The investigator who revealed Jimmy Savile to be a paedophile has claimed the BBC could have stopped him and the people involved should be held accountable.
Criminologist and former police detective Mark Williams-Thomas is known for uncovering the sex abuser in the 2012 ITV documentary The Other Side of Jimmy Savile.
Ten years since his exposé on the once-beloved television presenter, Williams-Thomas has shared how cover-ups enabled Savile to become one of the country's most prolific sex offenders.
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He begins by acknowledging how the police failed to stop Savile. "He could have been stopped," he says during LADbible's Extraordinary Lives: The MINUTES Podcast. "The police service had plenty of opportunities over the decades to stop it. But they didn’t. Because nobody ever did a thorough investigation."
When pressed for the reason why, he adds: “Because they were incompetent. Individual officers were incompetent. They failed to properly investigate him. I think they were overcome by power and influence."
He adds: “I know lots of famous people, I’ve worked with an awful lot of them, I’ve worked very closely with Simon Cowell, we worked together on projects and so I’ve mixed with all the A-list, I know them and I think probably for me it was like ‘Do you know what, he’s just like anybody else’. But I don’t think the police officers saw that and they certainly didn’t see that when they were investigating him.”
Claiming the BBC was the other side of why Savile was able to get away with his crimes for so long, Mark mentions the review for the BBC by Dame Janet Smith, which he calls 'pretty flawed'.
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"Dame Janet Smith came out, she did a review for the BBC and her review was pretty flawed really because ultimately it got the right conclusion but the outcome of it was then flawed.
"Because she said, you know, there were senior managers within the BBC particularly within the radio set up who had the information but then they did nothing with it but she doesn’t criticise them in any way at all, it’s ridiculous.
“So, let's be very clear - there were people out there, senior managers in the BBC who could have stopped it, who could’ve stopped this because they could have stopped him from being involved in his programmes, could’ve stopped the process but they didn’t do anything. They ignored that process."
Williams-Thomas then mentions that he was approached by Netflix to make a documentary about Savile but he'd only be interested in telling the story about the people who knew about Savile's crimes but did nothing.
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He goes as far as to say he could name 'five or six' of them.
“People were silenced. He was very, very powerful. But there were people within management, within setups within the BBC who could have done something.
"And I hope those people have restless sleep about it all.
“They need to be held accountable.”
Following the release of Williams-Thomas' documentary and the subsequent coverage of the claims, police launched Operation Yewtree, a widespread investigation into the child sex abuse allegations.
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Savile, who died in 2011, was never brought to justice. The investigation found his crimes spanned six decades and involved hundreds of victims.
Gregory Robinson