Police to publish Savile report

Sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile emerged a year after his death

The scale of sexual offending carried out by Jimmy Savile will be set out later in a joint report by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC.

Revelations that Savile had sexually abused girls prompted hundreds of other victims to come forward.

These included those who said they were attacked on BBC premises.

The report is expected to reveal that Savile’s abuse extended to many hospitals, and that he allegedly assaulted someone at a hospice.

The television presenter died at the age of 84 in October 2011, a year before allegations emerged in an ITV documentary.

Historical abuse

Friday’s report, called Giving Victims a Voice, will set out what Scotland Yard and the NSPCC have discovered about Jimmy Savile since they launched the inquiry – Operation Yewtree – three months ago.

By mid-December, police had recorded almost 200 allegations against him including 31 rapes, following information from 450 victims.

The detective leading the investigation has described Savile, whose crimes are thought to span 50 years, as a “predatory sex offender”.

The report is expected to show that Savile carried out a large number of sexual assaults on BBC premises, including Television Centre in west London where the children’s programme Jim’ll Fix It was recorded.

About a dozen hospitals are believed to have been identified by victims as locations where abuse was carried out, and at least one allegation has been made that Savile sexually assaulted someone in a hospice.

The Crown Prosecution Service will also publish a review of a decision in 2009 not to charge Savile with sexual offences after investigations by police in Surrey and Sussex.

‘Cathartic process’

Liz Dux, from Slater and Gordon Solicitors, who is representing many of the victims, said the police inquiry would bring them justice.

She said: “Operation Yewtree has given them validity. For many of them they have been able to give their statement for the first time in circumstances where they have been dealt with sensitively and they have been believed.

“This has been a very cathartic process for them. Now that the report is out they hope that they can move on to the inquiries, hope that the inquiries are dealt with as swiftly as possible, and that the civil claims will be concluded and that they can get on with the rest of their lives.”

The allegations prompted a series of investigations, including three at the BBC and another by the Department of Health into his role at Broadmoor hospital.

A report by former Sky News chief Nick Pollard into the the dropping of a BBC Newsnight investigation into Savile said the decision was “flawed” and plunged the corporation into “chaos and confusion”.

Operation Yewtree has three strands – claims against Savile, claims against Savile and others, and claims against others.

One victim, Deborah Cogger, was abused by Savile when she was aged 14 at Duncroft, an approved school for girls in Staines, Surrey, in 1974.

She said she hoped publication of the police report would help to bring things to an end.

“It’s helped me and I’m sure it’s helped a lot of others too,” she said.

“Just to be able to finally be believed – it’s not even telling the story – it’s being believed.

“I think it’s given a lot of people closure, not just the Savile case, abuse in general. Now it’s being spoken about, it’s been brought to the fore, and for a lot of historical cases it’s helped a lot of people. “

Savile was a BBC Radio 1 DJ as well as a presenter of Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It on the BBC, and was knighted in 1990.