January 2010 was when the story broke alleging that Terry had an affair with Perroncel.

October 2011 was game where Terry allegedly abused Ferdinand.

I know.


Just saying.
By the way, he can bang anyones wife he wants for me.
His business.

Yup. I appreciate that.



Two things here.

First, that technically, paedophilia is an interest in or sexual activity with children who pre-bubescent (usually seen as below 13). So I think that we do have to be careful using that word.

That is not, however, to excuse Savile's behaviour, which both appears to have included some paedophilic incidents, but certainly to have predominantly been an abuse of power – and very much all about the exercise of power. I'd personally cite the classic definition of rape, that it was not about sex, but about power.

I've mentioned Jerry's points repeatedly, because I do think that the culture has changed: it's changed both on paedophilia and on that abuse of power with older, post-pubescent young people.

One of the things, viewed very much in the cold light of day, that is interesting (and you've touched on it) is that people have been come out of the woodwork to reveal their own knowledge and disapproval.

Now personally, I have little doubt that the bulk of the stories are essentially correct: they tie in with victims' stories, they don't tend to contradict each other etc. But I do wonder whether part (at least) of the motivation for so many people coming forward in the last year is actually out of fear of themselves being accused of ... well, anything from cover-ups to comparable behaviour.



I completely understand and completely concur. Again, though, the cultural shift. But yes, most tabloids have, for a very long time, thought nothing of exposing the private lives of individuals – who were not committing illegal acts.



Well yes, I do believe that, although I entirely agree with your moral/ethical appraisal. But if, as I was told, Savile was devious enough to 'have enough' on others, and had done so quite deliberately, it makes more sense. And indeed, a lot of this then makes sense of why various media bodies etc have been so desperate to pin it all on the BBC (see my initial thread title).



I'm not surre that it is. Not least because, even in a different time, why would you brag, in print, that you'd done that – and that you'd got one over on the police and that they too were doing the same?

Given a number of things I've read in the last year, well before he was famous, he was pretty close to being a gangland-style crook. I suspect (and this is subjective) that he was, if not massively intelligent, then most certainly very devious/clever, with the sort of bravado and actually slightly frightening, in-your-face persona that actually gets some people away with an awful lot.



Again, changed culture. I know it's a slightly lame analogy from an evidential perspective, but just think of [iLife on Mars[/i.



Cultural difference. I don't think anyone would have taken that seriously at the time. It's actually difficult sometimes to realise how much the culture has changed since the mid-'80s. It's a [ihuge[/i cultural change in just a generation and a half.

On the security services: they vetted and had lists on all sorts of people – many (if not most) of whom had done nothing illegal but were 'suspect' because of their (perceived) politics. If they didn't monitor, closely, who was friends with a long-standing PM I find that hard to believe.

"The suspected victims included 28 children aged under 10, including 10 boys aged as young as 8".

When you were being told by other journos about Savile, did they use the correct terms of paedophile and hebephile, or did they just call him a pedo?



I don't particularly like the term abuse of power regarding Savile. I think abuse of power applies to teachers, doctors, police etc when they engage in sexual activity with people they are involved with in their work. This abuse of power occurs even with willing partners IMO, so it's "complex".

Savile was clearly abusing his fame to get sex, but personally I think that virtually every single famous man has done that too, and most famous women.

I don't know what Savile actually got up to. I was in the USA when most of this came out so I missed it at the time. It makes me feel ill to read about real abuse and rape victims, so it's not something I've particularly read up on.



Are people more sensitive to it now, or less sensitive? I think people are hyper-sensitive to it now. I don't know what the feelings were about it in decades past.



Paul Gambaccini didn't really reveal his knowledge, just his disapproval. Personally, I think most of the things that I've read about Savile have been people dancing on his grave, not enlightening the world to the level of protection Savile was getting.



One of the things that worries me is how can you disprove an allegation of child abuse that happened 40 years ago.

Now, for the people who are guilty of child abuse I have no sympathy. They are finally getting some payback, even though it is too late and nowhere near what they deserve.

