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?

He was a psychopath.

With the royals, I blame centuries of inbreeding. Not very normal really 🤷‍♀️

I don’t get that at all. I am in my 60s everyone I knew knew about him. There were rumours circulating for years. It really mystifies me.

Even if you hadn’t heard any rumours at all, surely it was as clear as day. He was just incredibly weird. An absolute creep who said creepy things in plain sight. I used to watch him on television (not much choice) and think he looked as if he didn’t wash. His mannerisms and comments were just so odd. And anyone who goes on about how much work they do for charity is suspicious. Why feel the need to advertise how much good you do? I did not know one single person who was taken in by him. If you can’t see something like that you must be incredibly naive.

Well im 52 and watched Jim,I'll fixit avidly if you remember he just wore a suit for it he looked as presentable as he could, no outlandish outfits
Me and all.my friends loved the programme lots of celebrities at the time had s persona and catch phrases
Any innuendos would have gone over my head
I'm not condoning him at all just explaining from a child's perspective at the time why he was popular.

I'm mid 50s and it wasn't obvious to me as a child. I can see it as an adult of course.

Wait until you hear about Mountbatten, beloved Uncle Dickie’, and his predilection for young boys and trying to arrange a coup d’etat.

But why didn’t your parents make comments when you watched him avidly? I know mine did. He did sometimes wear suits but he always looked like he slept on a grimy dralon sofa and didn’t have any actual real life friends or normal relationships. And his presenting persona was weird too. Surely if you knew someone like that in real life you’d feel unsettled and want to avoid them?

I don't think my parents were anymore aware of him than I was, maybe naive I dont know
I was too young to watch Top of the Pops when he was on it and I wouldnt have known wetherhe had friends or not
I was also a big fan of the generation game and im not in anyway comparing Jimmy Savile and Larry Grayson ,but Larry Graysin was a very over the top presenter.too.
Hindsight, s a wonderful thing .

I agree. I think that Jill had, shall we say, recently discovered a love of nature and all of the Elm trees around her House. She did the right thing and reported it, not realising that certain powerful people might not have been as horrified as she was to discover what she did.

I believe there are documented links to a certain celebrity - one who sounded like he was fond of cats, going by his nickname - about whom certain horrific revelations may come out after his death.

Why are people assuming that, just because children and even ordinary adults who only saw him on TV didn't suspect the truth about him, none of the authorities, none of those who worked closely with him, no royal advisors (who are usually extremely diligent and thorough in checking people out) etc. would have known?

People with too much money all swim in the same swamp.

I never saw a thing that was odd about him when I watched TV as a child. Or at least he didn’t seem any more out there than every other celebrity presenter the telly served up. The Crankies? Spike Milligan? Ed ‘Stupot’ Stewart? The Two Ronnies? Marti Caine? Jimmy Tarbuck? They were performers. They all seemed over the top, a bit fake, professional. They all grabbed the people they presented with in big fake hugs. There were a lot of ‘risqué’ jokes (possibly not from the Crankies). Frankly they all blended into one.

I was on a training placement at Stoke Mandeville in 2010. My placement educator came back from lunch looking green. She said ‘Jimmy Savile was in the canteen, he letched at me, I feel sick.’ I was a bit shocked because he must have been around 80 then but I still just thought ‘dirty old man’. There were so, so many of them.

I agree. I am from Manchester, where he often was. He was a creep at the beginning, during and at the end of his career.
I have no idea how he came into such a position of power, because I never met one single soul who had anything good to say about him.
When he came into the places I worked, people shunned him, but he still acted like the big celebrity, seemingly indifferent to the fact no one liked him.

A thread from the year he died.

IS jIMMy Saville dead yet? | Mumsnet

And a thread after he died:

jimmy savile has died... | Mumsnet

There is a huge amount of evidence that Savile procured vulnerable children ( those in the care system for example )for other powerful paedophiles who are both protected and easy to control by blackmail . They are thus hugely detrimental to society as well as their poor victims . Brave people who try and do something about elite paedophile rings wind up with their own lives ruined or are murdered .
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Very interesting you just have to look at the news coverage after he died he was almost saint like until everything came out about him ..

It wasn't just children either he was able to abuse vulnerable adults
Basically it seems anyone who was vulnerable was fair game .

Not mine, I always wanted to apply but didn't because I'd have to meet him!

