Savile, Jaconelli and the NYP Custody Scandal

Savile, Jaconelli and the NYP Custody Scandal

A Letter to the Editor from NYE Police & Crime correspondent, TIM HICKS.

~~~~~

Sir,

I write to comment on Nigel Ward’s article “The Reckoning” here which commented on a Radio Times article covering the BBC TV drama series “The Reckoning”, which investigated Jimmy Savile and his friend and fellow-abuser, North Yorkshire County Council and Scarborough Borough Council Conservative Councillor, Alderman and Mayor, Peter Jaconelli.

Nigel’s article covers the fight of the NYE team, principally Nigel and I, to (a) expose the cover up by North Yorkshire Police (NYP), (b) lay bare Jaconelli and Savile as paedophiles and (c) unmask the Councillors and Police Officers who protected him.

Nigel and I both took part in the BBC investigation mentioned in the Radio Times article here and both submitted evidence to the North Yorkshire Police (NYP) investigation into Savile code-named Operation Hibiscus. I also gave evidence to the Metropolitan Police investigation into Savile code-named Operation Yewtree and the NYE relentlessly covered the investigation as it progressed.

Deputy Chief Consatble Sue Cross (ret’d)

Looking back and assessing our campaign, I would conclude that we were successful in exposing the police cover-up led by Deputy Chief Constable Sue Cross and in exposing Savile and Jaconelli as rapists. NYP had to admit that it had not properly investigated Savile and Jaconelli; it had to refer itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Public statement by Assistant Chief Constable Paul Kennedy here.

However, we failed to bring any of the police officers that either protected Savile and Jaconelli, or participated in the cover up to book. No police officer has ever even been charged with any offence over the way both perverts were protected by the police.

Councillors from North Yorkshire County Council, Scarborough Borough Council or the North Yorkshire Police Authority, who must all have known about Jaconelli’s offending, but did nothing all escaped censure.

Scarborough and Whitby Conservative Association has never apologised for Jaconelli’s offending and supported Councillor John Nock’s view that:

“He [Jaconelli] was not a predatory paedophile. He was not like Jimmy Savile. He was only handing out money to poor kids for giving him a wank”.

John Nock is presently a Whitby Town Councillor.

NYE article here.

The NYE is now running a major campaign to expose a group of predatory police officers who are alleged to have been committing sexual offences against female detainees in NYP Custody Suites. I find it profoundly depressing that despite Savile and Jaconelli and the convictions of murderer and rapist PC Couzens, and serial rapist PC Carrick, which demonstrate the need for predatory police officers to be dismissed as soon as they are detected, nothing has changed.

The NYE investigation into sexual abuse of detainees has been met with exactly the same wall of silence now that it faced in 2012. No one denies the allegations are accurate. They just refuse to comment. Neither Chief Constable Winward, the Home Office, or Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner Zoë Metcalfe (successor to the North Yorkshire Police Authority) will comment on these allegations and my complaints have been suppressed.

They have been supported in this strategy by the North Yorkshire Police, Fire & Crime Panel of North Yorkshire Council, which has adopted the same policy now as its predecessor body North Yorkshire County Council did for Jaconelli.

In summary, the allegations of sexual abuse by police officers have been effortlessly swept under the carpet, as they were with Savile, Jaconelli, Couzens and Carrick.

The NYE will continue to raise public awareness of this issue.

Yours Truly,

Tim Hicks