SOCIETY risks being sucked into a potentially damaging moral panic over the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, a Scots academic has warned.

Professor Viviene Cree, head of social work at Edinburgh University, said the reactions of the public and media, and ensuing political outrage can have damaging consequences by drawing attention away from child abuse and neglect.

Ms Cree said: "We are in the middle of a storm at the moment, one that appears every now and again, and always with the same negative consequences, for individuals and for society.

"This isn't to suggest that bad things don't happen – that people aren't hurt and children aren't abused. We acknowledge that abuse and neglect happen all the time, and it is right that we do something to protect those who are vulnerable.

"But we also need to find a balance in our response to this, otherwise we'll be left with the wider negative effects of a moral panic, with individuals being wrongly accused, organisations – like the BBC – being lambasted and politicians calling for legislation that may have the consequence of harming the very people it seeks to protect."

Ms Cree was speaking prior to a series of Edinburgh University seminars on moral panics, which begin tomorrow. The series, Revisiting Moral Panics: A Critical Examination of 21st Century Social Issues and Anxieties, will draw links between the reaction to the Savile events and previous societal over-reactions, such as fights between Mods and Rockers and Satanic abuse in Orkney.

l The BBC could drop its archive repeats of Top Of The Pops to avoid broadcasting episodes featuring Savile. Last week an edition fronted by Dave Lee Travis was dropped following his arrest last week over claims he groped two women.

BBC4 has been showing programmes from 1976 onwards, in sequence, and next year it would have been due to screen editions from 1978.