In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (34 page)

There was no comment either about the fact Jimmy Savile was appearing in a series of newspaper advertisements for Start-rite shoes at the time. The campaign consisted of a full-page photo of the wide-eyed pillar of the establishment holding up an infant’s sandal. The slogan above the picture read: ‘“They’re No. 1 for school, gals!” Jimmy Savile OBE.’

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In 1977, Janie Jones was released from prison. Three years earlier she had been found guilty on seven charges of controlling prostitutes and four charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice at London’s Old Bailey. She had also faced charges of blackmail but been cleared. The madam and former pop singer had spent 200 days on remand and been refused bail on 13 occasions. She was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

At her first Old Bailey trial, Jones had been found not guilty of offering sexual favours to disc jockeys as an inducement to play records. Her part in organising sex parties for President Records in her Kensington flat had nevertheless provided some of the most salacious detail in the payola scandal, the sordid affair exposed by the
News of the World
that had eventually forced Jimmy Savile into defending his own reputation and that of the BBC.

Jones served three years in Holloway where she became friendly with the Moors murderer Myra Hindley, who convinced her the killings of five children were the sole responsibility of her lover, Ian Brady. On her release, Jones became an outspoken supporter of Hindley, arguing she was a reformed woman and should be granted an early release.

It was around this time that she claims to have received a strange summons from Jimmy Savile who had been the DJ at the New
Elizabethan Ballroom, one of Brady and Hindley’s favourite Manchester haunts before their arrest. ‘He was bragging that he had met Ian Brady,’ said Jones. ‘He said it was disgraceful that I was siding with Hindley against [him].’
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Savile could have conceivably met Brady in Manchester or during one of his occasional visits to various maximum-security prisons, although it’s understood the psychopath spent much of his time in solitary confinement. But on what possible grounds could he defend the sadistic Moors murderer?

Perhaps his experiences at Broadmoor had turned Jimmy Savile into a more understanding individual but it’s more likely, in my opinion, that he recognised something of himself in a man who had manipulated and dominated others, and who possessed the same blend of charm, narcissism and utter lack of empathy and remorse for what he had done.

But sticking up for Ian Brady wasn’t all that was on Jimmy Savile’s mind in that meeting, as Janie Jones recalled. He was particularly fascinated by the parties she held at which women dressed as schoolgirls. ‘[Savile] just kept saying that he could not understand why people went on about 13-year-old girls because they were “gagging” for it,’ she said. ‘I told him that anybody who wants to go with a 13-year-old is a paedophile.’

44. YOUR PORTER HURT ME

I
n 1977, a 12-year-old girl went into Stoke Mandeville Hospital to have her tonsils removed. Now in her late forties, she recalls that rather than being in a bed alongside other children, she was put on a geriatric ward.

The woman first reported her experiences to officers working on Operation Yewtree, and this is the subsequent statement she made to a former police child protection officer employed by Slater & Gordon, the firm representing scores of Jimmy Savile’s other victims. Liz Dux, a specialist child abuse lawyer with the firm, employed the services of the child protection expert because, in her words, ‘She was able to say straight away whether she believed they [those making allegations] were telling the truth, because she knows the sort of things that victims remember.’

I feel it is appropriate, with her permission, to let this woman’s account speak for itself.

‘I remember being bored and asking one of the nurses if I could go into the day room to watch television. I imagine she was glad to agree because I had been making a nuisance of myself on the ward. The nurse directed me to a day room which was a short walk down the corridor. I was wearing a flimsy homemade nightdress that came down to my knees, with a dressing gown over the top. I was a very slight build and my hair was in two pigtails.

‘As I went through the ward door on my way to the day room I saw a skinny man wearing a long coat. He was also wearing brown tracksuit-style trousers. By this I mean the trousers that he was wearing had no buttons or a zip. He had white to blond shoulder-length hair and was wearing heavy rings and a gold
chain around his neck. He was smoking a cigar. I didn’t recognise the man at the time.

‘The man asked me, “Where are you going?”. I recall that it was difficult for me to talk because my throat was sore. I said in a very croaky voice, “To the television room”. The man said, “I’ll show you” and he walked me down the corridor. I can’t recall what the man said but he was friendly and I felt comfortable in his company.

‘I recall that as we walked along the corridor the man opened a door which led to a room that contained a mop and bucket. Looking back, I realise that it must have been a cleaning cupboard. The man gave a short laugh and closed the door without going in. Almost immediately afterwards we arrived at the day room.

‘As we arrived at the day room an elderly man was leaving and I saw that he nodded an acknowledgement to the man who was accompanying me. The day room was a small room with a black and white television, which was stood on a low wooden table. There were a number of identical chairs in the room and an armchair. I went and sat on one of the chairs. The man said to me, “Have you got a boyfriend?” I didn’t answer because although I had boys who were friends, I didn’t understand the concept of a boyfriend.

