Since the revelations of Jimmy Savile’s prolific sex offending came to light last year there has been a palpable effort on the part of the government and much of the media (most notably the BBC, where Savile worked — and abused children — for decades) to brush the issue under the carpet. The disturbing implications as to how Savile was able to operate unimpeded and his connections to rich and powerful people, have been put aside in favour of focusing media attention on other minor celebrities and has-beens and the occasional dead politician. While there have been hints pointing to paedophile rings linked to members of the government — notably after Tom Watson MP raised the issue in Parliament — few mainstream journalists have conducted a thorough investigation, and the idea of organized networks of child abusers reaching into the upper echelons of society is rarely considered a possibility.
Even more outlandish is the notion that some of these paedophiles are carrying out Satanic ritual abuse on their victims — something so shocking and far-fetched that it hardly bares contemplating. But information is coming to light which suggests that, far from being a nightmarish fantasy, devil-worshipping ritual abuse could be a disturbing reality.
On the 19th January, the Mirror ran a story titled, “Pervert MP Cyril Smith was pals with satanic child sex monster.” outlining how deceased paedophile MP Cyril Smith was involved in satanic rituals and the rape of children as young as 2. Victim Michael Roberts, 40, provided shocking details of the rituals, set up by his stepdad Michael Horgan, a man who became known as the High Priest of Satan. Like-minded paedophiles, including the knighted MP Smith, attended events where young girls and boys were repeatedly raped while being filmed — some of the “parties” took place on Saddleworth Moor, where child killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had buried their victims. Evidence of Smith’s paedophilia was presented to the authorities in 1970, 1998 and 1999 but charges were never brought — as with Jimmy Savile, who’s activities were brought to the attention of the police on numerous occasions during his lifetime, it was only after his death that Smith was exposed as a paedophile.
Not only were Savile and Smith both able to operate as prolific paedophiles, both were knighted (perhaps a hint as to how they managed to avoid prosecution throughout their lives — Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have both claimed there was “overwhelming evidence” against Smith) and were close friends for decades. And Savile, it seems, may have also been involved in Satanic-based ritual abuse, conducted in the basements of hospitals such as Stoke Mandeville, where Savile was a volunteer porter and fundraiser between 1965 and 1988. Dr Valerie Sinason recounted the experience of the victim to the Sunday Express:
“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask. She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame. She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latinised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”
Additional accounts emerged in the same paper a few days later, detailing the ordeal of a 13 year old girl who was tied to an altar during a black mass at a secret venue. “Savile then climbed on to the table and raped me. Others around him called out Satan’s name and laughed hysterically and were worked up into a frenzy.” During her horrific ordeal, one of the devil worshippers sneered: “You definitely fixed this one, Jim!”
Perhaps understandably, there are many who react to these allegations with incredulity, accusing those who make such allegations of suffering from delusions or out to cash in on Savile’s notoriety (although the recent Express story notes that the victim received no money for her story). An examination of Jimmy Savile’s life, however, indicates that these allegations might be closer to the truth than most people realise. In an interview with Esquire — reported here in the Daily Mail — Savile stated, “I am also the eminence grise: the grey, shadowy figure in the background. The thing about me is I get things done and I work under cover.”
Here is an overview of some of Savile’s connections:
- For a children’s television presenter, Savile had close relationships with a number of prominent politicians, including Prime Ministers. Correspondence between Savile and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — heavily redacted by civil servants in the wake of the child abuse revelations — reveal that Savile and Thatcher met frequently as he sought funding for Stoke Mandeville hospital, where many of his abuses took place. He was also a frequent visitor to Chequers, spending New Year’s Eve with the Thatcher family on a number of occasions. Savile told Esquire, “I knew the real woman and the real woman was something else.”
- In 1971 Jimmy Savile joined Lord Longford’s Commission on Pornography, along with six peers, an archbishop, three bishops, three professors, Cliff Richard and Gyles Brandreth. Longford was lampooned by the media for touring sex clubs in Denmark, but perhaps more controversial was his unsuccessful campaign for the early release of child killer Myra Hindley. While it is quite possible that Longford and the Commission knew nothing about Savile’s offending at the time, he nevertheless seems an odd choice. Longford’s niece Harriet Harman faced controversy when it emerged she once advocated the watering down of child pornography laws during her time as legal officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties (known today as Liberty).
