Health Sec. Hunt extends Savile investigation

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announces extension of NHS Savile investigation to include more hospitals

I write to bring you up to date with today’s developments on the investigations into Britains worst prolific sexual offender Jimmy Savile (Operation Yewtree Tier 1) and its longest running and most successful paedophile offender Peter Jaconelli (Operation Yewtree Tier 2), which are as follows.

• Chief Constable Dave Jones of North Yorkshire Police has not responded to my open letter asking for “a full and open statement concerning these allegations of collusion by police officers to protect Jaconelli (and by extension Savile), because he was a senior Conservative politician, Mayor and Alderman”.  Full story here:  Open Letter

• Predictably, the Police & Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire has also ignored my request, contained in the same open letter to comment on allegations of corruption in North Yorkshire Police over its failure to arrest Peter Jaconelli, although he was known to be offending in Scarborough for many years.

• One correspondent to Real Whitby has alleged that a member of North Yorkshire Police was also a member of Savile’s infamous Friday Morning Tea Club.

• Another witness has alleged that Jaconelli corrupted boys by paying them for sexual services in his ice cream parlours.

• The Operation Yewtree investigation has been handed over to North Yorkshire Police, which has at last interviewed one witness, but dismissed his evidence.

• The only Councillor to speak out, Councillor Geoff Evans, has left the Council.

Of all the failures by the British Police Service that allowed Savile to go unpunished, unquestionably the two most critical were made by North Yorkshire Police:

1. The inexcusable failure by North Yorkshire Police to arrest Jaconelli, who was offending openly in Scarborough for over thirty years, which would surely have led them to wind up the vice ring he led in Scarborough, including Savile.

2. The apparent failure by the Force Intelligence Bureau to pass on the intelligence North Yorkshire Police had undoubtedly developed on Savile during the 2003 paedophile investigation

So the failure to comment or launch a credible becomes all the more serious.  Indeed it is not now an exaggeration to say that understanding this failure is to detect Jaconelli and Savile in Scarborough is arguably the key question in determining the reason for the failure of the Surrey Police investigation in 2007 and why Savile was able to escape detection for so long.

Regular readers will know that Real Whitby has been cooperating closely with the Sunday Express to expose Jaconelli and Savile’s contacts with patients from Rampton Secure Psychiatric Hospital.

Full story here: http://www.real-whitby.co.uk/savile-the-jaconelli-ring-and-rampton

Sunday Express coverage here and here.

• Following on from the decision by the Independent Police Complaints Commission to order North Yorkshire Police to consider if there are any conduct issues that should be referred to it, as a result of information received from Real Whitby, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22566656  the NHS investigation into his activities into hospitals has also been extended.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today:

“The inquiry, currently focused on Broadmoor, Stoke Mandeville and Leeds General hospitals, as well as a further 10 trusts, will be expanded to include “other hospitals”.

Health Secretary’s announcement

In the Real Whitby article above I stated “The Investigation by Ms Kate Lampard QC into Savile’s abuse at the NHS will now have to consider if Savile abused patients from Rampton -previously thought to have avoided his attentions”. The names of the “other hospitals” to be investigated have not been revealed by the Health Secretary.

Following on from the completely unsatisfactory and superficial report by Rampton into the visits Savile organised for patients to meet Jaconelli in Scarborough, Real Whitby is predicting that one of the hospitals to be investigated should be Rampton. (Text of report contained in this article, the authors asked to have their names redacted from the report so they could not be identified).

The Department of Health investigation is being overseen by the Barrister – and former deputy chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service – Ms Kate Lampard QC. Ms Lampard practiced as a Barrister for a number of years. She held chair and senior non-executive roles in the public sector and has undertaken independent investigations into serious incidents in public sector organisations. Ms Lampard  is not  making any press comment at this stage.

In a written ministerial statement, Mr Hunt said:

“The Metropolitan Police Service, working with Kate Lampard, has established there was further relevant information regarding Jimmy Savile. The Department of Health asked the Metropolitan Police Service, through an agreed information sharing process, to review information it held to ascertain if it included material related to health and care settings.”

• Real Whitby has cooperated completely with the Metropolitan Police Service Operation Yewtree and has already submitted extensive evidence to Detectives from the Metropolitan Police.  Last month, Real Whitby was again contacted by Scotland Yard to obtain our permission to submit our details to the BBC, HM Inspector of Constabulary and the NHS investigations into Savile, which was, of course, given.  We withheld this information pending the official announcement made today.

• We can also now confirm Real Whitby has been in regular contact with Ms Lampard and the NHS investigation and notified them of our concerns in respect of Rampton.

Real Whitby will continue to cooperate with the investigations into Jimmy Savile and Peter Jaconelli in the public interest, so the truth will come out and we will have some answers.  In particular, one to the key question of all:

Why did North Yorkshire Police fail to arrest Peter Jaconelli when he was operating openly and with impunity in Scarborough for over forty years, when this would surely have led them straight to Savile?