Leveson and Jimmy Savile

Last December I received a telephone call concerning Jimmy Savile’s apparent sexual abuse of underage girls in the 1970s. The details I heard were pretty chilling, but the negative reaction when I tried (unsuccessfully) to report the claims in the national press was equally troubling. There is every indication that the Leveson inquiry into press standards was to blame.

My source said that a Newsnight investigation into Savile’s activities had been shelved by the BBC in mysterious circumstances and encouraged me to find out more. I learnt that Newsnight had heard that Savile and two other celebrities, both still alive, had abused many different girls on BBC premises and in the Surrey countryside, when Savile visited an all-girls approved school called Duncroft. Newsnight also discovered that Savile had been questioned over sex crimes by Surrey police in 2007.

The claims had been corroborated several times over by former Duncroft pupils; two had even waived their anonymity to talk in front of the cameras about their experiences. By any standards Newsnight’s investigation was worthy of national attention, but the programme’s editor, Peter Rippon, had killed the story. Why? One theory I heard was that it clashed with tribute programmes to Savile scheduled for Christmas week.

On 21 December the BBC press office confirmed to me that Newsnight had undertaken a Savile investigation. Without commenting on details, they said it had been axed for editorial reasons. With this confirmation, I assumed the story would sail into any newspaper. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over two weeks I contacted six national news desks. One after another rejected the idea. I consistently suggested that it would not be necessary for anyone to accuse Savile outright of abusing children, simply to report that Newsnight had jettisoned its exposé despite significant-seeming findings, of which I knew quite a bit.