To still be stunned that The Royals were close with Jimmy Savile?

[ThatCleverExpert]

It still blows my mind that the Royal Family had such a long-standing relationship with Jimmy Savile. Prince Charles sought his advice multiple times and he was treated like some kind of national treasure, even given access to hospitals and prisons.

Meanwhile, this was a man who was later exposed as a prolific predator - someone who abused vulnerable people, including children and even corpses in hospital mortuaries.
How did nobody see it? How was he so protected? And how was someone like that allowed so close to people in power?

I know it was a different time but AIBU to think the whole thing is still just horrifying?

I do think he’s just the sort of person they still would be close to - a famous tv and radio presenter, who does lots of charity work, but for safe- non-political charities. A celebrity who may have politician friends but not campaigning or speaking out about any controversial issues of the day. Made them look like they had the common touch, would do the hard work for their charity of choice, not involved in any scandals (in his lifetime).

It's not at all obvious that someone you speak to perhaps only a few times a year is in fact a dangerous paedophile in their spare time.

Someone in our board games group turned out to be a paedophile ... he was improsined for having child port on his laptop.

But quite frankly it's hard to see how I'd work out he's a paedophile and a danger to young girls fro, how he played ticket to ride with other 25 year olds.

So I can quite see how seeing Jimmy Saville at the odd charity fundraiser doesn't give you the information about what he's up to the other 362 days of the year.

I agree with @Lundeand others pointing out how different society was. My late DF had dealings with JS. He first came across JS in the mid 1960s when my DF was living in Leeds. He didn’t meet JS but he lodged in an area where JS was well known locally and even then the general sense was to keep away from him without there being an explicit information about why. He wasn’t particularly liked by the local population from what my DF picked up. My DF was a 24 year old man so probably didn’t think much more of it and only reflected upon it later.

Then in the 1980s when my DF was head of a large charity JS was invited by someone in the Leeds office to raise money for the charity in various high profile events. This was the first time my father met him and he hated JS from that moment, but it was instinct, something he couldn’t put his finger on, an obvious lack of sincerity, a subtle cruelty to certain people, some sort of disconnect between the national treasure persona and the way he spoke to people off camera. Others felt the same as my DF but even as recently as the 1980s we communicated very differently and there was no information in the public domain to confirm people’s instincts as correct. Apart from a few people who must have known what he was like, the vast majority who knew him, regardless of their personal dislike of him, had no idea of his true nature.

I met him as a 12 year old girl in 1979 at some charity event and I remember being really excited to meet him but when I did I remember recoiling slightly and being really aware of the superficiality of his greeting, again, an instinct, not knowledge. I also know that he was tolerated by King Charles, not particularly liked.

He was, as PPs have said, highly manipulative and used sheer force of personality to insert himself among the powerful. He wasn’t liked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital by many of the staff but when the world is celebrating him as a force for good how do you become the lone negative voice? There was no social media. Safeguarding, grooming, believing the child; none of these concepts were in our collective consciousness. There wasn’t the same cynicism of authority figures generally. Different times and really hard to understand now that we have the full story, a different understanding and approach to the protection of vulnerable people and a less deferential attitude to people in power.

When the first information came out about JS my DF found a signed copy of JS’s autobiography that had been lurking on a bookshelf for years and burned it in the garden. Angry with himself for having tolerated the man for a few years despite his instincts. I imagine others felt the same as my DF did.

@YouOKHun
thank you for your post.
Even at 5 I thought he was awful.
And what charisma???
Yuk

Fair point. Well let’s say it wasn’t acknowledged as a serious problem. Victims were ignored and dismissed.

And you were ignorant about it you were brought up in a “naice” naive middle class environment. It wasn’t discussed or written about publically as it is now. There have since been many high profile cases in the news and many books and films on the subject. But back then you didn’t hear the word paedophile spoken about publically. The first public enquires were only held around a decade or so ago.

John Lydon in 19798 tried to speak out, even if it had aired who would believe a Sex Pistol over the respectable establishment that protected him? People are easily conned, they believe what suits them and their naive world view. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/john-lydon-says-he-was-banned-from-bbc-over-jimmy-savile-comments

All of the information about Savile's relationship with the Royal Family has one source: Jimmy Savile. This is what predators do - they cloak themselves with the respectability of other people. It's like when he claimed to have been invited to have Christmas at Chequers with the Thatchers for many years running. But the Carole Thatcher says it never happened, and there is not evidence that he was ever there for Christmas or anything else.

The comparisons with Epstein are startling aren’t they, even though they worked in different spheres?

Both highly intelligent and manipulative.
Both hiding in plain sight,
Both used respectable activities and respected or high ranking people as a cover for their crimes
Both had friends in very high places.
Both used money to ease their paths.
Both were massive networkers; they did people favours who then felt obligated towards them.

I loved Jim’ll fix it. It was one of my favourite programs. I think any creepy behaviour would have gone straight over our heads.

You have to remember at that time there were so many people in those circles with questionable morals. It was known but ignored. So media personalities, Hollywood grandees, Church ministers Catholic and Protestant. Politicians. Teachers, coaches. Anyone in a position of power over others basically.

Things are hidden, until they come out. Look at the recent cases of sporting malpractice against Gymnasts for example.

Positions of power attract and enable certain behaviours.

