Originally Posted by danielf

Yes, that's fair enough. I've made up my mind after doing some research earlier in the week. Like you, I was highly skeptical, but I soon found I couldn't maintain the skepticism. There's just too much incriminating stuff out there. Clearly, I don't have proof, but the image of the harmless eccentric philanthropist just isn't tenable.

This is the man who claimed, during his dance hall days, to never have thrown someone out. He'd tie them up in the boiler room till he 'was ready for them'. This is the man who, when working as a porter, would hop down to the morgue to smoke a cigar and ponder over life and death (that's from his 1973 autobiograpy). The man who, when phoned by a journalist, would remark 'she said she was 16, and I had no reason to not believe it' before a question was asked. The man who said that he claimed to not like children in a bid to throw journalists off the hunt. The man who said Gary Glitter didn't do anything wrong when he downloaded child pornography.

When you couple that with 40 allegations of abuse, and reports from people saying it was an open secret, reports from people that claim they've seen him abuse children, or saw him in bed with a 12 year old, it becomes very hard to escape the conclusion that Savile's image was carefully crafted to deflect allegations of abuse, and that he has managed to pull it off.