the sir jimmy savile obe thread
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
and with the usual aside of 'if guilty', each one of these subsequent cases is a reply to those who were giving it the 'why bother, what can it achieve' when the original Savile inquiry was announced after his death.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Yes, particularly 40 odd years on. They've either got something very specific or they are willing to 'lose a few' in these circumstances. Needless to say, I've no idea about his guilt or otherwise, but it is reasonable to assume these cases may well not have gone to trial if the CPS weren't in the spotlight post Savile.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Ammo for the defense?
elbows
Well-Known Member
As per the other thread, this isnt the first stuff Roache has been charged with, there were rape charges at the start of May which seem to have lead to more people coming forwards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22806885
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22806885
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes, two BBC producers who they have since decided not to charge. And Saviles driver who has been charged.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Does that matter? But, given that it's an investigation that largely focuses on - start point - famous people then what do you expect?
elbows
Well-Known Member
blimey. latest name allegedly linked to yewtree is a high status, well loved british actor.
Thats not a new rumour either. Its just part of a long-standing twitter guessing game that is usually based on fairly feeble 'evidence' and flares up from time to time, often not related to any actual legal events that are occurring at that moment. I forget the exact details of why his name floats around on twitter sometimes but I believe its due to someone he associated with being in trouble for offences in the past. I wouldnt give it the slightest credence unless something else actually happens, it is understandable that people gossip but there are some absolute scumbags on twitter who have no concept of what counts as proper evidence at all and think its fine to smear people left, right and centre.
Yup - how does he do it as he's lifted the the backing music from Ian Brown's Stellify and added his own vocals which are pretty brilliant IMHO. It won't be up long before YT pulls it.
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
I had a dream last night that I was fighting in a battle against an army led by Kevin Webster.
Socrates on Gossip
In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC) Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?"
"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?" The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued. "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really"
"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"
The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
People should be following mark Williams - Thomas today as he reveals 40 year cover up of BBC top of the Pops investigation.
https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas
Sounds like some big names will be coming up.
Mark Williams-Thomas
I can tell you that where evidence exists Op.Yewtree & Op.Fairbamk will pursue anyone - no matter who they are & this is being done
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
story
Changing the facts
Some may recall that I was molested by Jimmy Savile when I was a child. I said so on the Savile RIP thread and was accused of bullshit by one poster, and doubted and mocked by others, including mods. While not wanting to drag up old Urban beef, I do want to state that that was a difficult and detrimental thread for me, and I still feel aggrieved by some of the stuff that was said at the time. I also feel continuing gratitude towards those who stood up for me at the time.
I spent yesterday with the NSPCC, who are conducting a review of the police on behalf of HMIC, looking at police knowledge and response to the Savile scandal. They have already run several groups with people who were assaulted by Savile, with several more to go. This part of the process will be completed in September.
There were six of us present (10 were invited but 4 failed to attend) and two lovely facilitators. There were men and women present, of different ethnic groups. While being careful to respect confidentiality, I do feel able to say that I was astonished at the indiscriminate range of people affected by Savile. One woman had been assaulted at four years old. She was delivered to JS's dressing room by a minder, who then stood guard outside the door while JS assaulted her orally, and demanded she do the same to him. When he was finished he knocked on the door from inside and the minder came in to fetch the child and took her back to her seat in the auditorium. A man in the group had been assaulted at 18 years old whilst in Dartmoor, in the days when homosexuality was still illegal. He said he'd not reported it for fear that strings would be pulled to keep him in Dartmoor forever. A woman - assaulted at 14 years old while at Stoke Mandeville - told how she had reported it and been told to pipe down. She also reported that she was told that he was known for this kind of thing, and the girls must be careful around him. Another woman had been assaulted at 11 years old whilst on a cruise ship. She reported it to her parents, who told the crew, who said that the child must have imagined it. Nothing more was done.
Whether or not Savile's enablers will be sought for prosecution was not discussed in yesterday's group. Dartmoor is intending to run an internal review of their own. They have invited the man to come to Dartmoor to talk about his experience. He has refused, saying that he will never set foot there again. The fact that Dartmoor expects him to come to them was considered to be absurd, and the NSPCC said they'd be willing to try to get Dartmoor to conduct any review in a manner that is appropriate and respectful.