But I just wonder how many innocent people are going to be accused, who can never properly clear their name.

My feeling about Savile is that he was always pretty weird anyway. I never really understood him. As the "great" Joey Barton said, there was always something "off" about him. He was always "different".

Just going off on a tangent here. But let's say there was a black person who was disliked by a racist for a decade. No matter what he did, the black person would always be hated by the racist. Now, after a decade the black guy is arrested over a serious crime, the racist can now justify his hate of the last ten years because he always *knew* that the guy wasn't right. But his racism was never right, it was always disgusting.

That was the kind of the feeling I get when reading Gambaccini's interview. Did people really know what he was up to back then, or is Savile just suffering because he was different, weird, strange?



Jimmy Savile was so powerful that Rupert Murdoch wouldn't take him on?

Seriously, Jimmy Savile, Jim'll Fix It Savile. The guy with the naffest tracksuit ever. The guy who lived with his mum. Murdoch was too scared to take him on, even though half of Fleet Street knew he was a sexual criminal.

And it's not just Murdoch. It's Maxwell. Eddie Shah. All of the Fleet St moguls. They'll go up against Govt's, they'll go up against the Royal family, but they won't touch Jimmy Savile because he's just too connected?

Rupert Murdoch must have been implicated, obviously. Because IMO if taking down Savile took down other powerful figures then that just makes Savile a better target to hit.



The issues I highlighted might just have been because it was a ghostwriter who was writing it and they were too much in "crime novel" mode, and not in "this is supposed to be an autobiography" mode.

I'm staggered that was in his book. I'm staggered that the publishers didn't cut that out of the book so fast that half the book went. I'm staggered that nobody cited that passage as evidence why Savile should be in jail and never on our screens again.



The Batman was real. And he was Jimmy Savile. He just used his powers to have sex with kids without being detected.



I was growing up in the 80's so I cannot compare it at all. I just think that if I'd told my dad that a guy had fiddled with me my dad would have beaten the crap out of the guy at least. I can't imagine how it would be so different.

I know that the police have changed. An accusation of sexual abuse now would be treated with 100% seriousness and I can definitely imagine a cop saying you can't trust a kid back then. But I cannot imagine it being so bad that Savile could offend such a large amount and nobody would fight back against it.



Jimmy Savile slept at Chequers for 11 New Years Eve's in a row with Thatcher and her family. I cannot believe that the security services of Britain would permit a suspected child abuser being so close to the Prime Minister and her family if they had even the slightest suspicion he was doing that.

I don't think any such term was used in the conversation – that I recall.



There's using one's position and there's abusing it. I think that the autobiography excerpt is an illustration of the latter.



The issue of child abuse was only really dragged from under the cultural carpet in the mid 1980s. Before that, it was brushed away. Victims had nowhere to go and were not likely to be believed. Or you'd get situations such as that in east London where, as an old friend once told me, when a lad reached 'manhood', he'd be told by the other men in his community that, if any bloke was rumoured to be doing something dodgy with kids, they'd go around to his house, sort him out and send him packing. In other words, pass the problem to someone else.

There have been many cases that had happened decades earlier, where people had stifled all the damage up inside themselves for decades – because it wasn't talked about etc. And then, after Childline was launched (Ester Rantzen should always be remembered for this) there was an element of a damn burst. Famously, Billy Connolly had been abused as a child by his father.

Less famously, my father, as a clergyman, got asked by a senior cleric to go and pay a pastoral visit to an elderly women in a neighbouring parish. She was rather well to do, but had never married – had never had any relationship with a man (or woman, I assume). This was in the late 1980s and she was about 80. She'd been abused by her father and had never been able to tell anyone. Childline had brought it all back, right to the surface, and she needed to speak about it to someone.

So there was massive culture change on that issue.

I do think you're right though about the hypersensitivity. I can think of four other specific cases I know about (that's a horribly large number for one person). Two are connected to my own wider family group, as it were, while two others involved people I was quite close to, but who were not family. For one of the former – the only one of the four in which social services were involved – the outcome was good and the child was kept safe. To my mind, social services did an excellent job in a situation that was not easy (these stories never make the papers, unfortunately). However, in the others, a variety of long-term problems were caused, including, in the worst case, very serious mental health issues after the abuser had died and the eventual suicide of the young woman that he had abused (his grandchild).

