The post you are reporting:
Giving Victims a Voice.
"11. Concluding remarks
11.1 From the information provided by the hundreds of people who have come
forward to Operation Yewtree, police and the NSPCC have concluded that Jimmy
Savile was one of the UK's most prolific known sexual predators. Indeed the formal
recording of allegations of crime on this scale is, to the best of our knowledge,
unprecedented in the UK.
11.2 The details provided by the victims of his abuse paint the picture of a mainly
opportunistic individual who used his celebrity status as a powerful tool to coerce or
control them, preying on the vulnerable or star-struck for his sexual gratification.
Sadly, this type of behaviour is not uncommon in any society - sexual abuse,
whether in street gangs, though trafficking or within families and institutions, often
involves the use of powerful coercion, intimidation and manipulation to exploit the
vulnerable.
11.3 It would be naive to view this case as the isolated behaviour of an individual
rogue celebrity. We do, however, need to recognise the context of the 1960s and
1970s (the peak offending period). It was an age of different social attitudes and the
workings of the criminal justice system at the time would have reflected this, even
though the abuse committed was as illegal then as it is now. Thankfully attitudes
have changed considerably in a relatively short period of time.
11.4 The increased confidence of victims is manifested in the significant increase in
the reporting of non-recent abuse as a direct result of the exposure of Jimmy Savile.
This does not mean there is any room for complacency though - more work still
needs to be done to ensure that the vulnerable feel that the scales of justice have
been rebalanced and their confidence in the criminal justice system enhanced.
11.5 The questions asked by victims were how was Savile able to offend over so
many years, why wasn't he stopped and could it ever happen again? The accounts
victims have provided, showing the pattern of his behaviour and the protection from
public exposure his celebrity status appears to have afforded, go some way to
answering the first two questions.
11.6 Institutions and agencies that may have missed past opportunities to stop
Savile's activities - and organisations where similar sexual abuse could be going on
undetected - must now do all they can to make their procedures for safeguarding
children and vulnerable adults as robust and rigorous as possible. Only then can the
victims who have come forward be reassured that it is unlikely to happen again.
11.7 Perhaps the most important learning from this appalling case is in relation to
the children and adults who spoke out about Jimmy Savile at the time. Too often
they were not taken seriously. We must not allow this to happen again - those who
come forward must be given a voice and swift action taken to verify accounts of
abuse.
Detective Superintendent David Gray MPS Paedophile Unit
Peter Watt Director of Child Protection Advice & Awareness NSPCC
