In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies Page B
Authors: Dan Davies
Ads: Link
trial”, softening chit-chat so they don’t feel that they’ve just been trampled on.’
MacKean remains in no doubt, however, that the police letter and the CPS line were mere side issues. ‘It didn’t make any difference. The really important thing was that people like [Keri] and others we’d spoken to had never been to the police. So the policeletter was only a very narrow context, it wasn’t the single thing that made or broke the story because Meirion and I had more than the police. So whether the CPS dropped [the case] because he was too old and infirm, which they were never going to admit and what was being claimed, or whether it was dropped through lack of evidence, which is the usual thing, we still had more than the police.’
She says they knew the tide was running hard against them when Rippon announced his overnight change of mind. ‘We knew he wasn’t getting much support on the programme and we knew there was this view among some senior people, like Liz Gibbons, who thought it was in bad taste. We knew it didn’t take much to raise the white flag.’ 13 Indeed, when Jones and MacKean confronted him on the day of his turnaround, Rippon is reported to have given the surrender sign and said that he ‘was not willing to go to the wall on this one’.
Jones told his editor that if the story was pulled and word got out, the BBC would be accused of a cover-up to protect the Christmas tribute shows and the BBC’s reputation. MacKean says she felt Rippon was unwilling to challenge his bosses if they had concerns about the Savile report.
On the morning of 1 December, Jones sent himself what he calls his ‘Red Flag email’, setting out in detail his thoughts on why the story should run and the serious consequences to the BBC if it did not. He felt the journalistic bar suddenly put in place by Rippon was illogical and unnecessary. MacKean urged him to send it to Helen Boaden, partly because she knew Rippon had spoken to her. Jones demurred.
Later that day, Jones received an email from Rippon enquiring again about the letter from the police: ‘I think we should stop working on other elements until we know for sure what we are likely to get from them because we don’t really have a strong enough story without it.’ Rippon added that he’d cancel the editing suite that had been booked for the report.
Jones went into Rippon’s office and reiterated he was putting an artificial bar on the report and that if the CPS had dropped thecase, they were hardly likely to risk embarrassment by saying anything other than it being through lack of evidence. He listed the confirmation the police had taken the allegations seriously enough to investigate and pass a file to the CPS as being hugely significant, as was the fact that they had more evidence than the police because Keri had never been spoken to. He finished by saying it was a story that would make the front pages of every national newspaper and they would be accused of a cover-up if any of the victims went to the press, which he thought very likely.
The artificial bar of the CPS line and the police letter, if indeed it ever existed, is what MacKean describes as Peter Rippon’s ‘fig leaf’. ‘I just thought, “This is wrong,” she says. ‘It’s as simple as that. We had more than the CPS, we bypassed them, and we had more than the police had. We had wider testimonies.’
Despite ongoing conversations and protestations of the strength of what they had, MacKean says she was by this stage resigned to the fact the story would never see the light of day. ‘It was the definition of futile,’ she recalls. ‘There was no way we could go back to it after the tributes [had run]. How could the BBC then go back and say, “We could have revealed this”? Plus the victims knew and we thought it was only a matter of time before they told other journalists.’
On Friday, 2 December, while Meirion Jones was filming reconstructions for the Savile report with a
MacKean remains in no doubt, however, that the police letter and the CPS line were mere side issues. ‘It didn’t make any difference. The really important thing was that people like [Keri] and others we’d spoken to had never been to the police. So the policeletter was only a very narrow context, it wasn’t the single thing that made or broke the story because Meirion and I had more than the police. So whether the CPS dropped [the case] because he was too old and infirm, which they were never going to admit and what was being claimed, or whether it was dropped through lack of evidence, which is the usual thing, we still had more than the police.’
She says they knew the tide was running hard against them when Rippon announced his overnight change of mind. ‘We knew he wasn’t getting much support on the programme and we knew there was this view among some senior people, like Liz Gibbons, who thought it was in bad taste. We knew it didn’t take much to raise the white flag.’ 13 Indeed, when Jones and MacKean confronted him on the day of his turnaround, Rippon is reported to have given the surrender sign and said that he ‘was not willing to go to the wall on this one’.
Jones told his editor that if the story was pulled and word got out, the BBC would be accused of a cover-up to protect the Christmas tribute shows and the BBC’s reputation. MacKean says she felt Rippon was unwilling to challenge his bosses if they had concerns about the Savile report.
On the morning of 1 December, Jones sent himself what he calls his ‘Red Flag email’, setting out in detail his thoughts on why the story should run and the serious consequences to the BBC if it did not. He felt the journalistic bar suddenly put in place by Rippon was illogical and unnecessary. MacKean urged him to send it to Helen Boaden, partly because she knew Rippon had spoken to her. Jones demurred.
Later that day, Jones received an email from Rippon enquiring again about the letter from the police: ‘I think we should stop working on other elements until we know for sure what we are likely to get from them because we don’t really have a strong enough story without it.’ Rippon added that he’d cancel the editing suite that had been booked for the report.
Jones went into Rippon’s office and reiterated he was putting an artificial bar on the report and that if the CPS had dropped thecase, they were hardly likely to risk embarrassment by saying anything other than it being through lack of evidence. He listed the confirmation the police had taken the allegations seriously enough to investigate and pass a file to the CPS as being hugely significant, as was the fact that they had more evidence than the police because Keri had never been spoken to. He finished by saying it was a story that would make the front pages of every national newspaper and they would be accused of a cover-up if any of the victims went to the press, which he thought very likely.
The artificial bar of the CPS line and the police letter, if indeed it ever existed, is what MacKean describes as Peter Rippon’s ‘fig leaf’. ‘I just thought, “This is wrong,” she says. ‘It’s as simple as that. We had more than the CPS, we bypassed them, and we had more than the police had. We had wider testimonies.’
Despite ongoing conversations and protestations of the strength of what they had, MacKean says she was by this stage resigned to the fact the story would never see the light of day. ‘It was the definition of futile,’ she recalls. ‘There was no way we could go back to it after the tributes [had run]. How could the BBC then go back and say, “We could have revealed this”? Plus the victims knew and we thought it was only a matter of time before they told other journalists.’
On Friday, 2 December, while Meirion Jones was filming reconstructions for the Savile report with a
Similar Books
Unidentified Funny Objects 2
Robert Silverberg, Jim C. Hines, Jody Lynn Nye, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Tim Pratt, Esther Frisner