The point about this, though, is that in every case that I've just touched on, it was abuse (or the potential for abuse) by a family member or close family friend. Yet the 'sensitivity' these days is about 'stranger danger'. That remains very, very rare – the biggest danger to children outside the home is road traffic accidents. The overwhelming amount of abuse comes in the home.

But to continue trying to answer your question. I think that what we're now seeing is a further culture change, where we're coming across cases that were not (by and large) abuse in the way that I've outlined in those cases above, but were, say, more to do with, say, underage groupies (for want of a simplistic phrase) and also where there was, I think, a general attitude of: 'oh well, if a young person gets themselves into that position, it's their fault'. We are much more protective of young people now.

That is quite recent and you see the discussion about it happening in all sorts of ways: 'the pornification of society'; 'sexualisation': these are aspects of it. And personally, I think that there is a danger of wrapping young people in cotton wool. Of course, it all makes for good headlines for some media, while others handwring about it in a diffierent way.

But I think that the glut of accusations and charges (so I'm being very careful here) against certain celebrities is fraught with problems. One is a lack of forensic evidence, but the second is that, to use a cliché, times have changed. And I think that there is a massive danger in trying to foist the attitudes of today on to actions of 30-40 years ago.

To note: there is obviously a difference if children (ie under 13) were involved and also if admission of guilt is involved.



I do wonder whether some of this is a sort of secular confession time – seeking a sort of absolution by making one's own comments of disapproval in order to distance oneself from what was more generally going on, in light of changes to attitudes?



See above.



Some of it is scarily like a modern Salem, with nothing other than one person's word against another. Now 30-40 years ago, the adult would automatically be most likely to be believed in that situation. We have to guard against the pendulum going completely the other way.



It's not necessarily 'scared'. It's a question partly of not giving a toss. As I said, attitudes have changed.

What's happening now, though, is that Murdoch et al are using the Savile case to attack, in particular, the BBC for political reasons. Yet the point remains that they, in general, knew – and chose to do nothing about it. Now that brings us back to the cultural shift. But they can't go around blaming one organisation for not having culturally shifted earlier than they did.

Having said that, look at what the tabloids in particular do nowadays with stories about missing children: if the children in question are female and white – and especially if they are judged pretty – they will great coverage than otherwise. It is that cynical.



As I said, times were different. The police ignored a 'domestic', for instance. Many workplaces – and newspaper rooms would have come within this bracket – were a lot more 'blokey', for want of a better word. You could smoke in the office, you'd go for a bevy or five at lunch – and so forth.



If just some of what is said about Edward Heath's proclivities is true ...

Look at what's emerged about Cyril Smith.

I despised Esther Rantzen!

When the Savile story broke she was quick enough to get on camera to tell us about the rumours she had heard at the time ... but it became clear that this wonderful saintly caring person who seems to think she invented compassion for abused children did nothing about it.

Compassion was good for her later career but she certainly screwed up on that one.

Another one I'd forgotten:



[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/savage-by-name-why-is-paul-ogrady-so-angry-8219085.htmlFull story[/url

Includes, incidentally, some references to the abuse (not sexual) he and his fellow pupils received at school.

I agree with you that the BBC are getting way too much of a kicking over this. I think it's another massive piece of BS, similar to the way the BBC got a kicking over Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly when the government were blatantly lying to go to war.

I think the BBC are spectacularly bad at defending themselves. In fact people like Gambaccini are feeding their attacks when they allude that they knew when they really didn't.

But I don't think the correct response to that is to try and get an equally unfair judgement on others to spread the BS. Which is IMO how you started this thread.

Rantzen has NO excuse for not following up on this or passing the rumour on to police. That's Life were involved with: "the investigation of a boarding school with a headmaster who was a paedophile who employed several paedophile teachers".

