In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (36 page)

In 1976, the NCCL had filed a submission to a parliamentary committee arguing that the new law could lead to ‘damaging and absurd prosecutions’. Two years later a letter written by the NCCL’s legal officer, a young lawyer named Harriet Harman, in official response to the bill, argued that pornographic photos or films of children should not be classified as ‘indecent’ unless it could be proven that the child had suffered. The NCCL’s suggested amendment placed the onus of proof on the prosecution.

In its official submission, the NCCL stated, ‘Although this harm may be of a somewhat speculative nature, where participation falls short of physical assault, it is none-the-less justifiable to restrain activities by photographers which involve placing children under the age of 14 (or, arguably, 16) in sexual situations.

‘We suggest that the term “indecent” be qualified as follows: A photograph or film shall not for this purpose be considered indecent (a) by reason only that the model is in a state of undress (whether complete or partial); (b) unless it is proved or is to be inferred from the photograph or film that the making of the photograph or film might reasonably be expected to have caused the model physical harm or pronounced psychological or emotional disorder.’

The Protection of Children Act was passed on 20 July 1978. It was the last major child protection legislation for eleven years.

PART FIVE

46. REWRITING HISTORY

M
ark Williams-Thomas had five of Jimmy Savile’s victims on film, as well as others who had witnessed his offending behaviour. What he did not have, though, was a final part to his hour-long documentary. He needed expert, independent analysis of the evidence and it came with the contribution of Ian Glenn QC. After watching the filmed interviews, Glenn said it was his opinion that Williams-Thomas had enough for Jimmy Savile to be arrested were he still alive.

The next step, Williams-Thomas decided, was to show the material to Esther Rantzen, the television presenter and founder of Childline, the child protection charity. Rantzen held her head in her hands when she saw it. ‘I think it was incredibly powerful,’ says Williams-Thomas. ‘Rantzen’s was a very genuine response. The evidence, when you looked at it all together, was compelling.’

Executive producer Alex Gardiner, commissioning editor Ian Squires and ITV’s director of television Peter Fincham were all well aware of the risks involved in the exposé of a national hero and stayed closely involved throughout the process, reviewing new interviews as they were completed. Williams-Thomas maintains that while they remained supportive throughout, there was no input in terms of how the investigation was managed: ‘I was left with Lesley [Gardiner] and between the two of us we built it and put it together.’

On 7 September, a three-page letter from Williams-Thomas and Gardiner arrived at the office of George Entwistle, who was about to take over as director general of the BBC. The letter set out the
allegations against Jimmy Savile made in ITV’s forthcoming
Exposure
documentary as they related to the BBC, and posed a number of questions.

Paul Mylrea, the BBC’s director of Public Affairs, told the Pollard inquiry that the legal team initially drove the corporation’s response to the letter. ‘They were beginning to examine what there was on record, whether there was anything – any knowledge of Savile,’ he said. What is apparent, though, is that lines of communication within the BBC had already started to break down. Panic was setting in.
¹

Four days later, Stephen Mitchell, the deputy director of BBC News, collared Meirion Jones and raised the Savile issue. Mitchell said there had been no management interference in the decision not to proceed with the
Newsnight
story. When Jones began to outline why he believed pulling the story would have grave consequences for the BBC he recalls Mitchell shutting him down.

The official BBC line on what it was that
Newsnight
had been investigating was now taking shape. When the website Digital Spy ran a story on how similar the BBC’s investigation was to the one in ITV’s upcoming documentary, the BBC press office moved to set the record straight. ‘We [the BBC] were pursuing a particular angle related to the CPS/Police which we were unable to substantiate and which was therefore not broadcast.’
²

The very next day, some nine days after receiving the letter from Williams-Thomas and Gardiner, Julian Payne, the BBC’s head of press, finally sent a reply. It stated the
Newsnight
investigation was abandoned for ‘editorial reasons’ and quoted exactly the same rationale about the CPS and the police.

Lesley Gardiner was furious about the time it had taken for the BBC to respond. ‘[It] was almost dismissive in terms of what they were going to do about it,’ remembers Williams-Thomas. ‘I think that was a significant point. [The situation] was aggravated, of course, by the fact that they … then issued a very different statement. That was only because it was massively in the media eye. It raises the question of what they thought. Did they think it was just going to go away?’

On 28 September, five days before the ITV documentary was scheduled to be broadcast, and amid widespread reporting of the allegations it contained, the BBC issued a second statement: ‘While the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action.’
³

Newsnight
’s editor, Peter Rippon, added his voice to the denials coming out of the BBC. ‘It is absolutely untrue that the
Newsnight
investigation was dropped for anything other than editorial reasons. We have been very clear from the start that the piece was not broadcast because the story we were pursuing could not be substantiated. To say otherwise is false and very damaging to the BBC and individuals. The notion that internal pressure was applied appears to be a malicious rumour.’
⁴

In an email to Rippon, Meirion Jones expressed his concern at his editor’s attempt to ‘rewrite history’.
⁵
He pointed out that if there was to be an investigation – by the BBC Trust or the House of Commons Culture and Media Committee – ‘we have to be honest’.

Jones continued: ‘You made the decision that we had enough to TX [transmit] once we had confirmation that the police had investigated [Savile] – on top of the victim interviews we had already done … I don’t know what happened to change your mind and I thought that was a bizarre decision but I accepted that you decided to drop the story for Editorial Reasons because ultimately you are the Editor and it is up to you to make those calls.’

