Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

the sir jimmy savile obe thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
kebabking said:
while i wouldn't rule it out - and accept entirely that WYP in the 60's/70's/80's/90's weren't exactly paragons of virtue - isn't it just as likely that the lack of direct evidence is caused by the same things that cause the 'lack of evidence' in every other organistion this has happened to: that in the 60's/70's/80's society was not, by and large, bothered by older men having sex with older children and tended to dismiss complaints without even looking at them long enough to invoke the 'old boys network', and that the relationship between the alleged abuser and the organisation you'd complain to seemed sufficiently close to make it not worth the effort to make a complaint?

if you were 13 yo girl in Leeds who Saville had 'touched up' or worse, and you saw him on the local news playing golf with the CC and doing a crime awareness campaign with most of Roundhay Police Station, and he'd told you (as some have reported him doing) that he was best mates with the police, and you'd be arrested for making it up, would you bother making a complaint in the first place?

Saville was not a celebrity who raped children on the side, he was a rapist who became a celebrity precisely to cultivate the kind of relationships with the media, police, civic society and politicians that would give him the cover and access that he needed to carry on being a rapist. he groomed the police because he needed a public persona that said he was a 'good bloke' who was 'in' with the Police, in the same way he groomed the NHS to get access to children, and the same way he groomed the media to spike anything that suggested he was a wrong 'un.

all of those bodies have questions to answer, but Saville deliberately set out to penetrate and use those organisations for his own ends and against themselves - he would have been a fucking excellent spy.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but the report stinks, like most other stuff connected with this case. There are clearly some avenues of inquiry that are yet to be revealed, and the discrepancy between the recollections of individual detectives and the organisation hardly inspires confidence in the integrity of the investigation.

Intelligence about Savile's offending was mishandled a number of times, the report found, including in 1998 when West Yorkshire police failed to properly record an anonymous letter that made sexual abuse allegations about the late Top of the Pops host.
The letter was forwarded by a Metropolitan police officer from its clubs and vice unit, who told Operation Newgreen that it was "common knowledge within the team in the late 1980s and early 1990s that Savile was a paedophile". The letter is being separately investigated by the police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Assistant Chief Constable Ingrid Lee, the author of the report, told the Today programme: "That information [the 1998 anonymous letter] is the subject of an IPCC referral so it would be wrong of me to discuss that in further detail to allow them to conduct their inquiries."
Click to expand...

A former detective from the Leeds vice squad said he believed there had been an investigation into allegations of indecent assault by Savile on two girls in the early 1980s, but this was uncorroborated by other retired officers.
In its report, West Yorkshire police said: "Despite numerous interviews, system searches and inquiries with other agencies, the review team found no evidence of any previous allegations being made to WYP against Savile, or of any investigations being conducted."
Click to expand...

Hmmm...
 
brogdale said:
...Hmmm...
Click to expand...

people covering their backs? if, as seems the case, WYP 'knew' he was noncing on their patch, but like other police forces in the same position couldn't get a case anywhere near to prosecution standards, they have made an attempt to ditch any evidence on the basis that its going to be easier to claim ignorance of the whole thing than explain why they had all this information and never even got to charging him?

i do not doubt that there has been some 'cover' going on - that investigations got canned on the basis that 'its Jimmy Savile - he's best mates with the Chief Super - don't bother mate', and that some organisations tacitly accepted his noncing as the price to pay for a bit of celebrity (and that these people and organisations are guilty of very serious crimes, for which they should pay) but i think there is a very real danger that we are glossing over Savilles success in infiltrating these organisations. there is a veiw that if we make our procedures strong enough another Saville can't happen - which ignore completely the way that Saville used his celebrity to get those organisations to put aside the rules (however meagre they may have been) that they had at the time.

all of the organisations that Saville used had rules about old men having sex with children - and about setting those rules aside - the problem was never really the rules and procedure (woefull as they may have been) it was Savilles ability to get people to ignore them.
 
kebabking said:
people covering their backs? if, as seems the case, WYP 'knew' he was noncing on their patch, but like other police forces in the same position couldn't get a case anywhere near to prosecution standards, they have made an attempt to ditch any evidence on the basis that its going to be easier to claim ignorance of the whole thing than explain why they had all this information and never even got to charging him?

i do not doubt that there has been some 'cover' going on - that investigations got canned on the basis that 'its Jimmy Savile - he's best mates with the Chief Super - don't bother mate', and that some organisations tacitly accepted his noncing as the price to pay for a bit of celebrity (and that these people and organisations are guilty of very serious crimes, for which they should pay) but i think there is a very real danger that we are glossing over Savilles success in infiltrating these organisations. there is a veiw that if we make our procedures strong enough another Saville can't happen - which ignore completely the way that Saville used his celebrity to get those organisations to put aside the rules (however meagre they may have been) that they had at the time.

all of the organisations that Saville used had rules about old men having sex with children - and about setting those rules aside - the problem was never really the rules and procedure (woefull as they may have been) it was Savilles ability to get people to ignore them.
Click to expand...
Someone mentioned earlier about Savile "grooming the NHS", and I think that's spot-on: what Savile did was a lot of very effective grooming of a lot of organisations. And he did it in a way that played neatly into these organisations' vulnerabilities, just the way that sex abusers take advantage of their victims' vulnerabilities to take advantage of them.