- From 1974 to 1984 the UK-based pro-paedophilia group the Paedophile Information Exchange (P.I.E.) operated, affiliated with the NCCL. An open letter to Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, indicated that Savile was a known member of this organization. In his call for a thorough investigation of paedophile rings linked to No. 10 Downing Street, Tom Watson cited the investigation and conviction of Peter Righton, a founding member of P.I.E. and the former director of education at the National Institute for Social Work, and other investigators have cited his links to an assistant bishop, artists, aristocrats and public school teachers in a network which had infiltrated all 12 of the children’s homes run by Islington council. If Savile’s connection to P.I.E. is true then his involvement in this network is highly likely — when the Righton investigation was closed, former Det Ch Supt Mike Hames (more from him later), head of Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad wrote: “We have only touched the tip of a huge national and international problem.” The BBC series Inside Story produced a detailed documentary on the case:
- Savile’s political connections extended to Israel, where he met the president of Israel who invited him to address the country’s cabinet in 1975. Speaking of his meeting with President Ephraim Katzir, Savile said, “When the president came to me, he asked how I was enjoying my visit to Israel. I said I was very disappointed: the Israelis had won the Six Day War but they had given back all the land, including the only oil well in the region, and were now paying the Egyptians more for oil than if they had bought it from Saudi Arabia. I said: ‘You have forgotten to be Jewish’. He said: ‘Would you like to tell my cabinet that?’ Next morning, I went to the Knesset and they interrupted a cabinet meeting and I told them the same as I had told him.”
- These political connections were crucial for the establishment of locations where Savile could carry out his abuse. As well as his suite at Stoke Mandeville, where he practiced necrophilia and sex with “underage subnormals“, Savile also had the keys to the high security Broadmoor hospital, where staff described him as a “psychopath” with a “liking for children”. It was here that Savile is believed to have befriended Peter “The Yorkshire Ripper” Sutcliffe — following on from Savile’s death it was revealed that he was a suspect in the notorious case. Savile was appointed to Broadmoor in 1988 when Ken Clarke was health secretary — when controvery over the appointment emerged, Clarke stated, “I have no recollection of ever having met Jimmy Savile and no recollection of these events. The Department of Health are rightly now investigating to establish the facts.” Former health minister Edwina Currie was also criticized for her role in Savile’s appointment, to which she responded that she had “nothing to hide”.
- Savile’s influence reached even deeper into the British establishment, with strong connections to the royal family dating back to 1966 when he was introduced to them by Lord Mountbatten who realised Savile could be “a useful contact”. Before his assassination at the hands of the IRA, Mountbatten was implicated in the Kincora boys’ home abuse scandal — the book War of the Windsors by Stephen Prior, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince states, “He was also said to have an interest in what homosexuals call ‘rough trade’ and to be particularly attracted to working-class boys in their early teens,” and claims that rumours had “even linked him with the notorious scandal surrounding the Kincora Boys’ Home, where a network of teenage boys were made available to VIPs.” During his relationship with the royals Savile was described by Diana as a “sort of mentor” to Charles, but Savile was notoriously tight-lipped about his relationship with the family: he told one biographer, “Anything to do with matters royal is a no-go area.” When asked by Louis Theroux about his relationship with the House of Windsor, Savile refused to discuss the matter, telling the BBC presenter, “I’m not a grass”. James Wilson Vincent Savile became Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE in 1990 — at the time of writing his honours have yet to be rescinded.
- Jimmy Savile was also honoured with a Papal knighthood by being made a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of Saint Gregory the Great (KCSG) by Pope John Paul II in 1990. Pope John Paul II faced intense criticism for his handling of evidence of the widespread abuse of tens of thousands of children, remaining passive as litigation and prosecutions spread. The Catholic Church continues to protect paeedophile priests to this day — hardly surprising, given the Vatican’s sordid history helping thousands of Nazis escape Europe (with the assistance of the Red Cross) and building a secret property empire with Mussolini’s millions.