‘The man then leant down in front of me and positioned his body so that he was between my legs. I remember that he had a distinctive muggy odour. The man was gentle, almost caring. As he pushed my legs apart I saw that he had pulled down his trousers, not all the way but sufficiently to expose his penis. I recall that his penis had a distasteful smell. He then manoeuvred himself forward and as I remained seated he inserted his penis into my vagina.

‘I didn’t feel threatened by what he was doing to the point that I recall touching his cheek with the palm of my right hand. His cheek felt very clammy. The man’s penis was only in me for a short time. He then made a groaning noise and ejaculated. He withdrew his penis and then pulled up his trousers. His semen had gone all over the seat I was sitting on and over the inside of my thighs. He
then wiped me and the chair with the front of his white coat. Having done so, he stood up and without saying anything walked out of the room. The door to the room had been open throughout what had happened.

‘I have a distinct memory of getting off the chair and going to the doorway of the day room and watching the man as he walked down the corridor. I watched him until I lost sight of him when he went through some double doors at the end of the corridor.

‘What happened just seemed surreal. I was in shock and unable to put into context what had happened. I felt disorientated and walked back to the ward. I seem to remember initially I couldn’t find my way and went to a couple of other wards before I found mine. I hadn’t been gone very long. The whole thing happened very quickly, probably no more than 15 minutes.

‘As I went back to the ward I said to the nurse who had given me directions to the day room, “Your porter hurt me”. And the nurse said, “Where?” I couldn’t tell her so pointed to the area of my vagina. She said, “Don’t say anything, I’ll get into trouble.”

‘Having received this response I just went and sat on my bed. It was difficult to describe how I felt. I understood what had happened and that it was wrong and I felt strongly that I wanted people to know. I waited for the nurse who I had just told to become involved with a patient and I went over to her desk and got a pen. I tore out two pages of a bible, which was in my bedside unit. The pen I had taken didn’t work so I returned to the nurse’s station and got a pencil. I wrote on one of the torn out pages, “To the doctor. Your porter hurt me. Please ring my Dad.”

The woman said she then wrote down the address and telephone number for her father.

‘I then signed the page,’ she continued, ‘and I posted the sheet of paper in a letterbox that was situated in the corridor beyond my ward. I remember reading the word “letterbox”. The box was red and it was high up. I remember I had difficulty stretching up to post the page. I thought at the time I was posting the note to the doctors at the hospital.

‘The very same night of the rape I was in bed after the lights had been turned out. Although the ward was dark there was a partial light. I was half asleep when the same porter who had assaulted me earlier in the day came to my ward. This was the first time that I’d ever seen him on the ward. He was wearing the same clothes as he’d worn earlier.

‘I saw him walk straight to my bed as if he knew exactly where I was. I was frightened and I pulled the covers over my head. I could smell the same muggy odour that I’d smelled on him earlier in the day. The man stood to the left of my bed and without saying anything thrust one of his hands under the covers and positioned it between my legs. Although he didn’t insert his fingers he rubbed it on my vagina. I heard him make a sound as if he was enjoying what he was doing. He touched me in this way for only seconds; probably 10 to 20 seconds. I remember that his movements were rushed.

‘Again, I was really shocked by what was happening and didn’t know how to respond. I kept my head under the covers throughout. Just as suddenly as he had appeared he removed his hand and walked away from my bedside.

‘As he walked away I peeked my head out from under the covers and saw that he’d walked over to the bed of an elderly lady. As I watched him, I saw him literally jump on top of the woman so he was lying face down on top of her. As he did this, I heard a nurse shout, “You shouldn’t be in here, Jimmy.” I saw that he got off the lady and walked out of the ward. Nothing further was said.

‘The next day when I woke up, I noticed the woman who occupied the bed opposite me had gone and I didn’t see her again. As a result of being assaulted by the porter on a second occasion I decided I wanted to make sure that the doctors were aware of how the porter was behaving, so I wrote a second note, again on a page torn from the bible in my bedside unit. I wrote exactly the same message as I had done the day before and posted the note in the same letterbox.

‘Later during the course of that day I decided to try and find the porter. I don’t know what I intended to do. I left the ward and I made my way to the corridor, which led off the day room, the same corridor I’d watched the porter walk down after he’d raped me. I walked down the corridor myself and through the double doors I’d seen him go through.

‘I went into a bar where people were wearing white coats. I thought they were all doctors. They were sitting at tables, drinking and smoking. As I walked into the room one of the men said, “You shouldn’t be in here,” and he escorted me out. I couldn’t see if the porter who had assaulted me was in the bar or not. I went back to my ward and didn’t say anything further to the staff about either of the incidents, and I cannot remember anything more of my stay in hospital.

