Abuse on Camera, Theroux Documentary shows Savile Grope Teen!

JIMMY Savile gropes a teenage girl in front of cameras filming him for a documentary.
BBC film-maker Louis Theroux, 46, saw Savile rubbing himself against her and grabbing her bottom.

The girl was at a restaurant and was next to her mother, who Savile knew.
Theroux and Savile are then seen laughing and joking as they leave the Flying Pizza in Leeds.
The footage is being shown for the first time, 16 years after Theroux tried to expose him in documentary When Louis Met Jimmy.

The BAFTA-winning filmmaker now describes the disturbing moment as “uncomfortable viewing”.
Dad-of-three Theroux admits he developed “something like a friendship” with Savile, who is said to have abused 1,000 victims over six decades.

In Louis Theroux: Savile, which is on tomorrow night on BBC2, victims call the presenter “gullible”for failing to spot that he was a paedophile.

Back in 2000, the bespectacled interviewer spent months in the company of the DJ and TV presenter for a one-off programme, When Louis Met Jimmy.
The pair maintained what Louis calls “a friendly relationship” in the years that followed, something he reflects on in his new film Louis Theroux: Savile.

“One of the reasons I kept in touch was that I felt there was a side to him that I hadn’t seen, but I never found out the truth while he was alive,” Louis says of the man who, following his death in October 2011, was exposed as having sexually abused more than 320 victims – many of whom were disabled and underage.

“Sixteen years after I first met him, and three years after his offences came to light, I decided to speak to some of the people who knew Jimmy, his friends and victims.
“I wanted to understand how he had got away with his crimes for so long, to see what clues were there in hindsight, and make sense of my own failure to recognise him for what he was.”

After he died, I had to take a step back and examine my own conscience. What did I miss? What more could I have done?”

As part of his exploration into the disgraced presenter, Louis speaks to Chérie Wheatcroft, a former patient at Stoke Mandeville hospital, where the Jim’ll Fix It! star was a patron.
After burning herself on a fire, the A-level student was sitting on her hospital bed with bandaged hands and looking out of the window when she caught a passing Savile’s eye.
“The next minute, he climbed in the window and I was in shock,” Chérie recalls.

“He smiled, came straight at me and kissed me. I couldn’t use my hands, but he held my face and put his tongue down my throat. It went on and on.
“Then he started yabbering: ‘You’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you?’ I’m furious with myself [for not making a complaint] but I was scared to. He had money and influence.”

Another victim, who prefers to be known only as Sam, was regularly molested by Jimmy at the Stoke Mandeville hospital chapel aged 11.
“I used to wear lots of pairs of knickers to make it harder [for him],” Sam reveals. “I never said to him: ‘Don’t!’ because he knew he could.”

Indeed, as Louis points out, Savile’s extensive charity work – for which he was awarded an OBE in 1971 and a knighthood in 1990 – was “a smokescreen for his abuse and a way of getting access to vulnerable people”.

Journalist Angela Levin wrote a piece on Jimmy in the 1980s and tells Louis that, even then, she knew of the rumours surrounding him.
“I found him despicable, controlling and a bully,” Angela reveals.

“I was told by a nurse that he would play with little girls who were paralysed from the waist down, but the libel laws were very strong, so it was hard to write about it. He was well connected and you’d have to be a very brave journalist to do that.”
Similarly, Louis says he’d heard “unsavoury rumours” about Jimmy since he was a teenager, and now feels a conflicting sense of shame for developing a relationship with him.

“He molested, raped and abused hundreds of people and, when he was alive, I called him a friend, which I still struggle with,” Louis, 46, admits. “I knew there was a secret, but I didn’t know what it was. I feel a bit ashamed of that.
“I was one of the many people who failed to see what Jimmy was about. Now we know the truth, it all seems so clear, but as with a quiz: it’s only obvious if you know the answer.”

 Savile Report Giving victims justice
Click the link for the full Savile Report.

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