I had an intense dislike of Jimmy Savile when I was a child in the seventies. I didn’t watch Jim’ll Fix It, partly because I preferred cartoons, but also because he made my skin crawl. I am certainly not saying I had any special insight. How could I? But he never came across as sincere. I remember when I got older wondering if I had simply been guilty of black and white thinking and not understanding nuance and the fact that someone can come across as blunt and a bit weird, but still be a caring person. I’m in NI and people here can sound blunt, but overall they have big hearts. It took me years to understand that, even though I was surrounded by it. And I did wonder if I had missed the goodness in Jimmy Savile, while continuing to find him essentially unwatchable. I wasn’t particularly surprised by the rumours, or the eventual confirmation of those rumours, but I was utterly shocked by the extent of his crimes.

Popular with the BBC (there's a surprise) but I didn't know anyone who could stand him.
Those in the know who protected him at worst, kept their mouths shut at best, in my opinion had something to hide themselves, and knew he knew a lot...or were afraid they would lose their own positions.
I am cynical enough to not be surprised so many in authority kept quiet, the biggest shock was many NHS workers, from porters and nurses upwards, either suspected or were aware of what was happening when he visited hospitals and was given access to the most vulnerable.

I highly recommend reading “In Plain Sight” by Dan Davies to properly understand how and why JS got away with what he did till after his death.

It’s so weird when you think about it.

Andrew might have raped a trafficked teenager, & the worst that happens to him is he loses his Prince title, & has to move out of his 30 room mansion.

Powerful/Wealthy men always have, and always will, get away with depraved behaviour.

This is where I have some sympathy because if you were that porter, nurse, doctor, you would have had very little ability to affect Savile. It was the people who gave him permission to be there who are the most culpable, those in authority. We know many ordinary people did report him. Nothing changed.

Those powerful people who did say no to Savile are the good ones. The rest of them are morally culpable for what he did. They could have changed the outcome.

Yes I was listening to Tess Dunlop about this the other day.

Of all of the people we know for sure at this stage were involved; Jeffrey Epstein is dead (possibly murdered) Virginia Giuffre is very sadly dead (by her own hand) Ghislaine Maxwell is imprisoned, and Prince Andrew is swanning off to live a nice life in Bahrain!

A freind of mine and her husband worked on the children’s wards at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, at the time JS was there. She is absolutely adamant that nothing happened and he didn’t have a reputation. Which is not what other hospital staff have said. She also thinks the moon landings were faked, so I don’t really trust her judgement!

Some reported him and were ignored, that's true, but so many didn't, even though they suspected strongly he was abusing the kids they were looking after.
Care home workers let him take young unsuspecting girls off in his Rolls Royce for the day , even when some of the girls spoke out, nothing was done.
I read stories of nurses at Stoke Mandeville telling youngsters to pretend to be asleep when he came in, I found that really chilling.

You are right of course that the ones in authority were indeed morally corrupt, but many people in power are corrupt, that's how they get where they are.

They groom powerful people. Anyone who felt his unpleasantness, probably wasn’t targeted by him. As in, if you mattered, he made sure you thought he was great. If you didn’t he didn’t try as hard to deceive you.

And until relativey recently, ‘nice people’ were protected from vulgarity. Sex wasn’t openly discussed. Women barely knew about oral sex or being gay, let alone pedophilia.

There is an underlying misogyny to a lot of the treatment of young girls in institutions. The people who may be in charge of their care may not really care about them at all. They see problems not people. And there have been enough reports of paedophilia in care homes to make me think that some of the leadership in these places was compromised or complicit. But Savile was not obviously someone who should have been there. He was placed there by authority.

Another way of looking at this is the inverse of what happens now. People who are well motivated and work with children must have clearance. And they accept that this is part of what must happen.

Savile said he hated children. He threatened to sue newspapers who had sight of his allegations. It would have been easy to drop him. It didn’t happen because he was useful to authorities and powerful people. They kept him there.

The culpability of the government that elevated his power over vulnerable people is the sin. It is no good expecting the hospital porter or the nurse to police the powerful. They cannot. Savile had already made it impossible.

It certainly wasn’t talked about when my DSis and I were being sexually abused by our F and others during the 70s and early 80s.

When we reported our historical abuse to the police (our F was long dead by then, we asked people who had known our family in those days about what they’d known. It was telling that none of them were at all shocked to hear the truth about him, and quite a few had had concerns about us. One had even suspected that I’d been through CSA later (she hadn’t known us at the time).

No one had said anything to my DM at the time, which upset her very much, understandably.

Yet they’d all eulogised about my F during his funeral.

So I’m sadly not the least bit surprised at the cover-ups involved where Saville was concerned, though obviously disgusted and with so much empathy for all the victims.

I’m so sorry LizzieW1969

That’s absolutely horrific 😢

Thank you, @Frayededge44216 . Thankfully, my DSis and I have both been able to create good lives as adults.

Are you able to elaborate?
I imagine he had a lot of friends in high places
And I know he raised huge amounts of money
But why was he protected what was so special about him?

It was a different time when crimes against children were almost not reported on widely. Saville is just a high profile example of what went on in children's homes at the time.

Tabloid press at the time were mainly male run and wanted to maintain their access to behind the scenes of celebrities. Saville was also very litigious and silenced many papers with settlement arrangements.

Saville just played everything just right from choosing his victims with care, maintaining high profile relationships and doing charity work so he could abuse in plain sight.

In many ways Jeffrey Epstein had a similar playbook.