Rantzen says public criticism could threaten her work with child abuse charities, but unless she has got a spectacularly good excuse for not acting she has screwed up so bad she shouldn't be involved in the work anyway.

I think Rantzen deserves massive respect and praise for setting up Childline - even if she only did it because it helped her career. But unless she has explained herself exceptionally well she deserves a huge stain on her character. IMO she implicated herself with her words in the same way Savile did with his autobiography.

Quote He forced beauty to fondle him in caravan EXCLUSIVE By STEPHEN MOYES A FORMER beauty queen fled in terror after Sir Jimmy Savile indecently assaulted her in his caravan, boasting: “I am the strongest man in England.” Jill, 61, had no experience of men when Savile, whose fan club she belonged to, sent his Rolls-Royce to her mum’s B&B to pick her up. Savile bundled her into his caravan, called her a “nice little dolly bird” and asked if she would like to be locked in his cupboard so she could stay with him. Jill — not her real name — told The Sun: “He jumped on me and pulled my hand to his crotch. He was wearing very tight trousers. I realised he was excited and he said, ‘I am the strongest man in England’. I thought he was a bit of a wimp.” Jill was spared an even worse ordeal when he kicked her out after she said she wasn’t on the pill. She recalled: “He asked why not, and I told him I wasn’t that sort of girl. “The next minute he stood up, asked if I had my bus fare home and ushered me out. I was in shock and ran off.” Jill, from Worthing, West Sussex, was 20 when Savile visited her home town. She finally went to Sussex Police to report the incident in 2008 but no action was taken. Jill said: “I was a very naive young woman when he assaulted me and I never got over it. I am angry he got away with it as long as he lived. “But what he did to me was nothing compared to what he has done to lots of other girls. I am glad people can finally see him for what he is.”'" Read more: www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... z2ZbTnhWKx I think the death penalty is appropriate for this. Not for him, but for her. WTF. edit: I'm reading Giving Victims a Choice, which was the report written by the Met and NSPCC. Quote Investigation in to victim who said that in 1970 she was assaulted by Savile in his caravan in Sussex. The victim was reluctant to support a prosecution. '" Tortured. Then the death penalty.

Quote He forced beauty to fondle him in caravan EXCLUSIVE By STEPHEN MOYES A FORMER beauty queen fled in terror after Sir Jimmy Savile indecently assaulted her in his caravan, boasting: “I am the strongest man in England.” Jill, 61, had no experience of men when Savile, whose fan club she belonged to, sent his Rolls-Royce to her mum’s B&B to pick her up. Savile bundled her into his caravan, called her a “nice little dolly bird” and asked if she would like to be locked in his cupboard so she could stay with him. Jill — not her real name — told The Sun: “He jumped on me and pulled my hand to his crotch. He was wearing very tight trousers. I realised he was excited and he said, ‘I am the strongest man in England’. I thought he was a bit of a wimp.” Jill was spared an even worse ordeal when he kicked her out after she said she wasn’t on the pill. She recalled: “He asked why not, and I told him I wasn’t that sort of girl. “The next minute he stood up, asked if I had my bus fare home and ushered me out. I was in shock and ran off.” Jill, from Worthing, West Sussex, was 20 when Savile visited her home town. She finally went to Sussex Police to report the incident in 2008 but no action was taken. Jill said: “I was a very naive young woman when he assaulted me and I never got over it. I am angry he got away with it as long as he lived. “But what he did to me was nothing compared to what he has done to lots of other girls. I am glad people can finally see him for what he is.”'" Read more: www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... z2ZbTnhWKx I think the death penalty is appropriate for this. Not for him, but for her. WTF. edit: I'm reading Giving Victims a Choice, which was the report written by the Met and NSPCC. Quote Investigation in to victim who said that in 1970 she was assaulted by Savile in his caravan in Sussex. The victim was reluctant to support a prosecution. '" Tortured. Then the death penalty.

