Jimmy Savile and other revolting characters

Having read and researched the allegations about Jimmy Savile in the British press recently, it is hard to shake off the sense of disgust that I feel about him and the kind of uncomfortable, 'icky' feeling he elicits. I remember watching the Louis Theroux documentary about him and sensing that he was not an affable eccentric type at all, but rather someone who was mentally unstable and had only built up a greater defence of that dysfunctionality as he had got older. There was just something about him, a certain readiness to stand his ground and defend his strange behaviour as his right, that seemed somehow 'off-kilter'.

The sad truth is, that there are probably a lot of women who have come across someone in their lifetime who has been this kind of character - seemingly kind and gregarious, avuncular and well-liked by lots of people, but who underlyingly, sometimes imperceptibly to others, definitely has a problem. Most of the time, other people around them sense this odd quality about them and know to be careful or to monitor this kind of person more closely. Other times, young women or even girls are subjected to uncomfortable situations such as a hug that goes just that little bit too far or a congratulatory pat on the back that lingers too long and settles too low. Coleen Nolan describes this situation that she experienced with Jimmy Savile here. This is the type of thing that somehow goes on without anyone ever calling the perpetrator up on what they're doing because there's no outright crime to be accused of and, the worst thing in Jimmy Savile's case is the fact that he believed himself to be above recrimination. He would have laughed anything off as 'a bit of fun', no doubt, and nobody could argue with that. Until evidence emerges to the contrary. Which in that day and age, with no video-enabled mobile phones, would have been hard to produce. The fact that there were rumours, at the time, made little difference because Jimmy Savile had so much financial influence and because, as Janet Street Porter attests here, the rumours would have been laughed off in such a male-dominated industry if the only complaints emerging were from women.

In other cases, for women anywhere where there is no further act than a little 'over-enthusiasm' that physically manifests itself as an ambiguous touch or lingering hug, there is no way to take the matter any further, but the feeling a young woman has to deal with is at best, very unpleasant. It's a rite of passage that no-one would wish on a young woman but one that often takes place one way or another due to the nature of the confusion around new emotions and sensations experienced as a teenager and the lack of confidence in one's attractiveness or worth. A young woman unsure of herself but in need of affection is such an easy target for people like this.

And the other consequence is that these kind of sleaze-bags give the decent, kind, respectful guys a hard time figuring out how to negotiate the beginnings of a relationship when women have been subjected to so much deceit, so many instances of a 'smoke and mirrors' subterfuge of a sexual advance, that starting a relationship with someone becomes a frightening thing to do, where nothing feels safe. Add to that the humiliation involved in being a victim of someone like this when no-one will believe you or else they'll think it was your fault, and you've got the perfect breeding ground for a terrible wound to be carried by that young woman throughout her life.

This kind of experience, of the sort Coleen Nolan describes, is something that is hard enough to explain and describe as a fully fledged adult, let alone a young woman. The complexity of the confusion of conflicting emotions, such as 'Did I cause this?' to, 'how could I cause it - I'm not even attractive?', to, 'I feel violated but nothing happened' would give anyone pause in voicing their complaint about an isolated incident. All I can say is that my deepest sympathy goes to the victims who may not even consider themselves as such, because the word victim has such disenfranchising connotations, but who surely must feel that flood of conflicting and confusing, skin-crawling revulsion all over again just seeing his picture all over the media. The man had a screw loose and there's nothing anyone can do to compensate for that now, how ever it occurred, and how ever he chose to override or indulge that. Though Mark Lawson's beautifully written piece in the Guardian offers the poetic justice of the graveyard slot programme consigning Jimmy Savile's reputation to the scrapheap, it offers no real comfort for the women who know there was a nasty, horrible, screwed-up man who lived the high life, hurting and humiliating teenage girls along the way, who got off absolutely scot-free.