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Owzabout That Then? The Jimmy Savile Revelations & Aftermath

Let's consider Benny Hill for a moment .. saucy routines were his stock and trade, he was never married, never had any children, there were rumours that he was gay and after his mother died, he built a shrine to her. That ticks every contemporary 'psycho' box so far. He left 7.2 million due to frugal spending that couldn't be left to the people he wanted it to go to so distant relatives got his cash .. back in the days before fake historic sex crimes reports were so lucrative the money was fairly distributed instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill
 
Coastaljames said:
The vast, vast majority of sexual offences are carried out by family members or friends. The offender is nearly always known, generally intimately, by the victim. The idea of the predatory and unknown sex offender is largely a media creation.
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That is part of the wider issue. 'stranger danger' is almost negligible compared with assaults by people who are known and trusted.

It's actually very hard to tell your children that even people 'we know' are not allowed to behave in a certain way. You can make it abundantly clear there is nothing no God's green earth that you wouldn't forgive them for, plus as I've said before as a parent, knowing all this, you are watchful.

Swifty said:
Let's consider Benny Hill for a moment .. saucy routines were his stock and trade, he was never married, never had any children, there were rumours that he was gay and after his mother died, he built a shrine to her. That ticks every contemporary 'psycho' box so far. He left 7.2 million due to frugal spending that couldn't be left to the people he wanted it to go to so distant relatives got his cash .. back in the days before fake historic sex crimes reports were so lucrative the money was fairly distributed instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill
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I distinctly recall one of his regular ladies saying in interview that being 'nice' to Benny was part of the gig.
 
Rumours that one was gay might have had serious consequences for a career even in the 60's. And if one has concealed one's tendencies into adulthood it becomes a habit that is hard to break even if the world no longer finds it a problem.

That's not the same as rumours of child abuse.

No doubt the police thought they were on to a similar winner with Cliff. Convicting people in the 'court of public opinion' based on rumour is plain wrong.

With Savile, the police had actual complaints while he was still alive and did not follow up on them - I don't blame them for not pursuing scuttlebut which was around much earlier - although I do blame anyone (not a victim) who had actual evidence and did nothing about it. Surely the security services must have investigated him at some point, given his closeness to senior politicians and royalty? And it seems highly likely that there were people at the BBC who had suspicions that went beyond rumour.
 
Cochise said:
Rumours that one was gay might have had serious consequences for a career even in the 60's. And if one has concealed one's tendencies into adulthood it becomes a habit that is hard to break even if the world no longer finds it a problem.

That's not the same as rumours of child abuse.

No doubt the police thought they were on to a similar winner with Cliff. Convicting people in the 'court of public opinion' based on rumour is plain wrong.

With Savile, the police had actual complaints while he was still alive and did not follow up on them - I don't blame them for not pursuing scuttlebut which was around much earlier - although I do blame anyone (not a victim) who had actual evidence and did nothing about it. Surely the security services must have investigated him at some point, given his closeness to senior politicians and royalty? And it seems highly likely that there were people at the BBC who had suspicions that went beyond rumour.
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To me, this cuts to the very heart of the matter, I'm unapologetically left-wing and really can't believe the predelictions of someone so close to and involved with the "establishment" weren't well known. If that's the case I can only draw the conclusion that the "establishment" knew and just didn't care, after all, the abused were grubby lower class oiks, they were expendable, worthless even.
 
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Coal said:
The official report said as much.
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So what action has been taken? None, as far as I know.

Mouldy13 said:
If that's the case I can only draw the conclusion that the "establishment" knew and just didn't care, after all, the abused were grubby lower class oiks, the were expendable, worthless even.
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Not quite the way I'd have put it, but I agree with the assessment.
 
The necrophiliac stories about Savile sounds incredible. They said he visited morgues in hospitals. Paul Gambaccini have mentioned it.
 
Mouldy13 said:
To me, this cuts to the very heart of the matter, I'm unapologetically left-wing and really can't believe the predelictions of someone so close to and involved with the "establishment" weren't well known. If that's the case I can only draw the conclusion that the "establishment" knew and just didn't care, after all, the abused were grubby lower class oiks, they were expendable, worthless even.
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I think it could be a case of the "establishment" knowing and using that knowledge to have some sort of leverage on the person and to use them for their own advantage.
 
I seem to recall that during Savile's glory years, the BBC had a resident intelligence officer.