I grew up watching Jimmy Savile on television. I thought he was a bit creepy (as did my parents) but it was well-known that he did an enormous amount for charity so never questioned beyond that. He really did just fall into a category of lecherous 'dirty old men' who were a bit of joke (eg. Steptoe and Son, Rising Damp, Benny Hill, Rolf Harris, Alf Garnet, etc).

It wasn't just on television either, I encountered plenty of them in real life too but didn't understand as I was young and naïve (fortunately I was never a victim although friends were but never spoke of it). I grew up in an upper middle class family and nothing like this was ever spoken about and I'm not even sure my parents would have ever even known about child abuse as their upbringing would have been extremely sheltered, more so than mine (we at least had television!).

Since growing up, I have discovered that a surprising number of men I have known in real life, some of them outwardly lovely people and not at all in the obvious 'dirty old man' category, were involved in child abuse in some form or other. What many had in common was their involvement in charity which I find particularly scary. These men ranged from top barristers doing a high percentage of pro bono work and Christian-based fund raising through to a local keen gardener who ran the village cricket team and annual fete, both with no obvious outward signs of their horrific hidden private lives.

I think the royal family were probably just as naïve as I was and generally looked for the best in people, so I don't blame them, although I do blame their advisors who really should have known better, but I guess the palace admin were doing their job and just checked for police records rather than speculated over what may have been just unsubstantiated rumours at the time. I do think the police and BBC, along with the hospitals etc. have a lot to answer for though.

It definitely was a time when you'd get many men of a certain age - both in everyday life and on the telly - who were openly very eccentric, often said very inappropriate things and came across as a bit creepy.

It wasn't always easy to distinguish the majority who were odd, possibly sexually frustrated and maybe 'had a very keen eye for the ladies' (or men, in the case of some of them) from the few seriously dangerous predators who would brush aside matters of consent and/or seek to abuse children.

I agree in part with what you are saying. Times were very different back then, Similarly, in my family, growing up in the seventies, no one ever discussed paedophilia. Our upbringing was very sheltered and it simply wasn’t something we had heard of, even quite late in to our teens.

However, we know from Andrew Lownie that Prince Andrew suffered from SA when he was eleven. Many men in aristocratic circles attended boarding school as extremely young dc. and had distant parents and dysfunctional families. And there is significant evidence, including multiple direct testimonies from alleged victims at Kincora Boys’ Home and from intelligence documents, that Lord Mountbatten was a paedophile, though he was never prosecuted. So there was an abuser within the family.

Who knows, but in all honesty, for the above reasons, and because it was rife in boarding schools and cadet type institutions, I would have thought it more likely than not that the RF knew about child sexual abuse, more than your average family anyway. My dh and I have several friends who attended boarding schools in the seventies and they all knew to avoid certain teachers and school chaplains for example.

Do you think they're psychic?
In another 50 years time there will sadly be similar comments about some celebrity they are sometimes in contact with now.

I am afraid that the truth is far more unpleasant. I am of a similar background.to yourself . I only began to realise the depth of this ghastly stuff & its pollution of our society and the structures I respected when I tried to do something about Savile’s abuse of a 10 year old girl that I treated in 1991 .

That the advisors to the Royal family allowed this man ,known to be a sadistic paedophile with a police record going back to the 1950s , unfettered access to the Royal family is unconscionable. That the BBC gave such a creature a children’s programme called ‘ Jim’s Fix It ‘ knowing his predilections.
That Margaret Thatcher insisted on knighting him against all intelligence information & advice and that she also tolerated known paedophiles in her cabinet suggests an utter disregard for the welfare of vulnerable children by the upper echelons of society .
The hardest thing in my life has been realising that this horror runs through it & that it is utterly impossible for decent people to do anything about it .

My ex DP was a porter at the Leeds hospital where Saville did vanity shifts back in the 80s. He told me at the time that very few of the staff liked being around him or working with him because they found him creepy and fond of very tasteless "jokes" (and bear in mind in the 80s the public threshold for tasteless jokes was a lot higher than nowadays)

ExDP spoke to the head porter about a particularly unpleasant comment that Saville made, and was told "We don't say anything, we close our ears and we look away," and was warned his job would be under threat if he took it further. ExDP was also sternly reminded about JS' charity work and funds raised for "poorly kiddies".

JS cultivated "friends in high places" everywhere he went.

Whilst I absolutely believe this
I just dont under how he was able to get away with it all what was so special about. Him that he was protected and allowed to do what ever he wanted .