Clearly, Savile was incredibly well connected. From serial killers and gangsters (Savile associated with Ronnie Kray), to Popes, Prime Ministers and royalty, he was also closely linked to a number of notorious paedophiles and may have committed murder. He has also been linked to Haut de la Garenne, the children’s home in Jersey where evidence of historic child abuse came to light in 2008 (and which many believe became subject to a massive cover-up). Savile initially denied visiting Haut de la Garenne, but later admitted that he had done so, following the publication of a photograph showing him at the home surrounded by children.
As for Savile and Satanism, no conclusive evidence exists, although the following video clip does go some way to suggest how he perceived “God”:
Just how pervasive institutional paedophila is will probably never be known — as the Savile revelations have revealed, powerful forces are present which instigate cover-ups and often hinder full and open inquiries, shifting the focus away from organized networks to individual cases. One man who is qualified to comment on the nature and extent of the problem is Michael Hames, the former head of the Obsene Publications Branch. In his book The Dirty Squad, which outlines in some detail the case of Peter Righton, he says of the “international problem”:
“The fact is evident from the never-ending allegations of sexual abuse in the child-care system, and the hundreds upon hundreds of social workers who have been convicted of the systematic, planned abuse of children in their care … the child-care system has been thoroughly infiltrated at all levels by abusers. They have protected each other by subtle processes of misinformation, by the creation of doubt about the credibility of their victims, and by steady reassurances that all is well. Blatant and arrogant denial, even in the face of incriminating evidence, is a reaction native to the mentality of the paedophile, and it gets more of them off the hook than might be imagined.”
The extent to which the problem affects politics is hinted at in the following list of MPs convicted for sex offenses.
As Hames states, the problem is an international one. As this CNN report indicates, the downloading of child pornography by employees of the Pentagon was widespread — and largely ignored:
An even more shocking paedophilia scandal pointing to the involvement of figures at the highest level of American politics was uncovered in the following unaired documentary, Conspiracy of Silence:
In Belgium, the case of Marc Dutroux and the ineffectiveness of the prosecutors to uncover the truth led to a mass protest from the Belgian public. Again, allegations of a high-level cover-up were made, as outlined in the following documentary from the BBC (which once again reminds us of a time when the corporation was capable of hard-hitting investigative journalism):
The “Dutroux Affair” had shades of Satanism, practiced by European elites, in scenes which conjure images of a far more dark and twisted version of the occult orgies depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Peter Conradi, writing in the Sunday Times on December 29, 1996, reported:
“Brussels Satanic sects involved in bizarre rites including human sacrifice are being linked by Belgian police with this summer’s string of grisly paedophile murders in which at least four children died. Five witnesses came forward last week and described how black masses were held, at which children were killed in front of audiences said to have included prominent members of Belgian society. One investigator said it was “like going back to the Middle Ages”. The tentacles of the sects appear to have stretched beyond the borders of Belgium, to Holland, Germany and even America. The witnesses — several of whom claim to have received death threats — say that young babies were handed over by their parents willingly in return for money. In other cases the victims were abducted. The witnesses, who are believed to have identified the sites where the masses took place to the police, said organisers had also photographed participants and threatened to hand over the pictures if they went to the police.”
While most high-ranking paedophiles tend to escape prosecution once the cover-up machine goes into overdrive, there are occasional convictions which further highlight the extent of the problem. Jos Verbeek, the director of Unicef’s Belgian committee, was arrested and charged with inciting minors to debauchery — the case led to the resignation of the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund in Belgium. Unicef would later expose the raping of children in Sudan by UN staff, while the role of UN contractor Dyncorp in human trafficking and forced prostitution was revealed by a UN whistleblower.
The true reach of the tentacles of seemingly intertwining paedophile networks — and the heights they reach in the upper strata of society (who certainly have historical form when it comes to excess and debauchery) — will probably never come to light, despite all the good intentions and hard work of the investigators and crusaders doing their best to expose the systematic abuse of children.
“What you have to understand, John, is that sometimes there are forces and events too big, too powerful, with so much at stake for other people or institutions, that you cannot do anything about them, no matter how evil or wrong they are and no matter how dedicated or sincere you are or how much evidence you have. That is simply one of the hard facts of life you have to face. You have done your part. You have tried to expose the evil and wrongdoing. It has hurt you terribly. But it has not killed you up to this point. I am telling you, get out of this before it does.”
– Former CIA director and Cercle member William Colby giving advice to his friend senator John DeCamp, author of The Franklin Cover-Up.