So, in amongst the recriminations, perhaps we need to see these organisations as victims in order to look at how we might help them - the way we try to help children be less vulnerable to predators - to be less vulnerable to this kind of organisational grooming?
 
I'm not sure if I would apply the word grooming to these institutional failures. One reason why is that the nature of the power bargain between the abuser and the institution may not leave the institution as a victim as that word is commonly understood. Because in many instances it is not the institution that is harmed, rather it gains (eg via charity revenue), and its the people its supposed to serve that end up victims. Any reputation damage it may suffer years later when the truth comes out is hard to see as being damage of the sort the real victims suffer.
 
elbows said:
I'm not sure if I would apply the word grooming to these institutional failures. One reason why is that the nature of the power bargain between the abuser and the institution may not leave the institution as a victim as that word is commonly understood. Because in many instances it is not the institution that is harmed, rather it gains (eg via charity revenue), and its the people its supposed to serve that end up victims. Any reputation damage it may suffer years later when the truth comes out is hard to see as being damage of the sort the real victims suffer.
Click to expand...

while i see your point about the gain that the organisations got at the time, it still doesn't detract from the fact that they were being deliberately 'played' from the outset by someone who was seeking to nullify the organisations purpose for their own, hidden, gain.

if i give you a chololate bar laced with rat poison you might well eat the chocolate, enjoy it, chomp on it and feel nice and full (and so have gained by eating it) - but its still poison, you'll still be incredibly ill, and you'll still be a victim of poisoning and i'll still be able to do what i like to you while you slump into unconciousness and foam gently at the mouth.

what Savile did to these organistions was, in effect, the same thing: he presented a front, infiltrated them, poisoned them and his poison destroyed their ability to a) see that they had been incapacitated, and b) stop him from using their incapacitation for his own ends.

i think the spying analogy is a good one - Kim Philby 'groomed' SIS by being, on the face of it, a bloody effective officer with friends and admirers in most parts of the service - he was so good at hiding his treachery because he deliberately joined the section of SIS that dealt with threats to SIS's security, so he was able to use his position to negate anyone who came to SIS/CIA and said 'you've got a leak'. yes SIS was wilfully blind about Philby, yes it missed massive red flags (aha!), and yes it was utterly crap in keeping hold of him when they started to twig - but Philby was playing them against themselves, he joined them specifically to determine and exploit their weaknesses, and he did so. Savile is not much different, and he was dealing with coppers, producers, hospital administrators and hacks, not intelligence officers.
 
Double-agent spies undermine the central purpose of the spy agencies. Saviles relationship with many institutions was quite different. The tories got their fundraiser which played nicely into to their public funding cuts agenda. Stoke Mandeville got their new building. The BBC got their ratings. Yes Savile abused their trust, making them at least partially complicit in his crimes. But when we rely too strongly on a narrative of them being victims, I'm not sure as that helps to reform their weaknesses. It provides cover for individuals and structures to shirk responsibility. They had a duty of care towards the ultimate victims of Saviles crimes, and even decades later they are keen to paper over the cracks that caused these failings. Although perhaps by describing themselves as poor victims they are more able to admit their failings, in which case I can appreciate your point, but it still doesnt leave the right taste in my mouth.
 
elbows said:
...Saviles relationship with many institutions was quite different....
Click to expand...

i hold the opposite view - the Polices role was to uphold the law regarding old men touching and raping yonug girls, Saviles infiltration/ingratiation got them to stop doing that - the NHS's role was to protect children, Savile's infiltration/ingratiation got them to provide him with a 'free fire zone' - the media's role was the exposure of wrong-doing (you, at the back - stop laughing), Saviles infiltration/ingratiation got them to ignore/spike allegations about him.

his ability to influence - or make it look like he influenced - organisations got those organisations to do the exact opposite of what they were supposed to be doing.

i am not, to be clear, saying 'poor Police/NHS/BBC/etc...', i am saying that while CP rules and procedures are important, as important is a culture that trains people in organisations and as individuals to recognise when they are being played and groomed by someone who wishes to use them. very few of these organisations did not have rules about CP and access to children, and infact few of these organisations did not have people in them who though he was bad news - the problem was that these organisations and the decision makers at all levels within them were so compromised by the 'Jimmy is a good bloke who'se in with everybody' act that they didn't apply the rules.
 
ymu said:
Here ya go, Reno. I finally found the words.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I still don't think that gives you anymore information about someone I personally knew and you have only read a couple of sentences about on this forum through me. Basically you are claiming that our bosses, who you don't know anything about, must have sexually harassed her.

