Jimmy Savile

From what I just read it sounds as if the police had investigated several allegations?

Oh right! I missed that bit.

It now looks as though his charitable works were a very convenient cloak. What else did he do or spend his money on that we know about? There's no doubt he was generous. I know a family who benefited when he anonymously paid for their daughter's treatment for leukaemia after the NHS withdrew. There was a lot of media attention at the time and the girl sadly died but not many people knew who the benefactor was.
How awful that people who knew or suspected he was abusing young girls were afraid/reluctant to blow the whistle. I don't think it would happen these days. You can't really gag social networking.

It's not proven don't convict without proof!

These days a consoling quick hug can be judged sexual harassment. Twenty five years ago as a young secretary I remember having a buttock squeezed by a passing boss was just one of those things we had to put up with, part of the job. Standards have changed. Perhaps people are only coming forward now because there'd have been little reaction if they'd complained then.

It is a fine balance! When does 'flirting' and 'playfulness' become exploitation & even abuse. It is a fact that some young women/girls are attracted by the 'glamour' of celebrities /musicians/ actors etc and a fact that celebrities /musicians/ actors etc have taken advantage of that. I do think age is a factor..even a girl over the age of consent can be intimidated by an older person and may 'consent' to behaviour she might have said no to with a lad her own age. I think celebrities /musicians/ actors etc who have slept with young fans/groupies have exploited them at least.

jeni what you say makes sense. But these are different circumstances.
There will never be proof now, since the guy is dead.
I believe the women who have made the allegations.
They were children at the time. Am I right in thinking they were girls in children's homes?
What chance did they have ?? Against an Icon? I dread to think what it must have been like in a home for children in the sixties?
Nobody, not another soul , looking out for them.

I also think he got away with it because he knew many people who had/have their own secrets.

I don't think he feared exposure because he had an ego as big as a barn door and a bank balance to match. I could never understand why some people idolised him.

I used to enjoy the series In the Psychiatrists Chair on R4 with Anthony Clare.
Saville's interview is one of the two that sticks in my mind years later. Clare was an expert at getting "under people's skin" - he managed to get right under the bluster of Clare Rayner to the sadness beneath.
Saville was a brick wall. Even though he had consented to come on the programme, he just presented a bland, impenetrably defended public image of himself and Clare could not find a chink.

Yes, I enjoyed that programme Jess and I would listen with anticipation, thinking 'when will he ask such and such?' Of course, Clare knew how to hold back and make the interviewee do the work. I was surprised that Louis Theroux didn't get more out of Saville. I will watch the programme about this issue tonight with interest.

jeni I don't know what would constitute proof apart from a lot of people, victims and those who were in the know, saying he did it.

More objective proof would be difficult. Always is in assault/rape cases.

Clearly, now Savile is dead, no trial can take place. But it should be posdible for the CPS to acquire all the evidence and evaluate it. If any of those in positions of power and authority, for example senior employees at the BBC or other media are found to have colluded in a cover up, it should be possible to persecute them.

Persecute?

Ha ha! Was that a Freudian slip MiceElf

I meant to put a

I wonder if that was a somewhat Freudian slip!

nfk you are right that standards have changed. When I was about 19 working in an office in the mid 1970s, the middle aged boss would have me sitting opposite him at his desk checking computer printouts, a painfully slow task and catch my legs underneath in a 'scissors grip'. I never said anything because he was my boss, but would wriggle my legs out of the way or tuck them in backwards under my chair. Then others in the office starting teasing about the way he always singled me out to help him with work. Soon he arrived at work with his grey hair dyed jet black and groovy outfits. So the teasing increased. What did I do? I giggled with the other colleagues about it, not having a clue as to how to deal with it. It all came to a head when he sent me to the back of the warehouse to look for a file in the archives, followed me in there and tried to kiss me. I ducked out of it and bolted. This prompted me at last to report it to the senior boss, a most excruciating experience for me. The end of this story was that I was moved to another department. The fact that I can recall it all so clearly 45 years later, makes me realise what an effect it had on me.

That's why we need an Edit button.

No, it wasn't, just the iPad - or poor typing. But grannyknot tells such a true tale. There wasn't the ability years ago or the words for young vulnerable victims to deal with abusive behaviour. Heaven knows it's hard enough now, but thirty or forty years ago it was very, very hard indeed, and those in authority or with power were invariably listened to over 'a silly young girl'.

An uncle of mine wouldn't let me leave his house one day until I'd kissed him [I was very young at the time; they lived next door to us, his wife was my mum's sister]. I was so young the memory is very hazy but it's still one of the most vivid memories of my young life. I don't think I told my mum; if I had done so the fall out from it would have been something I wouldn't forget, but I know my mum never trusted the man, so perhaps I did say something at the time. We also had a primary school teacher who seemed very touchy feely; he was a very good teacher and those of us in his class were the ones who went on to grammar school, but, even then I wondered about him. When we're young we don't question things and, as Esther Ranzen said, when these things happen, have a tendency to blame ourselves. I even had a problem with a member of my family who I never confronted and, even though I told my husband on endless occasions he just laughed it off as if I was being silly. I was genuinely afraid of him, and I was in my forties at the time. Afraid to say anything to anyone else as I didn't want to cause upset in my husband's family. Felt it was just up to me to avoid situations where we would be alone together.

Let's not let this thread develop into bad things that happened to us as children.

That is only a suggestion. I know it's not up to me.

JO4 [like] emoticon.

I'm just trying to point out how it can happen that a young [or older] person can suffer abuse in varying degrees and say nothing at the time, but then mention it years later when other people come out of the woodwork saying the same thing. If you don't want to read what I've written, don't read it J. You've made me feel bad and boring now.

crimson , you are not bad or boring, I think that sometimes on threads such as this it is only natural to stray into ones own experiences.

I think that JO4 was only intending to suggest that every contributor should where possible try to keep to the subject in question, but I may be wrong.

Anyone out there who didn't find it traumatic when an older man, man in authority etc 'tried it on' as we used to say?