I am staggered at the scale of this.
Lots of details have come back to me about what happened, and I'm starting to see that I have been hiding from some of the reality of what he did to me. Having details corroborated by others has highlighted some of my own memories. We all remembered the smell of him. I can clearly recall the feel of his hands now, which I didn't before, and allowing that to come through has made it apparent to me that it was worse that I had previously remembered.
While my assault was very minor in the scheme of things, hearing the stories of others' has made me feel more horrified by it all. It feels as if the bullet grazed me on the way to hitting others. The older people in the group reported feelings of great guilt that they didn't make a better job of reporting their own assault, so that he was stopped. One woman said she had attended the group in an effort to redress that. At the end she turned to each of us and apologised. And who should apologise to her? She was reminded that, like others in the room, she HAD reported it, but nothing was done. Our general feeling at the end of the day was that the whole review process, and our contribution to it, might serve to shift general attitudes about how we receive reports of abuse by children and the vulnerable.
Those who accused me of making it up, or inventing, or misinterpreting what happened to me: I urge you to take a look at your attitudes. It is now obvious that the default response of "He/she's making it up, lying, imagining it, exaggerating, misinterpreting... it can't be true..." is an issue: it enables the abuser, and it disempowers the victim. This was what happened when I came out on the RIP thread, and that is what happened to other children who told on him. Hopefully this case (and others like it, such as the Cambridge case) will mark a sea change in the ways we listen to children who make accusations of sexual assault and abuse.
Oh, and by the way, apparently he was also raping adults, and he was still predatory and abusive right up til the end of his life. Opportunities were fewer, but his proclivities did not dim.
I spent yesterday with the NSPCC, who are conducting a review of the police on behalf of HMIC, looking at police knowledge and response to the Savile scandal. They have already run several groups with people who were assaulted by Savile, with several more to go. This part of the process will be completed in September.
There were six of us present (10 were invited but 4 failed to attend) and two lovely facilitators. There were men and women present, of different ethnic groups. While being careful to respect confidentiality, I do feel able to say that I was astonished at the indiscriminate range of people affected by Savile. One woman had been assaulted at four years old. She was delivered to JS's dressing room by a minder, who then stood guard outside the door while JS assaulted her orally, and demanded she do the same to him. When he was finished he knocked on the door from inside and the minder came in to fetch the child and took her back to her seat in the auditorium. A man in the group had been assaulted at 18 years old whilst in Dartmoor, in the days when homosexuality was still illegal. He said he'd not reported it for fear that strings would be pulled to keep him in Dartmoor forever. A woman - assaulted at 14 years old while at Stoke Mandeville - told how she had reported it and been told to pipe down. She also reported that she was told that he was known for this kind of thing, and the girls must be careful around him. Another woman had been assaulted at 11 years old whilst on a cruise ship. She reported it to her parents, who told the crew, who said that the child must have imagined it. Nothing more was done.
Whether or not Savile's enablers will be sought for prosecution was not discussed in yesterday's group. Dartmoor is intending to run an internal review of their own. They have invited the man to come to Dartmoor to talk about his experience. He has refused, saying that he will never set foot there again. The fact that Dartmoor expects him to come to them was considered to be absurd, and the NSPCC said they'd be willing to try to get Dartmoor to conduct any review in a manner that is appropriate and respectful.
I am staggered at the scale of this.
Lots of details have come back to me about what happened, and I'm starting to see that I have been hiding from some of the reality of what he did to me. Having details corroborated by others has highlighted some of my own memories. We all remembered the smell of him. I can clearly recall the feel of his hands now, which I didn't before, and allowing that to come through has made it apparent to me that it was worse that I had previously remembered.
While my assault was very minor in the scheme of things, hearing the stories of others' has made me feel more horrified by it all. It feels as if the bullet grazed me on the way to hitting others. The older people in the group reported feelings of great guilt that they didn't make a better job of reporting their own assault, so that he was stopped. One woman said she had attended the group in an effort to redress that. At the end she turned to each of us and apologised. And who should apologise to her? She was reminded that, like others in the room, she HAD reported it, but nothing was done. Our general feeling at the end of the day was that the whole review process, and our contribution to it, might serve to shift general attitudes about how we receive reports of abuse by children and the vulnerable.
