Jimmy Savile

There is no point wondering why people didnt blow the whistle on Jimmy Savile decades ago. The reason is quite simple, until the 1990s the routine abuse of women, groping etc etc was not considered to be anything serious. It was just shrugged off as one of the hazards of being female. If young girls were involved, even girls barely in their teen,s it was they who were always blamed for what happened to them becaused they had 'enticed' the man to take liberties with them or had gone somewhere they shouldnt ought to be so were fair game.

Do you remember all those jokes about vicars and choir boys and NSIT (not safe in taxis) after the names of Debs Delights in debutante's address books? Complain or object and you would be told that you couldnt take a joke or that it was a compliment that some indadequate found you attractive enough to grope, generally such inadequates would grope anything in knickers under 50.

Back in the early days of post-war feminism when women graduates aspired to be something other than secretaries or teachers, the best way for an inadequate male to put down an uppity woman was to be sexually aggressive.

Jimmy Savile's narrow interest only in pubescent and immediately pre-pubescent girls may well have caused comment and been considered pervy, but then the girls themselves would have been considered old enough to know what they were up to. In the 60s and 70s popstars and popgroups were pursued by groupies who couldnt wait to bed a Beetle, or a Stone, or whatever. Most were over 16 but a lot werent and there cannot be a single popstar of that period who hasnt at some time bedded an under age girl.

I am not defending what happened forty years ago but I am just getting fed up by the virtuous inability to understand why nobody blew the whistle at the time. The answer is, Jimmy Savile was sailing close to the wind, clearly some people were uneasy about him, but in the 60s, 70s, the age of sexual freedom and irresponsibility, anything went and men like Savile could get away with it.

Turns my stomach to think of the people who turned a blind eye because 'he gives a lot to charity' have they any idea of the legacy they have given to those women I hope they can sleep at night.

deferential, JessM?

I an wondering if this tells us something about the nature of our deference to celebrities and "important people".
Not only were the powerless victims were afraid to speak out, but other people believed he was somehow good by virtue of his fame and therefore did not believe victims or complied with his behaviour. We are a deferent, hierarchical lot in this country. (specially English people maybe - i think us Celts are a bit more stroppy and less willing to doff our caps?) But all goes back to the class system perhaps?
Malcolm Gladwell once wrote about airline crashes and how the safest pilots come from the least deferent (sp?) nations - i.e. NZ and Australia. Where they make a virtue about not being deferent (rebellion against their pommie forebears?)
Pilots from these countries were the most likely to tell air traffic control that is was a bloody emergency and they really DO need to release them a runway NOW or co-pilots most likely to challenge the judgements of captains.

Yes, crimson - adult patients. The one I heard said she'd been 28 at the time.

Surely professional adult women like nurses would not have been forced to go to his room ?

The article I read said it was patients that were advised to pretend to be asleep [didn't give specific ages], but that nurses were chosen to go to his room.

Apparently, according to the news I heard on the radio, he was in the habit of choosing one of the nurses to take to his private apartment at Stoke Mandeville. And it was adults who were being advised to pretend to be asleep.

I am rather confused today to read that the staff at one hospital used to advise the children to 'pretend to be asleep' when Savile made a visit. I can possibly understand people being in awe of him [as their benefactor] and perhaps scared of losing their jobs, but how could they know he was abusing children and not say anything?

My comment was nothing to do with Jimmy Saville.

Er JessM not sure what you reference to the dead means!

I am amazed at how often men justify themselves and others who download pornagraphic photos of children on the grounds that 'they are just looking'.Surely they realise that real children were abused to get these disgusting images?

I thought the day of agreement was yesterday. The dead do not have rights.

I agree petallus on this day of agreement, about baying crowds round courtrooms.
It is an interesting question about the extent to which the dead have rights.

I'd forgotten how JS used the phrase 'boys and girls' so much.

I think I understand what Feetle is saying about feral morality. It can be seen in the baying crowds surrounding police vans taking people accused of awful crimes to court. Spitting, screaming and you just know if they could get hold of the accused he would be torn to bits.

All in the name of moral outrage and not a pretty sight.

merlotgran who said Prince Phillip asked Saville to help Charles and Diana ? - I would be astounded if that was true! Unless I hear from the Prince himself I think it was a publicity item on Saville's part. The Royals aren't stupid, Prince Phillip was in the Navy and probably was aware that Saville was weird even if he didn't know the exact details. Someone on this thread said we shouldn't pursue this because Saville is dead. The women concerned are still having to live with this trauma and need to be heard and believed. I found Freddie Starr's interview this week decidly suspect and creepy. He was whining about being innocent about abusing young women with his chavvy 34 year old pregnant girl friend standing behind him, he is 69 years old - nuff said!!

Sweet feetle you may still be a boy at heart but I am a woman, not a girl. You're only digging the hole deeper!!!!!

Yes - dammit - I did mean Macaulay! What a bloody fool, wasn't he, boys and girls?

(Me - not Macaulay...)

feetlebaum Apart from the rather sick-making nature of the image of JS as a chewy toy, I don't really understand what you are saying. Who is enjoying this chewy toy thing? What is tragic? Why should solemn be so much more appropriate than angry?

How can ridiculous be replaced by feral in the quotation? I assume you mean in the sense of resembling a wild animal, but wild animals don't have public fits of morality so the quotation becomes completely meaningless.

PS Did you mean Macaulay?

'We'd all feel better after its run its course'? Not sure what you mean by that feetle do you perhaps mean feel 'more comfortable'?. I got the impression that was Chris Patten's attitude too.

However I do agree that the way certain papers have seized on the story is not attractive. But then you could say that about the populist press and they way they treat news stories.

You knew Freddy Starr then?

The historian, Macauley, famously said "We know no spectacle so ridiculous, as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality."

I worry that 'ridiculous' no longer fits the bill, that it can be replaced by 'feral' -- Sa-vile he may be, but the enjoyment of the folks using him as a chew-toy is not attractive... A more solemn approach to this tragedy might be more appealing in the long run, and we'd all feel better after it has run its course!

As for Freddie - I know nothing of his relationships - I just know that he was, when I knew him, like a loaded gun - at his home you never got between him and the pool, or you would find yourself in it, fully dressed.

I bet they were shivering in their shoes when you walked away....! And it's all I would expect from any of us!

Respect absent

Nanadog They left the pub (I assume they left, I went home first) chastened and wiser than when they went in.