that he was actually put in charge of Broadmoor.
A former driver charged with sex offences as part of the investigation triggered by allegations of abuse against Jimmy Savile has been found dead. David Smith, 66, was the first person to be charged by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Operation Yewtree investigation. He had pleaded not guilty in July to two counts of indecent assault and two of gross indecency on a child following his arrest in December. But he failed to turn up at Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday for the start of his trial, prompting police to go to his home in Effingham Road, Lewisham.
Scotland Yard said: "At approximately 1420 officers entered the address and found the body of a man. A FME (forensic medical examiner) attended and pronounced the man dead at the scene. Next of kin are being informed." Smith's barrister, Sandy Canavan, had told the court she was "concerned" that her solicitor had been unable to contact him ahead of the trial as she had regularly been in touch with him. She told the court Smith was the sole carer for his elderly mother.
Police have separated the Yewtree investigation into three parts, the first concerned with the actions of Savile, while the second concerns allegations against what has become known as 'Savile and others'. Mr Smith was investigated under the third strand, concerning accusations of sexual abuse unconnected to Savile but made by people who came forward following publicity surrounding the Savile allegations.
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