‘When I was about 14 years old I was watching television and I saw the porter who had assaulted me in hospital. I recognised his voice to begin with. The picture on our television was of poor quality and quite distorted. I was amazed to see the man was the porter from the hospital. I was sure of it because I recognised him visually and his mannerisms. His voice was very distinctive. I couldn’t understand why the porter from the hospital was on television.

‘In time I came to know that the porter was Jimmy Savile but I remained confused at that stage about the situation.’

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Other than the utterly brazen and callous nature of Savile’s attack on the girl, the most shocking aspect of her account is the clear-eyed recollection of telling a nurse on the ward what had just been done to her, and her attempts to notify other members of the hospital staff.

Since Savile’s death and the dam wall breaking on his secret life of offending, it has become blindingly obvious it wasn’t such a secret life after all. At Stoke Mandeville, and at the other hospitals where he invested the bulk of his time, it seems that his behaviour was, if not well known, then at the very least discussed among members of staff.

In October 2012, in the immediate fallout from the scandal, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust stated it was ‘shocked’ to hear of the allegations about Jimmy Savile, adding, ‘We are unaware of any record or reports of inappropriate behaviour of this nature during Jimmy’s work with the trust.’
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In the late Seventies, John Lindsay was working as a detective constable with Thames Valley Police. He claimed it was then that a young female nurse at Stoke Mandeville told him staff were concerned about Jimmy Savile’s conduct during hospital visits.

‘[The nurse] said to me at the time they didn’t like Savile because he was touching little girls in hospital, not necessarily in a sexual way, but touching them and they were unhappy about the way he was going on,’ Lindsay said. ‘They told the little girls who were in hospital to stay in bed and give the impression they were asleep.’
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Lindsay reported the allegations to a senior colleague who brushed them off: ‘Jimmy Savile is a high-profile man,’ the senior officer is reported to have said. ‘He must be OK. He could not be doing anything irregular. Don’t worry about it.’ Nothing more was done and, Lindsay argued, there was little else he could do.

As a patient at Stoke Mandeville, Rebecca Owen recounts that she overheard nurses talking about how Jimmy Savile picked his targets: ‘It was an air of resignation that you had to put up with it,’ she said. ‘There was some sort of ironic chatter between the nurses about who would be the lucky one to go off to his room. And then, as one of the nurses was leaving or passing by my bed, she leant over and said the best thing you can do is stay in bed until he’s gone and pretend to be asleep.’
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Such assaults were taking place from the very start of Savile’s long association with Stoke Mandeville. A visitor to the hospital, who was nine at the time, claims Savile fondled him in his Rolls-Royce at a fund-raising event for the hospital in the very early 1970s. In 1971, Caroline Moore, who was paralysed from the chest down, was a 13-year-old patient at Stoke Mandeville when she says Savile attacked her in a corridor.

‘I was quite shy and lonely,’ recalled Moore. ‘I don’t remember him saying anything to me but he leant down and I was excited because I thought he was going to give me a wee peck on the cheek. But he took my face in his hands and rammed – and that is the only way I can describe it – he rammed his tongue right down the back of my throat, to the point where it almost made me gag … Afterwards he just walked off as if nothing had happened.’
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Another female patient reported a similar assault on her taking place in the late 1980s. She was in bed recovering from an operation at the time.

Like Liz Dux’s anonymous client, Caroline Moore tried telling people what had happened to her. ‘I told my family at the time: they didn’t take it seriously because he was such a high-profile character,’ she said.

In the same period that Detective Constable Lindsay informed his superior what he’d been told by a nurse at Stoke Mandeville, Samantha Dearan recounts how as an 11-year-old Savile repeatedly groped her during Catholic mass at the hospital’s chapel. The Dearan family worshipped at the chapel, and Samantha was regularly asked to carry round the collection plate.

‘Savile used to stand in the separate little room during mass,’ she explained, ‘and I had to go in there to get the offering plate while the service was going on. It was horrible; I used to hate it. I knew what was going to happen before I walked through the door. I just tried to get in and out as quickly as possible. It was so blatant it made you even more afraid to say anything. I thought it was my fault.’
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Samantha Dearan said the assaults continued for three or four years, and that Savile liked to keep the door open so he could see the priest. She believes he got a thrill out of it. ‘Eventually,’ she admits, ‘I stopped going to church because of him.’

It wasn’t only at Stoke Mandeville that Savile exploited his status as a famous benefactor to secure access to unsuspecting and largely defenceless patients. At Leeds General Infirmary, where he had hoodwinked the board of governors with his voluntary work
and then bought the loyalty of the porters with his offers of free holidays in the caravans he kept dotted around the British coastline, he was acting with a similar level of impunity. And again, he was encouraged that nobody appeared to want to stop him.

In May 1972, June Thornton, a nurse from York, was admitted to the hospital for an operation on her spine. As she lay in bed, she recollects seeing Jimmy Savile approaching a young female patient on the same ward.