Thursday 28 March 2013

Jimmy Savile: Who was protecting him for decades, and why?

When the Jimmy Savile scandal broke in late 2012, I wasn't particularly interested. A sleazy old DJ and TV presenter groping young girls - highly unpleasant, but not exactly big news as far as I could see.

But then all the pictures and stories started to emerge involving Savile and members of the Royal Family, as well as various prime ministers, and even the top Catholic clergyman in Britain.

He had Christmas dinner with Mrs. Thatcher and her husband eleven years in a row, we learned. There was the obvious question of why royalty and prime ministers would want to spend their time with this man, who by all accounts seems to have been quite transparently a self-serving, sociopathic bastard, hiding behind an "eccentric, fun loving" image which he successfully projected in the media (with the media's help!). No one who met him seems to have actually genuinely liked or befriended him, but we were fed this media line that he was some kind of selfless saint, so at the time of his death, his remarkable set of personal connections in royalty and politics seemed quite reasonable to most people. He did a lot of charity work, we all know about that... but these connections involved more than just a few promotional photo opportunities:

"Savile advised Prince Charles over the appointment of a royal aide" (Daily Mail, 5th November 2012)

"Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles" (The Guardian, 29th October 2012)

"Jimmy Savile alarmed Royal staff with lewd behaviour at Palace" (Daily Telegraph, 30th October 2012)

"Jimmy Savile - The Royal court jester" (Daily Express website, 30 October 2011)

"Jimmy Savile's extraordinary access to Margaret Thatcher detailed in secret files" (The Guardian, 28 December 2012)

"Revealed: Jimmy Savile's close friendship with Margaret Thatcher " (28 December 2012)

"Jimmy Savile and the Cardinal: Britain's top Catholic cleric was friend of disgraced TV host" (The Mirror, 26 February 2013)

"UK's top Catholic was long-standing friend of Savile" (Daily Mail website, 28 March 2013)

Anyone who gets that close to royalty and prime ministers (as well as holding a high-profile position in the BBC for fifty years) is thorougly checked out by the security services (MI5, etc.). That's exactly the kind of thing they're there for - "protecting the realm" includes protecting the sovereign and his/her family from contact with serial child rapists!

And anyone knighted by The Queen (which Savile was, in 1990) is thoroughly vetted to minimise the chance that disreputable behaviour won't come to light and embarrass the British monarchy by association.

So what happened? How much investigation, how much vetting went on? Did the British security services simply suffer from decades of incompetence? How did Savile get so close to the Royal Family? Were they not warned about him? If not, why? And if they were, why did they not shun him?

It now seems that any semi-competent detective could have learned that Savile was involved in some pretty sinister stuff - or at least could have established enough of a suspicion about him that he would have been kept at arms length rather than welcomed into the highest levels of the establishment. Consider:



And it gets weirder.

Why did cabinet minister Edwina Currie put Savile in charge of a task force to run Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital when he had no qualifications in mental health, prison security, or anything else?

"Jimmy Savile: Questions for Edwina Currie and the BBC" (The Telegraph, 20 October 2012)

"Currie: Savile 'suggested himself' for Broadmoor role" (ITV news website, 21 November 2012)

His activities as volunteer porter at two morgues (Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary), where he appears to have had unlimited access to the facilities, now seems very suspicious indeed.

Anyone who still believes Savile he was wheeling corspes about out of the goodness of his heart is seriousy naive.

"Savile sex scandal hits horrific new low as former colleague Paul Gambaccini claims on Radio Five Live that DJ was a 'necrophiliac'" (Mail Online, 23 October 2012)

"Hospital to probe Jimmy Savile's lone visits to morgue" (The Sun, 15 October 2012)

The conclusion I've come to is that this man must have been protected at the highest level. But by who? And why? I don't have the answers, but the more I've looked into this, the more horrific it starts to seem.

Savile has been directly linked to the Bryn Estyn care home in North Wales where extensive abuse of children went on for years. Despite some very tightly constrained investigations which concluded that there were no paedophile networks involved (supposedly just a few lowly employees acting in isolation), it's now looking certain that there was a very high level cover-up to protect certain VIPs involved in the abuse. There are highly credible claims that Margaret Thatcher's Parliamenary Private Secretary Peter Morrison - a known paedophile at the time, cabinet colleague Edwina Currie has since admitted - visited Bryn Estyn and took boys away in his car.