Quote ="Lord God Jose Mourinho"Read more: www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... z2ZbTnhWKx I think the death penalty is appropriate for this. Not for him, but for her. WTF. edit: I'm reading Giving Victims a Choice, which was the report written by the Met and NSPCC. Tortured. Then the death penalty.'" Thats how he got away with it for the whole of his life though, certainly in the 60s through to the 80s the police were a male dominated organisation (Life On Mars was spot on with its observations of this aspect) and famous men like Savile might be seen as "a bit strange", notes may be made not to leave him alone with young vulnerable women, but when it came down to actual real evidence of assault and/or rape the culture of "Well you probably asked for it" would have kicked in and would have prevailed right through the court system even up to senior judges.

Quote ="Lord God Jose Mourinho"Read more: www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... z2ZbTnhWKx I think the death penalty is appropriate for this. Not for him, but for her. WTF. edit: I'm reading Giving Victims a Choice, which was the report written by the Met and NSPCC. Tortured. Then the death penalty.'" Thats how he got away with it for the whole of his life though, certainly in the 60s through to the 80s the police were a male dominated organisation (Life On Mars was spot on with its observations of this aspect) and famous men like Savile might be seen as "a bit strange", notes may be made not to leave him alone with young vulnerable women, but when it came down to actual real evidence of assault and/or rape the culture of "Well you probably asked for it" would have kicked in and would have prevailed right through the court system even up to senior judges.

"Got away with it"????



WTF did he do?

He thought he was going to be screwing an easy, hot chick. An easy, 20 YEAR OLD, hot chick. His driver picks her up in his Rolls Royce, drops her off at his caravan.

He's not ambiguous about what he wants. He wants it now. He gets on with it.

He asks if she's on the pill. She says not, "I'm not that type of girl." He pretty much shows her the door because what he thought she was "his type of girl" clearly wasn't.

Seriously, if that allegation was made to the police today against Justin Timberlake or a PL football player do you think the police would be treating it seriously? IMO they'd have been going down the "treat the mental time waster respectfully but get her out of here as quickly as possible" route. The Sun article didn't mention it (can't think why), but it was her that didn't want the case to be followed up, not the police or CPS.

If she'd gone to The Sun with that story when Savile was alive. I don't think there's a chance they'd have been interested. The journalist would be, "This is a POS, the woman is a flake". If an idiot journo did write the article, the editor and the lawyers would be binning it and concluding that they needed to get a new writer.

If the woman had wanted the police to act further, I think the chances of a conviction are practically zero. And that's just on a lurid article from her side.

But when it's a dead guy The Sun can write about the vile paedo and how Savile ruined her life. The police are clearly counting that as one of Savile's offences. In fact, hers was one of the cases that had been brought to the police before the Savile documentary.

You can't libel a dead guy. And if only every criminal would die so they couldn't defend themselves over allegations the police would appear about 100 times better than they are.

I read about Wilfred De'ath, who was arrested as part of Yew Tree. De'ath claimed that it wasn't him because he hadn't even got the job that got him access to that type of event at the time. I was staggered that he was being arrested over a 40 year old allegation of groping at the cinema.

I read another "victim" account where Savile was hitting on a girl who says she was 14 at the time. Savile kissed her "with his disgusting cigar breath". Savile asked the girl if she liked it, she said she didn't so Savile left her alone and went looking for a girl who was up for it.

I think Savile definitely broke the law by sleeping with under age girls. I think he is *probably* guilty enough of enough vile crime that he pretty much deserves his reputation shredding anyway. But just on reading the highlights I am in no way convinced that Savile is anything near the predatory paedophile that he's been painted as.

Do I think the police would treat an allegation of sexual assault seriously today regardless of who "the star" was ?

Yes I do, at the least they'd investigate it further rather than just dismissing it in the way you suggest, their would be on the line if they didn't - 30 or 40 years ago they could wave the girl away with a lecture on how no-one would ever believe her if she repeated her tale, it happened, and not just to females either, if you were black in the 60s and 70s then your access to justice was also pretty limited, have a read up of the David Oluwale story the investigation of which was seen as an attack on the Leeds police force by the Met - a couple of my friends joined the police in the mid 70s and it was still a very sore point within the ranks.

