IT is strange to reach for the memory of a man and find an absence instead of a presence.

I’m talking about Jimmy Savile, the television personality, fund-raiser and paedophile who dominates the headlines from beyond the grave.

I interviewed him in the 1990s. Amongst the many people who shared their life histories with me, his is the only one I can’t bring to mind.

My memory of the others remains sharp. I can recall in detail their biographies and, more importantly, their characters. Savile is a void. I can see now that he was too clever for me. I’m not the only one he fooled.

We met for Sunday lunch in a hotel carvery and he distracted me by grabbing an entire leg of lamb and eating it in his hands like a chicken leg.

The unexpectedness of his excess along with the kisses he slurped up my arm at the interview’s conclusion blinded me. I have a vague impression of a watchful expression in his eyes but I fear it’s a manufactured memory following on the heels of his true story being revealed. 

And what a scandalous story it is: one that grows more ghastly by the day. It’s shocking that he got away with so much abuse over such a long time. It’s also shocking that it’s taken decades for the voices of his victims to be heard.

And now to add insult to injury, his victims’ stories are once again being silenced – this time by the metropolitan media’s clamour about the BBC.

I don’t know the names of most of Savile’s victims but I’m growing all too familiar with the internal management structure of the  BBC.

Yesterday, for example, the big new story was that Newsnight editor Peter Rippon had stepped down. Last night Panorama investigated Newsnight’s decision to drop its Savile investigation.

Well, excuse me. If I had been raped or abused by a television celebrity when still a minor, I would expect my story to take precedence over his employer’s fever of self-examination.

Savile’s abuse meanders after him like a snail trail. It goes from the BBC to Stoke Mandeville, Haut de la Garenne, Broadmoor and Duncroft Approved School where the head gave him a flat from which base he treated the school like, “a paedophile sweet-shop”, according to one former pupil.

His BBC celebrity granted him invincibility while he lived. Now that he’s dead the media is become shockingly focused on the BBC, the damage to its brand and which obscure executive did what and when.

The metropolitan elite is rushing around in ever-decreasing circles like hens with a fox in the coop. It’s like a bar-room brawl during which the assassin slips unseen from the room.

Can’t the BBC leave its internal strife to the inquiries soon to be conducted by the former high court judge, Dame Janet Smith and Nick Pollard, the former head of Sky News? Right now isn’t its journalistic duty with the victims of its fallen star? Isn’t it the rest of the media’s too?

Most of us care a great deal less about who wrote what email than we do about giving the victims their voice and about establishing safeguards to prevent this ever happening again.

Savile hid in full view. He was a bachelor who lived with his mother and had no discernible adult sex life. He was a man who liked spending time with children and the vulnerable. He was seen with young people in his dressing room, in his caravan. He boasted about some of them “showing their appreciation” for his help.

When asked on Have I Got News for You what he did in his caravan he replied on air: “Anyone I can get my hands on.”
Even he must have wondered how he got away with it.

The answer was that the viewing public was torn between fascination and distaste. He was Grayson Perry without the artistic talent: part celebrity and part poor soul.  He was a walking embarrassment with his hideous track suits, peroxide bob and idiotic catchphrases, then he turned himself into a national treasure by the enormity of his fund-raising for good causes.

He was so sexually unattractive that we failed to see his predatory intent. He wanted access to the sick, disabled and silenced young the better to abuse them. Our charitable donations were his ticket.

His former prey don’t describe him as wacky or kindly. They use words like “threatening” and “powerful”.  A now-adult paper boy who narrowly escaped rape when Savile took him into his flat to give him a Christmas tip said that after Savile pulled down his jeans: “Mr Nice Guy had gone out the window. It was very frightening.”

The children were silenced by his wealth and celebrity. Yet all these years, every one of them had the power to bring him down if only they’d known it. The trouble was that none realised it, or none thought they’d be listened to. At least one had her complaint dismissed by the headmistress at Duncroft.

But if a child can make their voice heard and they are telling the truth, their accusation will not stand alone for long. Men like Savile are serial offenders, so when accusations emerge, they turn into an avalanche.

The lesson is that adults must listen with respect. They must finally understand that no-one is above suspicion; that no-one should avoid scrutiny because of who they are.

Esther Rantzen says that throughout all the years he was abusing, no child called ChildLine to blow the whistle on Savile. They are speaking up now but they are adults. The least they should expect is that their voices remain the loudest and receive the most attention in this scandal. But in the last few days that hasn’t been the case.

In grabbing the spotlight for itself, the BBC has shoved the victims back into the shadows and the rest of the London media has joined in the feeding frenzy of navel gazing.
Vilification is the fate of celebrities found to be child molesters. Savile knew that. It’s why he used intimidation. His family has had to uproot his headstone for fear of it being a target for rage.

Children need to know their power. They might not be able to resist a large, powerful and frightening abuser. But they can, by telling their story, destroy him.

Now that’s a message that the BBC would do well to deliver at this time.