I have enough women in my life to know that their life experience isn't identical to each other and also that they don't process experience in an identical way.
 
kebabking said:
his ability to influence - or make it look like he influenced - organisations got those organisations to do the exact opposite of what they were supposed to be doing.
Click to expand...

Apart from the police I dont think 'exact opposite' is accurate.

i am not, to be clear, saying 'poor Police/NHS/BBC/etc...', i am saying that while CP rules and procedures are important, as important is a culture that trains people in organisations and as individuals to recognise when they are being played and groomed by someone who wishes to use them. very few of these organisations did not have rules about CP and access to children, and infact few of these organisations did not have people in them who though he was bad news - the problem was that these organisations and the decision makers at all levels within them were so compromised by the 'Jimmy is a good bloke who'se in with everybody' act that they didn't apply the rules.
Click to expand...

Well this is a key point which is often glossed over by reassurances that 'things are different now'. To an extent they are, I'm not sure that the child protection rules were codified and given prominence during a large part of Saviles offending years. I dont doubt that it would be harder for an individual to operate as Savile did now, although I'm sure there are still weaknesses and I'm not complacent. Some of the words that poured out of Esther Rantzen are probably worthy of further exploration when looking at stuff such as turning a blind eye or certain interests trumping others.

And no, I dont think you are saying poor police etc, but my comments have been at least partially sponsored by the fact that when these themes have come up in the mainstream post-Savile, that aspect has very much been present.
 
Good stuff from the torygraph; exposing WYP report as factually incorrect...

The force only admitted Savile had four five-year-old victims on Saturday after repeated questions from this newspaper.
In a 59-page report on its dealings with the serial paedophile published last week it suggested there was one victim of that age.
A spokesman for the force said the report might have been “slightly misleading”, while one MP said it appeared the force’s account of events was “unravelling”.
Click to expand...
:facepalm:
 
THe police certainly don't seem to have got the knack for making reports that seem at least vaguely credible yet.
 
brogdale said:
Good stuff from the torygraph; exposing WYP report as factually incorrect...


:facepalm:
Click to expand...
And their pressure now results in an external inquiry into:

Assistant Chief Constable Ingrid Lee’s business relationship with serving and retired officers of West Yorkshire Police.
Mrs Lee commissioned and oversaw the force’s internal inquiry into its dealings with Savile, whose main home was in Leeds and who had a close association with the local police.

He hosted eight officers for regular “Friday Morning Club” meetings in his flat and fronted crime prevention campaigns.
She was placed under investigation yesterday after The Sunday Telegraph found she was a director of a property firm alongside four current or former officers from the force.
Click to expand...
 
yardbird said:
Chris Denning was a one of the Johnathan King crew wasn't he?
Click to expand...

Yes. Served time in prison here and abroad for child sex offences. According to Twitter he's just been released from a Slovakian prison where he's been since 2010 after being done for 'producing child pornography'.

It's possible the police nabbed him as soon as he came back?

He's apparently been arrested under the "others" category. Does "others" mean not celeb/Saville, or not child offences...or something else?

I'm not sure where the other name, being not so subtley hinted at in this thread, has come from but it would be huge if so.
 
Right. I'd have thought most of the arrests would be in "others" then. Twitter is implying that others means not famous. I didn't think that was correct.
 
I wouldnt put too much faith in the most high-profile twitter rumour on this one since plenty of people on there have been waiting for that name with much anticipation. To the extent they will jump at that possibility even more readily than usual, and with even less evidence.
 
Fez909 said:
Right. I'd have thought most of the arrests would be in "others" then. Twitter is implying that others means not famous. I didn't think that was correct.
Click to expand...

Indeed thats not correct. Apart from Freddie Starr, Gary Glitter and a non-celebrity who was associated with Savile, all the others have been under the category of others.
 
Graham Ovenden convicted for sex offenses involving children just got a suspended 12-month jail term :facepalm:
(He's an artist of some note for those who never heard of him).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Pickman's model
Sir mark rowley's time is up
2
Replies
38
Views
2K
GarveyLives
G
blossie33
Sir Mo Farah reveals he was trafficked to the UK as a child
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
Lord Camomile
Lord Camomile
Jeff Robinson
Thread to document institutional animal abuse
2
Replies
52
Views
2K
bcuster
bcuster
Pickman's model
sir stephen house's time is up
Replies
5
Views
570
GarveyLives
G
T & P
Arise Sir Tony (Blair)
9 10 11 12 13
Replies
367
Views
13K
gosub
gosub
Back
Top Bottom