Those who accused me of making it up, or inventing, or misinterpreting what happened to me: I urge you to take a look at your attitudes. It is now obvious that the default response of "He/she's making it up, lying, imagining it, exaggerating, misinterpreting... it can't be true..." is an issue: it enables the abuser, and it disempowers the victim. This was what happened when I came out on the RIP thread, and that is what happened to other children who told on him. Hopefully this case (and others like it, such as the Cambridge case) will mark a sea change in the ways we listen to children who make accusations of sexual assault and abuse.
Oh, and by the way, apparently he was also raping adults, and he was still predatory and abusive right up til the end of his life. Opportunities were fewer, but his proclivities did not dim.
story
Changing the facts
My post was too long for one entry, so here is part two
Some of the questions that were put to us:
-Do you trust the police? This was answered with a unanimous No.
-Do you feel that the police are there to advise the public, or are they only available for emergencies? Nobody said they'd go to the police for advice about anything.
-Did you report your assault to the police at the time? Again, a unanimous No.
-When you did decide to make a report, did you call the police in the first instance? Nobody did. Everyone was encouraged to go to the police by the person to whom they made their first disclosure... apart from me. The thing that prompted me to call the police was the RIP thread. I was so incensed by the response I got on that thread, and I felt so disempowered by it that I decided must stand up and say something. As it happened, my call to Scotland Yard was the first they received; they had not yet set up an incident room and didn't know how to deal with my call.
-For those who were in institutions at the time of the assault, did you feel that there was anyone to whom you could report what happened? In both cases the answer was No.
The facilitators told us that the police were taking their own failure very seriously indeed, and this review process is an attempt to look at that. I suggest that each of us should also look at ways in which we may also be contributing to such failures.
We were asked to discuss ideas about how to make it more possible for children and others at risk to report their experiences, and the dangers inherent in setting up such a system (e.g. malicious reports). We kept coming back to the question of who a child could tell, and to whom that person could then report it. The necessity for a strong supple responsive line of communication was identified, but how to implement such a thing, and what form it might take seemed problematic.
We were also asked if we thought it should be mandatory to report concerns about abuse to the authorities. Somebody said that it ought to be an ethical or moral obligation to do so, and it is a sorry state of affairs to find that we are collectively so muddied about this. Our apparent current default of doubting the child was deemed to be a central fault here. However, swinging too far the other way was also a concern, with the attendant risk of witch-hunts. Concerns about malicious reports came up, and the worry that introducing such a system could erode the tenet of innocence until proven guilty where abuse is concerned. We also discussed the problems and conflicts that might arise when the suspected abuser is a member of the family or a loved one. And of course there was plenty of talk about how Savile used his fame and reputation to enable his activities, the implications of that, and the current round of accusations and arrests of people in the public arena.
Given what happened on the RIP thread, I am very chary of making this post. I no longer feel that Urban is a safe place to share personal stuff, and I have not done so since that time. I doubt that I will again. Saying "It's only the internet" is a nonsense, especially when organisations like Childline and the Samaritans are using any and all internet facilities available to reach out to people and make it possible for us all to get help when we need it. If some of us choose to do that on communities like this one, that should come as no surprise. Indeed, Urban has often proved that it can be a safe place (for instance that thread in the Benefits forum), but in this instance, for me, it was not. Is that a fault of mine, or of this community? I felt at the time, and still feel, that I made a terrible mistake by coming out here: I was stupid and foolish, and I still regret it. I may yet regret this post and remove or edit it.
I have received some kind supportive PMs, for which I am grateful, and which have been really helpful to me. I admit to wanting a direct apology for the accusation of bullshit etc. But even if that's not forthcoming, I hope the people concerned will give it some proper thought and try to understand the effects of such an attitude on the individual, and on the larger picture.
Some of the questions that were put to us:
-Do you trust the police? This was answered with a unanimous No.
