ITV just got a High Court injunction concerning Freddie Starr overturned…
Really? Christ alive.
If there is a spate of old celebrity codgers off the telly topping themselves in coming months, I won’t be one bit surprised.
Never saw it myself, but lots of stuff seems to keep coming out - however despite the quantity of anecdotes, the real shame is that we cannot test them in court.
Looks like there is plenty to prompt an investigation.
All we can do now is look more dispassionately at the claims and find out who was aware of what - but its all shutting stable doors and horses, unless some other creepies are discovered hidden under their rocks.
I’m trying to download itvplayer to watch the documentary, but those I know who’ve seen it were shocked and convinced by it. Shocked at the apparent scale of his abuse and at just how reliable the allegations are.
Hugo Rifkind also posted an extract from savile’s biography in which he talks directly about taking an escaped remand school girl back to his flat and the police not pressing charges due to his power. Sex is very strongly implied. I’d like to see someone else corroborate that story, but Rifkind is not just some blogger. It reads like savile not just admitting, but boasting about abuse and implicating local police in it.
Sorry for not providing a direct link - can’t figure out how to copy the link from my phone.
Here you go:
I watched the ITV programme last night. The accounts given by the witnesses and alleged victims was startlingly consistent, even in quite small details.
Either they are describing a real thing, or there’s some kind of collusion or shared mythos - it doesn’t seem likely to me that they independently fabricated their own claims.
I’m mostly convinced there was something rotten going on.
I am not convinced that Freddie Starr did anything though, doesn’t seem like him.
Anyway I may be crucified for saying this, but it’s beginning to look to me as though in the 70s it was if not quite socially acceptable to mollest young girls, at least something that people weren’t that bothered about, somewhat less serious than say littering. I don’t see any other explanation for the way everyone has reacted.
And here is the story I was thinking of.
I watched the documentary on Wednesday night and found it deeply disturbing. I was the same age as those girls and watched Top of the Pops every Thursday night. Even though I despised a lot of the acts, preferring “progressive music”, it was the only regular programme where I could catch sight of the bands I idolised. If they had a single that charted, if they released a single that would be featured as a new release. My mates and I also despised most of the cheesy Radio One DJs on the show. We loved it when John Peel was on, he had musical integrity (!) we listened to his nightly radio programme. However I’m not going to comment about what the above article says about him or this post will become ridiculously long.
When I read about Claire McAlpine’s diary in the paper. I was shocked. However the DJs I remember being named were Savile and Tony Blackburn (who has not featured in any of the recent stories). To my fourteen year old self Savile just seemed to ridiculous a figure to be involved. To the papers of the day this wasn’t a story about child abuse this was a sex scandal. It never occurred to me that the poor girl might have been unwilling and who on earth would actually want to have sex with that ridiculous old man? And then the story went away.
Now I’ve seen the documentary, now that the latest accusation comes from a member of Savile’s own family I think the allegations and rumours are true, and, god help them, there’s a lot of other people in high places involved.
In 1971 at fourteen, the age of some of these girls, I thought sex sounded like a very good thing. I couldn’t wait to start – if anyone would have me, and if my parents would stop being so ridiculously over protective. But I had no intention of doing it with anyone I didn’t fancy or like. I’d no inkling that rape was other than the dirty pervert jumping out of the bushes. And just like those girls in the audience of Top of the Pops I had my own experience of hanging out with people in the business.
Me and my mates went to loads of gigs, our Dads would pick us up from the local venues and someone’s big brother (usually mine) would be persuaded to chaperone us if we went up to London. Yeah, I know I said my parents were overprotective but actually I was having a great time. We became great fans of a band, not a very famous band but they made real records (one produced by no less than George Martin), and made a decent living playing on the college circuit. We visited them in the dressing room after gigs, we hung out with them before the gigs when they played locally. We played hopscotch outside one venue, we misbehaved in cafes. They mentioned us in the fanzine and wrote us silly letters which we passed around and treasured. They had tea at a mate’s house once but my stoopid parents wouldn’t let me go. We were fangirls who knew the band, heaven!
In the four years or so I knew them, before they split up, the most untoward thing I remember happening was when one of the band sidled up to my big bro’ and asked if he knew where to get some pot (Bro’ didn’t) . After we left school one of my friends (then nineteen) went out with a band member (four or five years older) who she had had a major crush on but it didn’t work out. If anything was happening to one of my friends, anything sick, secret and exploitative it would break my fucking heart.
It now seems to me that in those long ago days some of us, kids, bands, big brothers were in a happy daze. Swinging London, the summer of love, the gigs and festivals, the amazing music, such a contrast to teenage angst, school and the boring lives of our mums and dads. Meanwhile there were predators sharking amongst the happy crowds, picking out the vulnerable, and it makes me angry and sick and sad. Of course this latest scandal isn’t the first notion I’ve had of this, I’m quite the old cynic these days, but seeing those women and knowing that if things had only been a little different it could have been me has hit home.
This is one of the classic hallmarks of the start of journalistic abuse, rather than the sexual kind. You get five or ten people in the same room. They may or may not have been raped/molested etc 30 or forty years ago. It doesn’t really matter. Everyone begins to fill in gaps in their own memories with other peoples’ tales. This goes on until everyone has an apparently genuine memory of being abused by dozens of DJs/pop stars/I expect royalty will be next.