When I was 14 or 15, in the early 70's, a number of girls at my school would regularly go to a local Thursday night disco. It was notionally 18+ but younger girls could easily get in. Saville would often turn up unannounced and do an impromptu DJ set for half an hour. While he was on stage the bouncers would wander round asking girls (the underage ones) "would you like meet Jimmy backstage". The girls I knew wouldn't go anywhere near him. They knew of his reputation and regarded him as a dirty middle aged man. But apparently others did unless someone warned them off.

Because I was aware of his reputation I kept a mild interest in any press reports about him. Whenever there was a positive article about him, praising his charity work, there would often be another article a couple of pages further on about child abuse or underage sex. It was like an in joke. Once when he'd received an award (might have been his knighthood) I read a glowing article about him in one of the sundays. On the next page was an article about child abuse and the small number successful prosecutions. An unnamed senior police officer was quoted as saying something on the lines of "we're keeping tabs one well known public figure who we keep getting complaints about. But we'd never get a conviction, the general public regard him as a saint. No jury would believe a young lass over him".

I think the media generally were complicit in allowing Saville to get away with it. But the BBC employed him, protected him, turned a blind eye to his behaviour and deserve every bit of criticism they receive.

You read that Sun article and conclude sexual assault???

Seriously???

IMO if that is that standard of sexual assault then I'd expect that every man is guilty of it.

Do I believe that there have been MASSIVE abuses of power by the police, especially on blacks? Yes. I am sure of it. I was reading yesterday about a Black Panther who was virtually executed in the US. It made me sick reading about it. It's stunning that people were allowed to get away with some of the things they did.

But all Jimmy Savile did to that 20 YEAR OLD WOMAN was assume that she was up for it when all the indications are she was up for it. There is nothing in that article which says that she indicated in any way that she didn't want what he was doing.

If Jimmy Savile was the vile sexual predator he's painted as he wouldn't have sent the woman packing when she said she wasn't on the pill because she "wasn't that type of girl".

[i“He jumped on me and pulled my hand to his crotch."
[/i


Its worthy of further investigation by any police force who have it made to them as a statement, its certainly not acceptable for any male to behave like that within a few minutes of meeting any random female and I doubt you'd find many men guilty of that.

Depends what circles you move in of course.

And if someone had warned them off they'd have obviously said no.

It was the 1970's. Girls didn't like sex. They were not impressed by rich men who were on the TV. Being the famous guy from TV who was centre stage in the nightclub has never been a prize to anyone.

No girl would have ever said that she didn't go backstage when the truth was that they went back stage and was a willing party to everything that was done to them. Women are always plain and honest, especially about sex.



So the papers were writing about child abuse, they just weren't interested in writing about a famous guy they knew who was committing it???

But actually, they were very interested Savile's child abuse. They just explained it to the public with a special code that the public should have been smart enough to work out.





Child abuse. The quickest and easiest way to guarantee a laugh. Who doesn't like a joke about children being abused?



That's so awesome. I just wish I had that job of writing that glowing article about a child abuser knowing that we were so clever that we'd be stitching him up at the same time on the next page.

I think I'd enjoy my job so much that week I'd refuse to pick up my pay packet.

There's no flaws with that stupid scenario is there? There's no one who would read the glowing article about the knighted Savile, think that he was a truly great guy getting his just rewards and watch his TV shows with even more respect for him? They wouldn't give that article about child abuse a wild swerve and never put the two together like you were able to?



The BS keeps piling up.

The general public regard him as a saint. Mainly because the papers keep calling him a saint, when really it's the stupid public's fault for not understand the hieroglyphics of the daily press and their special code.

We, the police, are watching this child abuser openly abuse children. But we can't do anything because no one would believe a child. Or us, when we're watching it.



You were complicit in his behaviour too. You knew what he was. You knew the retarded game the media were playing. You obviously supported their retarded code because you kept buying the papers.

Go to jail. Give yourself in. You knew of child abuse. You did nothing. Operation Yew Tree would be pleased with the conviction. They probably won't be getting any unless you guilty people start admitting your guilt.

