Jimmy Savile: Stoke Mandeville abuse report to be published
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Version 0 of 1. A key report into the sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile of patients at Stoke Mandeville hospital is to be published on Thursday. I hope those people who are still alive, who did know what was happened, feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves The investigation into the scale and details of the sexual assaults on patients at the Buckinghamshire hospital was delayed after new information came to light. The report, overseen by former barrister Kate Lampard, is likely to highlight how Savile, who died in October 2011, abused his position within the hospital and in his role as a charity fundraiser to abuse and attack vulnerable patients. Savile, a volunteer porter at the hospital, was said to have committed 22 offences. Savile raised £40m for Stoke Mandeville, and boasted that he “lived” in a bedroom that hospital managers had given him and he could do as he pleased. Three investigations were launched at Stoke Mandeville, Leeds general infirmary and Broadmoor hospital after details emerged about cases of alleged abuse by Savile in hospitals. NHS reports on Leeds and Broadmoor were published last year, but those abused by Savile at Stoke Mandeville were told that the publication of the investigation – featuring some of his worst offences – had been postponed after new information was received. In a separate report also to be published on Thursday, Lampard will highlight recommendations to stop such a scandal occurring again within NHS hospitals. Over more than four decades, the entertainer conducted what previous reports have said was “truly awful” sexual abuse within the wards of hospitals where he was given free rein by staff. At Broadmoor, he had keys allowing him unrestricted access. He was allowed to watch female patients strip and bathe. The inquiry was also given macabre accounts of Savile acting unacceptably with dead bodies in the Leeds mortuary. Michael Salmon, 80, a consultant paediatrician, was last week convicted of nine indecent assaults carried out against girls at Stoke Mandeville and two counts of rape. Salmon was abusing girls at the hospital between 1973 and 1988 – a time when Savile also had unfettered access to patients in the hospital. He was jailed for a minimum of nine years, for what the judge at Reading crown court said was a horrific abuse of vulnerable children. Salmon had previously been jailed for three years in 1990 after admitting indecent assaults on two 13-year-old girls and a 16-year-old girl. He was struck off the medical register in 1991. But further allegations about Salmon were made to the Metropolitan police in 2012 during investigations of historical abuse carried out by Savile and others. One woman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Savile began molesting her in the early 1970s when she was a 17-year-old auxiliary at Stoke Mandeville. The woman, who was given the pseudonym Debra, said: “It was always very casual patting on the bottom to start with, then he [Savile] was always trying to push the boundaries with me – putting his hands under my skirt, trying to put his hands inside my knickers.” She said the abuse lasted 18 months but she was too frightened to report it. “I was just starting out and didn’t want to rock the boat,” the former nurse said. “I think people must have covered up for him because I can’t believe people didn’t know about it. I imagine people knew he was doing it and just chose to not to say anything.” Stoke Mandeville’s former director of nursing, Chris McFarlane, said Savile had “100% access” to all parts of the hospital. “If he knocked on a closed door and somebody opened the door, Jimmy would be allowed in. I don’t believe I knew anybody who would have said: ‘Y ou’re not allowed in here’, because he was Jimmy Savile. How could we have allowed him to sit with our patients in the spinal unit, some of whom were paralysed from the neck down, maybe he was just talking to them, maybe he was doing much more than that, patients wouldn’t have known?” Related: Jimmy Savile by the man who knew him best Lawyers for Savile’s victims are demanding that managers at the hospital at the time of the abuse are held to account. Slater and Gordon, which represents 44 former staff and patients who say they were abused by Savile at Stoke Mandeville, said it “beggars belief” that senior staff failed to intervene. Solicitor Liz Dux said: “The victims are hopeful the review will establish a much greater level of accountability than the previous one did. Anything less will rightly be seen as a whitewash by those people still suffering from the awful crimes Savile committed all those years ago.” Abigail, who was abused by Savile when she was an 11-year-old patient in the 1970s, said: “I want to see some accountability from the report in to Stoke Mandeville. No one has properly said sorry. We must make sure this can never, ever happen again to anyone else in an institution. No more lives must be ruined.” Sylvia Nicol a former trustee of the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust said Savile “was welcomed with open arms where ever he went ... I never heard any rumours”. She added: “I’m not denying anything took place … but I can only say that I saw him do good. I can’t be a judge or jury on anything else, none of the sadness that seems to have been going on there was I aware of.” Dux told the BBC that many of her clients had given evidence of how they reported abuse at the time, but they were told to keep quiet. “One of them has named the senior nursing sister to whom she told immediately after she had been assaulted in the children’s ward. She was told by the senior nursing sister: ‘Be quiet, you silly girl. Do you know what he does for the hospital?’” The senior nurse has since died, Dux said. “We do know that numerous people reported [Savile’s abuse] to senior members of staff. They will want answers today as to why people didn’t act. I hope the inquiry does try to name people and I hope those people who are still alive who did know what was happened feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.” She said nothing more could be done to punish those who knew. “Deliberately turning a blind eye is not a crime at the moment, which is why we are calling for a change in the law, supported by Labour and the Liberal [Democrats] so that if abuse happens in a regulated activity and a blind eye is turned, in future those people can be prosecuted.” |