"Eyewitness 'saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse'" (Channel 4 News website, 6th November 2012)

"Sir Peter Morrison 'seen' at abuse care home" (ITV News website, 7th November 2012)

"Jimmy Savile linked to North Wales child abuse scandal" (The Telegraph, 7th November 2012)

"Victims tell of horror inside North Wales care home where gang rape, strip searches and vicious canings were a way of life... and Jimmy Savile was a regular visitor" (Mail Online, 7th November 2012)

So why was Savile visiting this place if there were no networks involved? Interestingly, William Hague (current foreign secretary) was Welsh secretary at the time his Conservative colleague was allegedly visting Bryn Estyn to rape children, and he then went on to set up the Waterhouse Enquiry which supposedly investigated abuse at the home. Despite numerous VIPs being named by victims as having taken part in the abuse, none of their names ever surfaced in the final report, and none were prosecuted.

"The Jillings report: How the truth about North Wales child abuse scandal was suppressed" (The Independent, 11 November 2012)

Did Mrs. Thatcher really not know what her Private Secretary and annual Christmas guest were up to? Why didn't the security services warn her? Was this all just incompetence?

On 24th October 2012, at the height of the Savile scandal, Labour MP Tom Watson stood up in the House of Commons and nervously asked a question at Prime Minister's Question Time, talking of "clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10". The House went deathly quiet - none of the usual guffawing and buffoonery - you could have heard a pin drop. Watson has been accused of party-political motives for bringing this up, but does this really matter, considering what's at stake? Check the video, it's truly chilling stuff (and watch David Cameron's face):

Amazingly, the mainstream media almost completely ignored this bombshell. There was nothing on the BBC TV news about it that evening for example - how the hell can this not be considered newsworthy? It's been kept so well out of the media that when I bring it up with people I meet, no one knows what I'm talking about.

As a result of Watson's question, it seems, investigations have recently been reopened into the case of Peter Righton who Watson refers to. Righton was an internationally respected expert in child care, traveling to conferences, publishing in academic journals, etc. Then he got caught with an extensive collection of horrific child pornography. He was also linked to the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange, a legal organisation founded in 1974 seeking to promote the idea that adult-child sex was healthy and normal, and to get the legal age of consent lowered to four (!!!) Despite a vigorous campaign by the public against PIE, Home Secretary Leon Brittan was alarmingly reluctant to shut the organisation down. It was eventually disbanded, with a membership list of over 1000 paedophiles, but very few were prosecuted and the network appears to have gone underground).

"Leon Brittan and the Paedophile Information Exchange" (Spotlight on Abuse blog, 3rd March 2013)

various news articles from UK press on PIE (1975-83) (Spotlight on Abuse blog)

This new investigation has led to the Metropolitan Police setting up Operation Fernbridge, looking into the Elm Guest House in West London, where extensive abuse of children from local care homes went on for years. News of this scandal broke in the early 80s, the papers covered it for ten days, rumours of MPs, cabinet ministers, members of the royal household and other VIP's being involved swirled around, and then the mainstream media dropped the whole thing.

various news items from UK papers on Elm Guest House scandal (Spotlight on Abuse blog)

A few things about Fernbridge have leaked out into a few papers, but the mainstream media (BBC and Sky News in particular) have been carefully avoiding the story.

"Elm guest house: Home Office was warned by top Tory 30 years ago of VIP paedophile ring" (The Mirror, 10th February 2013)

"Paedophile ring leader, Colin Peters, linked to Barnes scandal: Convicted barrister in child-sex chain alleged to have abused boys at London guesthouse" (The Independent, 3rd March 2013)

"Police failings put dozens of children at risk from notorious paedophile ring: Documents reveal some visitors at Elm Guest House went on to commit series of child sex offences"

"Cyril Smith named in Barnes abuse case" (The Independent, 27th January 2013)

"Police arrest two men in child abuse inquiry dating back to 1980s: Investigations focusing on allegations of abuse at guest house and care home in Barnes, south-west London" (The Guardian, 6th February 2013)

"Timebomb at Elm Guest House: Pop stars, a bishop and a top politician appear on a list seized by police investigating child abuse at the London hotel in the 1980s" (Daily Mail, 1st February 2013)

Savile has been directly linked to this place, the owner (who still hasn't been arrested and questioned by Fernbridge!) claiming to have been a close friend of Savile!