-Do you feel that the police are there to advise the public, or are they only available for emergencies? Nobody said they'd go to the police for advice about anything.
-Did you report your assault to the police at the time? Again, a unanimous No.
-When you did decide to make a report, did you call the police in the first instance? Nobody did. Everyone was encouraged to go to the police by the person to whom they made their first disclosure... apart from me. The thing that prompted me to call the police was the RIP thread. I was so incensed by the response I got on that thread, and I felt so disempowered by it that I decided must stand up and say something. As it happened, my call to Scotland Yard was the first they received; they had not yet set up an incident room and didn't know how to deal with my call.
-For those who were in institutions at the time of the assault, did you feel that there was anyone to whom you could report what happened? In both cases the answer was No.
The facilitators told us that the police were taking their own failure very seriously indeed, and this review process is an attempt to look at that. I suggest that each of us should also look at ways in which we may also be contributing to such failures.
We were asked to discuss ideas about how to make it more possible for children and others at risk to report their experiences, and the dangers inherent in setting up such a system (e.g. malicious reports). We kept coming back to the question of who a child could tell, and to whom that person could then report it. The necessity for a strong supple responsive line of communication was identified, but how to implement such a thing, and what form it might take seemed problematic.
We were also asked if we thought it should be mandatory to report concerns about abuse to the authorities. Somebody said that it ought to be an ethical or moral obligation to do so, and it is a sorry state of affairs to find that we are collectively so muddied about this. Our apparent current default of doubting the child was deemed to be a central fault here. However, swinging too far the other way was also a concern, with the attendant risk of witch-hunts. Concerns about malicious reports came up, and the worry that introducing such a system could erode the tenet of innocence until proven guilty where abuse is concerned. We also discussed the problems and conflicts that might arise when the suspected abuser is a member of the family or a loved one. And of course there was plenty of talk about how Savile used his fame and reputation to enable his activities, the implications of that, and the current round of accusations and arrests of people in the public arena.
Given what happened on the RIP thread, I am very chary of making this post. I no longer feel that Urban is a safe place to share personal stuff, and I have not done so since that time. I doubt that I will again. Saying "It's only the internet" is a nonsense, especially when organisations like Childline and the Samaritans are using any and all internet facilities available to reach out to people and make it possible for us all to get help when we need it. If some of us choose to do that on communities like this one, that should come as no surprise. Indeed, Urban has often proved that it can be a safe place (for instance that thread in the Benefits forum), but in this instance, for me, it was not. Is that a fault of mine, or of this community? I felt at the time, and still feel, that I made a terrible mistake by coming out here: I was stupid and foolish, and I still regret it. I may yet regret this post and remove or edit it.
I have received some kind supportive PMs, for which I am grateful, and which have been really helpful to me. I admit to wanting a direct apology for the accusation of bullshit etc. But even if that's not forthcoming, I hope the people concerned will give it some proper thought and try to understand the effects of such an attitude on the individual, and on the larger picture.
Lord Camomile
Yipchaa!
I'm sorry that you don't feel urban is safe place to share anymore, but I certainly am appreciative you did this time, and I think it's very brave.
What you said makes for very hard reading, but it's important that it can be read (and written, obviously). On a personal level, I have been very, very fortunate in that I've never really come into contact with this kind of thing, even indirectly (although the latter of course I may unknowingly have), so to gain any kind of insight is important to me.
Good luck to you
What you said makes for very hard reading, but it's important that it can be read (and written, obviously). On a personal level, I have been very, very fortunate in that I've never really come into contact with this kind of thing, even indirectly (although the latter of course I may unknowingly have), so to gain any kind of insight is important to me.
Good luck to you
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
Please don't edit or remove it.
little_legs
Поехали!
You are very brave person story
I've been meaning to say the same thing to existentialist
I take my hat off to both of you.
I've been meaning to say the same thing to existentialist
I take my hat off to both of you.
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
Fair play to you story for putting your story out there, and sorry to hear about what happened on the other thread
Agree with Dillinger. Leave it there. You deserve to be heard
Agree with Dillinger. Leave it there. You deserve to be heard
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