I’m 100% certain I have no clue what really happened. I heard rumours of Jimmy Savile being a kiddy diddler years ago, but then again, I’ve heard all kinds of rumours about all kinds of celebrities. We cannot ever know the truth, though. Some of the people making the accusations may be telling the truth, some of them may have 40 year old faulty memories, some of them might be making this stuff up from whole cloth for any number of reasons. We just don’t know.
I think the nephews story will sink this ship, we’ll find many more people coming forward now.
The people interviewed weren’t in the same room - they never met. And the reports from savile’s colleagues are pretty damning, as is his own boasting in his autobiography.
If your starting position is that it’s journalistic abuse, the fact that the journalist **says **the people have never met counts for very little, though. Ditto for the people themselves saying it, when it is queried.
I think it is pretty plain that Savile was a very deeply unpleasant man and that he used his power and celebrity to do exactly what he wanted, with no regard for anyone else. The apparent lack of anyone else with enough clout to stand up to him is what baffles me. He wasn’t born Sir Jimmy Savile, national treasure and beloved by all, after all. He came from absolutely nothing. So the only thing I can come up with which makes any sort of sense to me is that he was always clever, even as a young unknown man, to only mix with and work with people who were just like him. People who thought like he did. And did what he did. And that in those circles, it was just what went on - nothing strange or nasty about it.
Which must mean that there were plenty more like him and that this saga is going to run for a very long time.
Yeah, that’s why that quote from his autobiography seemed so strange to me. Essentially: You coppers can’t touch me, I’m a nightclub DJ!
Still want to see the actual, unedited page.
From my limited contact with the music industry, my experience with bands is that they screwed whichever groupies they liked, and some were surely the wrong side of 16.
TBH I didn’t really care about it much at the time – these girls weren’t just giving consent, they were ripping the guys’ trousers off. And no-one around seemed to care.
In retrospect…I’m not sure now…should I be ashamed that I never reported this?
The bands that I saw this happen with are such big names you wouldn’t believe me now if I named them.
Now, this is of course significantly different from an ageing DJ/presenter getting access to schools and abusing (mostly) unwilling girls.
I’m just saying, if we’re going to try to find everyone in the industry that may be complicit in sex with underage girls, I suspect a heck of a lot of people are going down…
That’s a distinct possibility, but do we even know these people have been in the same room at the same time? They appeared to have been interviewed/filmed at their own homes or workplaces.
We don’t know what information the journalists shared with them, or how they were talked to/prepped before the cameras started rolling.
They needn’t have met, but information could have been shared by a researcher, leading questions may have been asked before the tape started.
The people whose job it is to investigate abuse receive training in how to question victims, and are meticulous in record keeping to demonstrate that the victims have not been led or fed information. Cases get thrown out in England for minor infractions of record keeping, an accusation of ‘editing’ of notes led to a recent case collapsing.
I suspect that Savile did most of what he is accused of doing, however, I am quite wary of the ITV investigation and worry that they have poisoned the victims’ testimonies through information sharing, leading and suggestion (possibly entirely inadvertently).
Yes, it is quite possible for Savile to be a sleazy perv, and for some of the stories to be made-up. However, seeing as there is unlikely to be any criminal action then I suspect we’ll just have to make do with that degree of uncertainty.
Would I convict him on the evidence so far? No. Do I think he did it? absolutely.
Aren’t the Met starting an investigation? That might rope in some of the people that allegedly covered for him, although some of those are themselves already dead.
I think that they should focus on making sure that this can never happen again, some kind of corporate liability for covering up sexual abuse within an organisation (including accidentally), and make it harder for people with money to threaten legal action to prevent disclosure as Savile is said to have done. That will probably mean reforming libel laws, which is no bad thing IMO.
I’m still surprised that the press knew about the rumours and never thought to print anything, it isn’t as if the libel laws ever really frightened them before.
To clarify, I meant that there must have been a lot of them assaulting/raping unwilling girls with the thought that it was all no big deal and part of every day life for them. That’s the thing I think will run and run.
I think that the groupies were a completely different kettle of fish. If any teenager did her level best to get into a rock star’s dressing room/rip his trousers off when she was fourteen or fifteen, I do think it’s more than a bit ridiculous for her to claim now, when she’s fifty odd, that so and so took advantage of her, when she was “a child”.
She wasn’t a child. Yes, she was under the age of consent, which she - better than anyone else - knew. So for a former groupie to come out now and say “But forty years ago I was fifteen and he was thirty five so he took advantage of me. He was the adult, he should have known better” is trivialising the real victims in all this; the ones that Savile and his ilk raped and assaulted.
Basically you’ve said what I wanted to, totally agree.
You always hear arguments like this every time there is a high profile paedophile case. There is simply no way you can ensure that no child is abused by a paedophile ever again, short of putting every child in a box, by themselves, until they hit the age of consent. There have always been paedophiles and there will continue to be paedophiles as long as the human race exists. It doesn’t matter what laws you put in place, because paedophiles break them. They might be prosecuted afterwards, but that is not the same thing as prevention. I’m guessing the current laws are a lot tighter than they were 40 odd years ago anyway.
The reason why he got away with it for so long was because there was no proof. If you are intending on changing the laws so that proof is no longer required, and a rumour is all you need to start libelling people in the press, then you might as well print a paedophile list with the name of every teacher in the country on it. Some kids make this stuff up, and it ruins the lives of teachers who have done absolutely nothing wrong. Any corporation who started sacking members of staff based on unsubstantiated rumours will find themselves on the losing end of an employment tribunal pretty sharpish.