The Reckoning - Savile

Toetoe

Watching made me think how gullible naive and trusting we were . I'm 73 now and realised how I trusted those in authority and as a mother hoped my children were safe . We of course knew their were dirty ole men around and I spoke to my children about these people . But looking back I can see how mums would wave their children off to exciting adventures . Those poor children , those poor mothers and fathers , it's heartbreaking. We watched the Vile creature on TV and although he was odd and eccentric I never ever thought he was doing what he did

Let's hope the future generations learn from this ,parents and growing children .

That’s true Toetoe.
Re your last paragraph, I think adults are more aware, but how often do we read of children/young people realising they were groomed, or actually deciding for themselves that getting in a car and going to someone’s house for an adult party, without their parent’s knowledge, or sometimes even with their parent’s collaboration is not safe?

And some sort of shift to responding to red flags. Look at the red flags with Brand, in plain sight, but enabled all the way along.

Parsley3

I hope that the documentary and drama exposing Savile have given his victims some closure. They have carried the harm done to them for a very long time and at last they can speak of it knowing that they are believed.

That's the best that can come of it now. That and (maybe) a shift in the outlook that disbelieves women in favour of male perpetrators.

I hope that the documentary and drama exposing Savile have given his victims some closure. They have carried the harm done to them for a very long time and at last they can speak of it knowing that they are believed.

There has never been any justice for Savilles victims.

Anniebach

Justice was done by what his mother may or may not have said in the sanctuary of the confessional ? Not true

No, that is not what happened, and nobody has said otherwise.

Watching made me think how gullible naive and trusting we were . I'm 73 now and realised how I trusted those in authority and as a mother hoped my children were safe . We of course knew their were dirty ole men around and I spoke to my children about these people . But looking back I can see how mums would wave their children off to exciting adventures . Those poor children , those poor mothers and fathers , it's heartbreaking. We watched the Vile creature on TV and although he was odd and eccentric I never ever thought he was doing what he did

Let's hope the future generations learn from this ,parents and growing children .

I have said I do not agree with private letters being exposed in a documentary and portrayal of a mother in a confessional included in a drama , nothing defending Savile

Justice was done by what his mother may or may not have said in the sanctuary of the confessional ? Not true

Anniebach

Did it all depend on what his mother may have said in the confessional ?

No.

What would you have preferred to be the outcome of the Savile case? If there had not been an expose in the first place, the stories of all the women, boys and girls would have died with him. Does that feel like justice to you?

I don't understand what seems to be your defence of him. As I say, people watch and don't watch whatever they like, but you seem to have read or seen nothing on the matter, yet you are questioning everything people who have seen the programme(s) on the fairness of the reporting. Why?

Did it all depend on what his mother may have said in the confessional ?

What do you think should have happened, Annie? Should Savile have died and been 'left alone', with his victims never being heard?

There was no one on trial

Private letters are private

Possibly not, if the contents are shown to be in the public interest / in order to convict someone, for instance.

I don’t watch Netflix. Private letters are private. Portraying
some one in a confessional is making things up.

Anniebach

I don’t watch them, documentaries yes, dramas no

Well if you watch the documentary Jimmy Savile, A British Horror Story you will see that it covers the letters from the royals amongst the other questions you have asked on this thread. You actually see the letters, and the then Prince of Wales' signature on the headed palace paper.

I don't understand why you seem so outraged that as these things have come to light people are interested in what was going on under our noses for so long. It's absolutely fine to prefer documentaries to dramas, but that's not what you are really saying, is it? You are suggesting that the drama is somehow designed to cast aspersions on an innocent man, which is far from the case.

Documentaries often use similar ways of compressing bits of evidence in the interests of keeping to time. They might say 'letters show', or 'many people have said', which is no different from the way drama works. Drama often reaches a wider audience than documentary, and is every bit as open to legal challenge if it gets 'facts' wrong. The scriptwriters won't have made things up - they may have put the words of several people into the mouth of one semi-fictional character, but that's not the same thing at all.

Anyway, many people won't believe documentaries either when they question the behaviour of men on the word of women. Look at the Russell Brand one as an example - it's depressing.

What sickens me are those stupid women in the audience who laugh at every single thing he says.

We're back to the Milgram Experiment, though. There would have been someone holding up 'laugh' cards, and they would have been told at the start that they should laugh when asked to. It's probably less about being stupid than about having been brought up to obey 'authority' and do as they are told. This was the 70s, and attitudes to women were different, but I suspect that if the experiment got past an ethics committee today (doubtful) the results would be very similar.

Here is a blistering 37 min interview with Andrew Neil where he asks Savile some very personal questions about women and relationships.
Quote: Despite the fact he promoted himself as a 'ladies' man', we could not find a single woman he'd ever dated, much less anyone he'd had a relationship with. Indeed, the only woman with whom he appeared to have a close relationship was his mother — 'the duchess' — on whom he professed to dote.

Andrew Neil and Savile

He does seem uncomfortable during this interview, but is such a master at ducking and diving. What sickens me are those stupid women in the audience who laugh at every single thing he says.

I don’t watch them, documentaries yes, dramas no

There have been many dramatisations of recent events. I watch few, but I watched one about Fred West quite some years ago and there was a superb one about jremy Thorpe and Norman Scott and many other highly praised ones,which I didn't watch.

This is so recent

There would be few dramas if suffering was never reflected.

I don’t agree with drama made from suffering

No one can possibly know or have recorded every word, every conversation or anything else Jimmy Savile, or any other criminal did.

What a dramatisation does = and what this is, is a dramatisation, is gather all the information possible on the man and what he has done and then form a cogent and engaging and coherent story. because every detailed fact and conversation is not recorded, because 50 plus years of abherrent behaviour has to be encompassed in a few short hours, obviously many of the events and scenes in the dramatisation, did not happen exactly as happened, sometimes scenes will be imagined that give a lot of information in a short time. I am a catholic and I have no problem at all with confessional scenes. What you are watching in The Reckoning is a drama, not a documentary. It must be judged by the rules of drama not minute factual precision.

Anniebach

Yes he did , they had plenty of facts , no need to stretch it

It will have been a 'fact' that he said the things they portrayed as happening in the confessional - just not in that context. Similarly the other aspects of the drama will have been based on research. As I say, if you watch it that will be made clear. It would not, however make for a cohesive drama (which is what this is - it doesn't set out to be an official report) if every small piece of information gathered were acted exactly as it happened.

There is also the important matter of protecting the victims. As we know, there will always be those who assume that women unable to prove sexual assault (as though that is even possible most of the time) will be disbelieved and assumed to have 'asked for it'. If someone has made a statement and asked for anonymity, do you think her story should be withheld in case there is a minor inaccuracy that would make people think less of the predatory paedophile necrophiliac rapist that was Jimmy Savile? Up to you, obviously, but that seems to me a strange way to look at it.