Googling this, I expected to find his name. He was often referred to in places such as Private Eye and The New Statesman during the Thatcher years. By which time he had moved on.

I think they referred to him as "The Colonel" or "The Captain."

The Spycatcher faction tended to think he was a bit useless, if I remember rightly. They wanted any "pinkoes" banned from the airwaves. As his brief was essentially political, Savile's cozy Conservatism may have exempted his sleazy private life from the scrutiny it deserved. :eek:
 
Mouldy13 said:
...the "establishment" knew and just didn't care...
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Saville was a very, very close friend of Prince Charles. Thatcher had him for Christmas at dinner at Checkers every year. I'd say it wasn't that people didn't care, rather that to say he had friends in high places was an understatement.
 
Coastaljames said:
The vast, vast majority of sexual offences are carried out by family members or friends. The offender is nearly always known, generally intimately, by the victim. The idea of the predatory and unknown sex offender is largely a media creation.
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Yup, absolutely. Of course, children didn't personally know Savile, Harris, Hall and the rest of the famous abusers but they trusted them because their parents did. This made them vulnerable.
 
^ Whilst I'd agree largely with that point I'd also point out that the media never reported on the thousands of kids abused by nobodies.

The celeb-abusers are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority.
 
Coastaljames said:
Saville was a very, very close friend of Prince Charles. Thatcher had him for Christmas at dinner at Checkers every year. I'd say it wasn't that people didn't care, rather that to say he had friends in high places was an understatement.
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I read somewhere that Carol Thatcher completely denied the Christmas dinner thing, and that was well before he died and the accusations came out.
Hmm can't find it though. So not a very good point!!
Having said that, is there any evidence in the opposite direction? Again, is it just people repeating stuff "they know" or "they read"?

I'm not a denier. I think forteans should talk about evidence. Not rumour.

edit: found this at the daily mail from 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221229/Prince-Charless-Flyfishers-Club-bans-women.html

(not that I would usually give the daily mail much credence ;)
 
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Mythopoeika said:
Is the bus ready?
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That late 20th century chant "You're either on the bus, or under the bus" would also seem appropriate in terms of the anger being displayed by a Cliff pushed over the edge.

That BBC news helicopter stunt during the Police raid was simply astounding... that's a US trope, befitting OJ Simpson or Sarah Palin much-more than the UK's Peter Pan of Pop.

Cliff (just like Peter) may, back in the day, have had challenges with shadows, darlings, lost boys or pirates. But in that era (a timeline which many stars shared with Jimmy) it really did seem to very nearly be standard fare.

(And no: 'being on a double-decker' is not a euphemism....)
 
Carse said:
For people who don't use iplayer, what is the allusion please..?
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It refers to a character called Jacko Vance who appears in Val McDermid's Wire in the Blood - a charismatic celebrity who abuses young girls and was based on stories about Savile she had heard when she was a journalist.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
It refers to a character called Jacko Vance who appears in Val McDermid's Wire in the Blood - a charismatic celebrity who abuses young girls and was based on stories about Savile she had heard when she was a journalist.
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She is on record as saying she met JS once and based the character on him.
 
I read Wire in the Blood soon after it came out (I'm a huge fan of crime fiction) and even then it was very clearly based on JS. And if you've ever heard the edition of In the Psychiatrist's Chair with Anthony Clare, it was clear that back then, in 1991, that was both a disturbed and disturbing individual. I never liked his TV/radio persona - a DJ with no apparent interest in music - and after listening to In the Psychiatrist's Chair I tried to avoid him entirely.
 
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Probably coming in a bit late here and at the risk of doing this subject to death but this is something close to my heart, having been involved in helping a friend expose a violent paedophile teacher at a local school. The extent to which institutions(clearly relevant currently) will go to cover up allegations of this type of activity has to be experienced to be believed. We were in turn ignored ,vilified, blamed and then threatened by an Executive officer of the Local Authority and others - all to cover up evidence which was in plain sight (not even hidden). No one wanted to know not even the local MP or the Board of Governors all the while the paedophile teacher plied its sordid trade at the school in question. Fortunately I do not take kindly to threats and finally after 6 attempts to get the Police involved I had to have a very "interesting" "discussion" with senior Police officers which eventually resulted in the paedophile getting 3 years. But it took 6 years to do it! Quite why the Authorities considered this acceptable remains a mystery. As a teenager I used to live near where JS mother lived and often saw him in his Roller with "company". Blimey there is a telly interview which shows him saying that God would forgive him for his dalliances with the young ladies. Makes my blood boil! Rant over.
 
cycleboy2 said:
In the Psychiatrist's Chair
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Had a look for that edition and guess what, it's unavailable. I WONDER why?

