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Jimmy Savile scandal extends to Australian victims

Alleged victims of the late Jimmy Savile now include men as well as women, including an Australian.

As the scandal surrounding the late Jimmy Savile deepens in the UK it has now emerged men as well as women are claiming to have been victims of alleged abuse, including an Australian man.

In what has been described as a “tsunami of filth” by the Chairman of the BBC, police are following 400 lines of inquiry involving more than 300 victims of alleged abuse by Savile from the 1960s through to the 1980s.

Alan Collins from law firm Pannone says, “It is being reported that a lot of the alleged Savile victims were women but that is not right. We are representing mostly men. These were boys in the 1960s and ’70s from good quality homes who were victims but are today upstanding people who would not normally come to the attention of the law.”

He declined to say any more about the case but it is understood he has been in email and telephone contact with the NSW man and was arranging to meet when he was to be in Australia on unrelated business.

The BBC now has announced three inquiries underway.

On Monday, former Court of Appeal judge Dame Janet Smith will begin a review into the culture and practices of the corporation during Savile’s time there, and will also examine if the BBC’s child protection and whistleblowing policies are fit for purpose.

An independent inquiry led by former Sky head of news Nick Pollard will also examine whether there were any failings in the BBC’s management of a Newsnight investigation about Savile which was not broadcast.

The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, has written to the Vatican to ask if Savile’s papal knighthood can be posthumously removed.

Thirty police officers were now investigating the Savile case.

Source: Herald Sun, BBC

3 Responses

  1. Sadly in some ways the television industry is not unlike the catholic church. They have known about things like this yet turned a blind eye or even protected the perpetrator. Give it some time and more things will surface in the australian industry. (some already have but its just the tip of the iceberg). As so often is the case, it takes many years for the scars to re-surface, for people to find their voice. But its too late for all the others that have been abused and suffered or are no longer with us.

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