Unabated

The scandal surrounding Jimmy Saville goes on unabated. The BBC are in turmoil over their part in what happened and the family of the late DJ look on as more revelations appear each day. If they were not convinced at first of how big this was going to become, their eyes have been opened now by the scale of things.

It seems there were two sides to Jimmy Saville. He gave generously to charity and received a great deal of acclaim in his lifetime for that. He made friends with royalty and with the church who honoured him with a knighthood. On the other hand he brought misery to many young ladies who suffered from his abuse many of whom complained at the time only to have their complaints dismissed by people in authority. It seems that the stories were dismissed because of the power that Saville had as a result of his ‘good side’.

No doubt, given time, this story will blow over to be replaced by other sordid revelations of someone else but hopefully before that happens, the people responsible for covering up what went on will be called to account and lessons will be learnt.

However, there is still one aspect of this scandal which to me is disturbing. The NHS has apparently not seen fit to apologise to the victims who suffered at their hospitals where Saville was given free rein to come and go as he pleased. Further more, there has been no explanation of why he was provided with accommodation in two of the hospitals and keys to the wards in another. I would hope that the investigations taking place would look into these issues with the same vigour that they are applying to what went wrong at the BBC.