BBC denies 'burying Jimmy Savile sex abuse investigation'

THE BBC "buried" a recent Newsnight investigation into allegations that one of the corporation's best known figures, Jimmy Savile, had sexually abused teenage girls at Television Centre, it is claimed. The Newsnight inquiry was reportedly shelved in order to protect the BBC's reputation.

The allegations surfaced this week in an article by Miles Goslett for the magazine, The Oldie. The claims date back to the 1970s when Savile, the Radio One disc jockey turned TV star, was hosting the BBC family show, Clunk Click.

Newsnight reportedly launched the investigation after a one-time pupil at Duncroft Approved School in Staines, where Savile was a regular visitor, complained she had been molested by him in his dressing room when she was still 14 or 15.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Newsnight reporters then learned of further complaints from other ex-pupils of Duncroft who said they had been "groomed" by Savile. They also received complaints against two other celebrities, both still living, who had also allegedly abused teenage girls at Television Centre.

Executives had hoped to broadcast the Newsnight report in December, two months after Savile's death, the Telegraph claims. Instead, they were reportedly ordered to abandon the investigation.

The Telegraph says the BBC "now stands accused" of covering up the allegations against Savile because they did not want their reputation to be tarnished.

In The Oldie, Goslett reports a Newsnight spokesman saying: "Any suggestion that a story was dropped for anything other than editorial reasons is completely untrue. The BBC gathers information on hundreds of stories and not all make it to air. In this case the angle we were pursuing could not be substantiated."

However, a BBC News "source" apparently told Goslett that this was a "smokescreen". There were two reasons why the inquiry was shelved, the source said: first, some of the alleged incidents took place on BBC property at Television Centre, thus the corporation itself was "directly involved"; and second, the BBC had already planned lavish tributes to celebrate Savile's career as the presenter of Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It, and these would be "compromised" given the extreme nature of the claims Newsnight was pursuing. ·