"Met detectives told of Jimmy Savile's link to Elm Guest House: Haroon Kasir boasted of friendship with Jimmy Savile, and 'was odd after star's death'" (Exaro News, 16th February 2013)

If you've read this far and still aren't willing to believe Savile was protected and part of VIP child abuse networks then perhaps you should consider that you might be in denial.

Savile has also been linked to the Haute de Garenne childrens home in Jersey where we now horrific abuse went on for decades. Again, a tightly constrained investigation brought a few lowly employees to justice but (as always) no evidence of organised abuse was allowed into the public domain. Just one example of what this place was like: Edward Paisnel, the man who came and played Father Christmas at this children's home for several years was later convicted for extreme sexual abuse and murder. He became known in the press as the "Beast of Jersey", and claimed in his trial to have been part of a secret VIP abuse network on the island. This was dismissed as fantasy. Once again, we were told he was acting alone.

"Paedophile was Santa at Jersey kids' home" (Metro News, 26th February 2008)

"Beast of Jersey paedophile Edward Paisnel was known to visit children’s home" (The Times, 26th February 2008)

When the investigation was going on about the abuse at Haute de Garenne, Savile denied he had ever been there and used his lawyers to block The Sun from printing pictures of him clearly on the premises surrounded by children.

"Jimmy Savile turns to Fox Hayes for action against The Sun" (The Lawyer, 17th March 2008)

When an investigation was completed into why numerous police investigations into alleged abuses by Savile over the decades never led to his prosectution, we were told that it could all be innocently explained by a lack of communication, limitations in the ability of various police forces to cross reference files, minor incompetences, etc.

But wait! We were also told that several of these explosive files on "national treasure" Jimmy Savile were marked as "sensitive" and thereby kept from view. These files didn't mark themselves "sensitive"! So who did, and why? Are there no journalists out there prepared to ask such simple questions?

"Police failings over BBC's Savile exposed in report" (Yahoo News, 12th March 2013)

"Police 'unable to access sex files' on celebrity suspects" (The Guardian, 20th March 2013)

"Nothing to See Here" (Fleet Street Fox blog, 12th March 2013)

"Celebrity Criminals Like Jimmy Savile 'Were Protected By Police'" (Huffington Post, 20th March 2013)

Perhaps the key to why there's been such a hush in the media about this stuff can be found in the following incident (which, again, went unmentioned in the mainstream media):

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingston, on London's LBC Radio during the height of Savile scandal, said quite clearly that MI5 had been secretly filming the sexual abuse of children at Kincora Boys Home in Belfast, in order to entrap (and thereby be able to blackmail and gain leverage over) certain Ulster politicians. There have been rumours and investigations about this place for years. No one's disputing that abuse went on there. So if untrue, why would a shrewd politician like Livingston risk his career by making such a claim? And if it's true, this means that security services haven't just been covering up abuse like Savile's (for whatever reason), they've also been organising it.

Police incompetence? Isolated incidents? Do you really believe that? I know this is too horrific for some people to contemplate, but it's looking increasingly like powerful paedophile networks have infiltrated just about every sector of the British Establishment (Police, Judiciary, Parliament, Clergy, the Royal Household), and that webs of deceipt, corruption and blackmail are being employed to cover their tracks and achieve aims which the general public know nothing of.

PLEASE get informed about this, talk to your friends about it, spread the word via social media. Yes, it's horrible. Yes, we'd all rather not have to think about it. But if this country is indeed under the control of networks of child rapists, are you just going to shrug and let it happen?

There's a lot of confusion, rumour and badly authored stuff online about this (and the far-right are trying to exploit it in order to discredit all of the mainstream political parties), so check your sources and use some discretion in what information you spread. The following two blogs are (I believe) currently the most complete and factually reliable sources of information on this matter:

Spotlight on Abuse
The Needle

THIS DARKNESS MUST END.