She wasn't a random female. He'd sent his Rolls Royce to pick her up from the B&B she was staying in. They clearly had that arrangement. Or it was just a massive piece of luck that a Jimmy Savile fan club member was just picked up luckily by Jimmy Savile's driver and she just accepted any offer of a ride in a Roller.

Why was she going to his caravan?

Have I ever done that? No. Have you ever done that? I'd guess no as well. Do I think that nearly every member of a certain LS6 RL team has acted like that? Pretty much.

The main reason being that we have to work to get some. If we did what Savile did then we'd be getting a slapped face and our association with the girl would be over.

But during a date where you thought you were getting lucky did you get explicitly get permission to take things to the next stage? I doubt it. If you ask for explicit permission then you're not likely to get it. At each stage of where you progressed you are risking an assault charge if you apply the judgement against Savile to standard dating practice.

Have you ever touched a woman's breast who then knocked you back? If you have, I hope you go and hand yourself in to the police.

IMO Savile probably had hundreds of women picked up by his driver. I'd assume his technique worked higher than 90%. His techniques would get him whatever the hell he wanted most of the time. On this occasion he thought she was an easy groupie who he was going to do and treated her like that. It became clear she wasn't like that and she was going to make him work for it. He pretty much realised they were on completely different pages over where they were and he showed her the door. She left, disappointed that that she wouldn't be married to her idol after all.

She chooses to believe that she was sexually assaulted. She's got that right. She'll probably get paid out because of that and pick up 10 grand in "compensation".

I think genuine sexual assault is a massively serious crime and should be treated as such. I don't think humouring this stupid woman as being a victim of a genuine sexual assault helps anybody.

I love the way you make up stuff.

Its very entertaining.

You believe that that woman is a genuine victim of a sexual assault?

For example, Justin Timberlake is accused of doing that. He responds to that with a "Go eff yourself with your crazy ****" and refuses to even participate in the trial.

So the only evidence is the nonsense that the Sun wrote.

You'd convict?

The example doesn't work.

If anyone is accused of sexual assault and the CPS consider that the evidence is good enough to go to trial (as you suggest), then he can't say "Go eff yourself..."

And thats where your example stops.

If the accused refuses to participate in a trial then the trial will just proceed with only the prosecution case.

Personally, if think if a groupie made that allegation against somebody after that happened then I think they have every right to refuse their participation.

The reason I use this as an example is because Savile obviously cannot defend himself because he's dead. No trial is going to proceed so her version of the events is the only one put forward (and I'm not even disputing her version).

Savile and Justin Timberlake's defence would be the same. Savile because he is dead. Timberlake because he thinks this is BS. They can't go ahead with the trial against Savile, but they would be able to with Timberlake.

On that evidence, would you convict?

(Nice attempt not to admit I'm right though.)

But your example of a live celebrity refusing to attend a British court on a criminal charge of rape (because the CPS would have reviewed and re-reviewed all of the evidence before proceeding), simply because that celebrity states that the charge is BS, is ridiculous because it just would not happen that way, its a criminal charge and the celebrity would be extradited if necessary otherwise any foreign "celebrity" could travel the world raping at will and then shut themselves away in their LA mansion and shout "Its all bull" through the letterbox.

Or buy off the victims but that only seems to work in the USA.

The point should be made though that it must be an absolute nightmare for young males who become overnight celebrities through music or acting (but mainly music) and who then suddenly find thousands of young girls literally throwing themselves at you - still, even after everything that has been revealed and reviled these past twelve months.

In particular when we were playing the "Who's Next" sweepstake last year my money was always on a young Scottish band from the 1970s who's trademark was peddling rubbish to young girls while wearing lots of tartan clothing - their manager served jailtime for indecency so they weren't exactly guided or protected very well by him and had they been so inclined could have hand picked a dozen young girls every night for years.

The last I heard of them they were playing in a pub in the centre of Leeds to 40 or 50 (mainly) middle aged women who would probably still have followed them back to their hotel if requested.