Rippon drafted a response that he emailed to Stephen Mitchell for approval. The email was never sent to Jones. Instead, they met face-to-face. Rippon contends that it was at this meeting that Jones told him that Surrey Police had interviewed all the women they had spoken to. Both Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean maintain they were consistently transparent about the fact that Keri was not part of the police investigation and therefore
Newsnight
had more than Surrey Police did when the CPS made its decision.

As the pressure on the BBC continued to mount, questions were now being asked in the press about whether information had been withheld from the police. Meanwhile the chain of internal communication within the BBC only seemed to grow. The BBC press office advised, wrongly, that a response should emphasise that the information provided by Keri was already known to the police.

Williams-Thomas remembers the week before transmission as being one of the most stressful of his life. ‘It was probably the closest I’ve been to having a nervous breakdown,’ he admits. ‘We were about to expose an individual who was highly regarded and respected and who had been a national institution. And ultimately, it was down to Lesley and I. We were responsible for this and for looking after the five people who were about to go on national TV. That is a big, big commitment.’

The first wave of press coverage about the imminent
Exposure
film contained some strong criticism. Roger Foster, Savile’s nephew and one of the organisers of his three-day funeral, said he was ‘sad and disgusted’. He voiced his fear that the allegations would have a negative effect on his uncle’s charity legacy. ‘The guy hasn’t been dead for a year and they’re bringing up these stories,’ he said. ‘I just don’t understand the motives behind this.’

‘His family came out and said that it was a disgrace,’ says Williams-Thomas. ‘So I was in the firing line from that. I was in the firing line for ITV, I was the face of the programme.’ It was upsetting, but he says he tried to ignore it. ‘I was very determined that what I was doing was right. I wanted to give a voice to those five people. I knew there would be other victims out there and I was hoping they would come forward. I never knew it would be as many as did come forward but I always hoped that there would be some other people that had the confidence to [do that].’

In the period leading up to the documentary being aired, Williams-Thomas sat at home with his eldest daughter listening to a particularly vociferous phone-in show on Radio Leeds. ‘My phone was ringing all morning,’ he remembers. ‘My agent was calling me saying “Radio Leeds are after you.” I thought, I’m just
not talking. So they did this phone-in and people were saying [they were] trying to get hold of Mark Williams-Thomas and he’s not returning their calls.’

Williams-Thomas has three children. His eldest daughter was 17 at the time. ‘I remember [her] saying, “What you’ve done is right.” You know what, that is quite a strong thing to say.’ His 13-year-old daughter, also ‘got it’, he says. ‘[She said] it was the right thing to do to expose an individual like that.’

At five minutes past five on the afternoon of 2 October, Peter Rippon responded to internal pressure within the BBC by publishing a blog post outlining his reasons for not broadcasting
Newsnight
’s report on Jimmy Savile. Helen Boaden, Stephen Mitchell, the Corporate and News PR departments and the BBC’s head of Corporate and Public Affairs were all involved in tweaks made to the original briefing document Mitchell had instructed Rippon to prepare. The office of Director General George Entwistle was also kept in the loop.

In the final, approved text, Rippon denied there had been a ‘BBC cover-up’ and that
Newsnight
had ‘deliberately withheld information from the police’. However, he did nail his colours firmly to the mast by claiming, ‘if we could establish some sort of institutional failure we would have a much stronger story’. He restated the line that the CPS decision not to proceed was based on a lack of evidence rather than Jimmy Savile’s age, and that it was the crucial factor in persuading him ‘not to publish’.
⁶

Within an hour, Jeremy Paxman,
Newsnight
’s most senior presenter, emailed Rippon with his own thoughts. He said the blog post did not answer all the accusations laid against the programme, adding, ‘I think we make a problem for ourselves by running away from this story.’
⁷
He outlined five points of serious concern and asked Rippon to reconsider doing something on the story. In one of a series of subsequent emails, Rippon argued that not covering the story was ‘the least worse option’.
⁸

Amid the deluge of newspaper stories and the spiralling sense of confusion at the BBC, the trustees of one of Jimmy Savile’s charitable
funds released a statement of their own: ‘We are conscious of the dedication and effort that Sir Jimmy made throughout his lifetime to charity. He raised more than £40 million for good causes, giving away 90 per cent of his income. The broadcast of such serious allegations, which by their very nature will be one-sided, may impact on the charitable trust and its endeavours.’
⁹

Williams-Thomas and Gardiner were still in the editing suite on the morning of 3 October. Their documentary was to be broadcast later that evening. By now, the media tide had turned firmly in their favour, and a dozen victims of Jimmy Savile were now telling their stories in papers and on news bulletins across Britain. ‘It was a real change,’ Williams-Thomas acknowledges. ‘We then had the media onside.’

Even the BBC had finally bowed to the pressure, announcing its Investigations Unit would assist police inquiries into its former star, a man who was now being posthumously rebranded as Public Enemy Number 1.

The former Surrey Police officer at the centre of the growing storm spent the rest of the afternoon doing interviews. Williams-Thomas was tired and surviving on shredded nerves. He agreed to stay on at ITV headquarters until the early evening in case any further changes were required to the programme, but was adamant that he wanted to watch the documentary at home with his family.

He remembers trying to grab a couple of hours’ sleep at a London hotel. ‘It was still frantic,’ he says. ‘My phone was ringing non-stop … I must have got half an hour because I was just exhausted.’

The walls had been breached and beyond lay the ugly truth Jimmy Savile had spent his life trying to conceal.