I did hear it on its first airing and found Savile as creepy as ever. Can't remember much about it except that. There's an extract from it on Youtube which I will listen to

Also heard the hilarious 1989 Mary Whitehouse one -
From Wiki:
In August 1989,[68] in a broadcast of In the Psychiatrist's Chair on BBC Radio, Whitehouse confused the playwright with his hero in The Singing Detective. She claimed that Dennis Potter's mother had "committed adultery with a strange man and that the shock of witnessing this had caused her son to be afflicted"[68] with psoriatic arthropathy. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC[69] and The Listener.[70] Whitehouse claimed she had a blackout at the interview's halfway point and her comments were not intentional.[71]
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:rofl:

Serious face on now -

The current 'football abuse scandal' makes me wonder if it's being taken more seriously because the alleged victims were boys. Y'know, where teenage girls might be groomed and abused by older men, they have often been dismissed as gold diggers or slags or even young but already hardened prostitutes. Their abusers have mainly got away with it.

On the other hand, hearing of young boys and teenage lads being treated in this way is seen as unnatural and so immediately accepted as wrong.

Not to say the boys haven't suffered - far from it - just that they seem to be believed and supported where the girls often haven't been.

Incidentally, when I worked with teenagers in care I met quite a few boys who'd been sexually abused and worked in the sex trade. Nobody seemed to know what to do with them, hardly any more than with the girls. It was a momentous problem for everyone; bad enough for the girls to be on the game, but for boys to even admit it was humiliating.
 
PeteS said:
Probably coming in a bit late here and at the risk of doing this subject to death but this is something close to my heart, having been involved in helping a friend expose a violent paedophile teacher at a local school. The extent to which institutions(clearly relevant currently) will go to cover up allegations of this type of activity has to be experienced to be believed. We were in turn ignored ,vilified, blamed and then threatened by an Executive officer of the Local Authority and others - all to cover up evidence which was in plain sight (not even hidden). No one wanted to know not even the local MP or the Board of Governors all the while the paedophile teacher plied its sordid trade at the school in question. Fortunately I do not take kindly to threats and finally after 6 attempts to get the Police involved I had to have a very "interesting" "discussion" with senior Police officers which eventually resulted in the paedophile getting 3 years. But it took 6 years to do it! Quite why the Authorities considered this acceptable remains a mystery. As a teenager I used to live near where JS mother lived and often saw him in his Roller with "company". Blimey there is a telly interview which shows him saying that God would forgive him for his dalliances with the young ladies. Makes my blood boil! Rant over.
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Good for you! well done mate ..

Both me and my Sister met weird teachers. We both briefly went to same sex schools, I remember her telling me about a teacher (at Highclare School, Sutton Coldfield) who would tell one of the girls to come and sit with him at his desk at the front of the class, he would covertly (behind the desk) give the girl something they called a 'horse bite' she said .. apparently that meant nipping the top of the girl in question's leg (like a crab claw) .... the girls didn't make a fuss about it and just laughed it off at the time :eek: .. it makes you wonder how much further he might have been going ?..

At my school (Wylde Green College, Sutton Coldfield), a male teacher took a shine to me .. nothing weird about that I suppose but I remember once being in a classroom on my own with him as home time was just about to happen when he came out with (in a serious tone of voice) "You like me, don't you?" .. even as a ten year old who had no idea what a pedo was I thought the question was a bit weird .. "Yes Sir, but not when you tell me off" ... "No, that's not what I meant" was his reply .. I got out of that classroom quick sharpish.

At my next school, our janitor, Jock, went to prison for sexually assaulting his Grandaughter .. he lived on site (John Taylor High School, Barton Under Needwood), afterwards his wife had to continue working there, often in the tuck shop .. us lot, being stupid little bastards used to shout "Jock the ripper!" in earshot of her .. I've felt bad about doing that ever since :( .. that poor woman .. Frankie Boyle brought that all back to me with his joke "When I was at school, sex education was a muttered warning about the janitor."
 
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