The Surrey Police investigation into Savile has previously been outlined in this earlier blogpost http://bit.ly/2dybGYs. This took place during the 2007-9 period and covered three allegations. The first was that Savile had forced a pupil of Duncroft approved school to place her hand on his groin in the TV room, the second that Savile had kissed a choir girl visiting Stoke Mandeville hospital and put his tongue in her mouth, and the third that Savile had engaged in sexual activity with a pupil in a building known as Norman Lodge located in the grounds of Duncroft. The file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), then under the leadership of Sir Keir, and the decision was reached by the CPS was that there was insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution.
As a result of the furore that ensued after the broadcast of the ITV Exposure programme in October 2012, the CPS, still under the leadership of Sir Keir, commissioned a report by Alison Levitt QC to investigate the reasons for not prosecuting Savile. Although the facts provided in her report are extensive, thorough and detailed, the analysis and conclusions are grossly unrealistic, almost bordering on the delusional.
The report was commissioned during the fallout from the ITV Exposure programme (the numerous fabrications presented in this were debunked in the previously mentioned blogpost). Like the BBC Smith report (outlined here http://bit.ly/2mMrQza) the Levitt report was based on the premise that Savile was a serial predatory sex offender and the conclusions and reasoning were tailored to conform to this belief. She claims to have ‘tried to ensure as far as possible that I have judged the cases on the basis of what was known at the time, rather than the information today’. But it is clear from reading the report that she has accepted wholesale the prevailing narrative about Savile’s supposedly predatory behaviour, and this has deeply influenced her outlook and findings.
Her report also covered an investigation by Sussex Police into a single separate allegation involving a woman in her early twenties. This occurred in 1970 but was not reported until 2008. Unlike the Surrey allegations Savile was never interviewed by police about this, so it is not possible to know his response. After discussion with the police the complainant decided that she was not prepared to take the case forward as ‘it was a long time ago and she did not have access to the information the police required’ declaring she did not want ‘any more hassle’ about the matter. In the circumstances it is clear the CPS decision not to prosecute was the only option available. With regard to the allegation relating to Norman Lodge at Duncroft the Levitt report agreed with the conclusion of the CPS that ‘no prosecution could have taken place because the behaviour complained of did not amount to a criminal offence’.
With regard to the two remaining allegations investigated by Surrey Police it should be noted that neither of the complaints were made by the individual allegedly assaulted. In the case of the Duncroft TV room incident the complaint was made by a former pupil who claimed to have witnessed the alleged incident. This involved Savile taking the girl’s hand and placing it on is groin. When interviewed by the police she said that ‘she did not think much of what had happened’ and did not want to make a statement. Savile denied that this had ever happened, pointing out that it would have been impossible with so many witnesses present. The incident appears to relate more to some teasing suggestive horseplay, than an assault of a sexual nature, and in any case Savile was the object of the claimed touching, not the girl.
With regard to the Stoke Mandeville hospital allegation the complaint was made by her sister, a former Duncroft pupil. It was alleged that as the sister was about to board the coach for home, Savile called her over asking for a goodbye kiss. The girl was expecting a kiss on the cheek but instead ‘he kissed her on the lips and put his tongue inside her mouth’. She was shocked by this incident but the only person she told about it was her sister. In a statement she declared that she ‘never considered going to the police about the incident. I thought it was so insignificant at the time. I think it would have been a waste of police time’. Savile denied the incident had taken place again pointing out it would have been impossible with so many witnesses present. It is difficult to disagree with the assessment of the girl that the police at the time would have shown very little inclination to investigate what most people would regard as a relatively trivial incident.
In both of these cases the CPS reviewing lawyer stated that the determining factor in reaching his decisions was that he had been told by police that the alleged victims were ‘adamant’ that they would not go to court, and that one of them would ‘suffer’ if forced to take part in a prosecution. Given all this he took the view that ‘there was no point in considering the matter further as there was nothing more that could be done’.
In her report Alison Levitt disagreed with this approach. She ludicrously claimed that the allegations were ‘serious’ when in reality they were very minor and where even the alleged victims did not consider any need for the police to become involved. She makes much of the fact that none of them were informed that there were other complainants and that the CPS should have recognised this and ‘built’ a prosecution. She also claims that there was no collusion but in reality the former pupils making the complaints had been in contact on the Friends Reunited website.
The CPS was undoubtedly right not to prosecute, not only because those most affected refused to take part, but also because any jury would find it impossible to convict such relatively minor infractions, with such slender evidence, after such a long period of time. A prosecution in these circumstances would have been an abuse of the legal process, and any witnesses would likely have been torn to shreds by the defence counsel. Alison Levitt’s unbalanced conclusions can only have been made in an attempt to appease the baying mob outraged by the fabrications they had credulously swallowed after the ITV Exposure programme. The report however did confirm that in the case of the Stoke Mandeville kissing incident there was no mention of Savile previously ringing the girl’s home or her writing to him, as falsely claimed in the Exposure programme.
So it is true that Sir Keir Starmer was never personally involved in the decision not to prosecute Jimmy Savile, although it is somewhat surprising that he was never informed about a case involving such a well known national celebrity. Starmer accepted the finding of the Levitt report in full, which was clearly a disreputable and unprincipled attempt to distant himself from the entirely correct decision of his reviewing lawyer. In so doing he placed appeasing the public loathing of Savile over the facts and evidence of the cases, and the interests of natural justice.
Boris Johnson should also be condemned, not only for suggesting that Starmer was personally responsible for this decision and for his supposed ‘apology’ after the Levitt report, but also for assuming as truthful the grotesquely exaggerated nature of the complaints against Savile. This criticism can also be levelled at the aide of the prime minister who resigned, denouncing Johnson’s implication that Starmer ‘was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice’ through ‘an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse’. She is completely wrong on both counts, as it is clear from her gross exaggerations that, like Johnson, before sounding off she had done nothing to investigate the facts behind the decision of the CPS not to prosecute Savile.
To conclude, the prime minister was right to condemn Sir Keir but for the wrong reason. He should have condemned him for disreputably failing to support his reviewing lawyer who made the absolutely correct decision not to prosecute Savile.
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